JUST A LITTLE LONGER
It’s been an unusually hot couple of weeks....great tomato growing weather. And that’s really where the flavors for our newest sourdough drop began....
There’s something about late summer that makes me want to eat very simply. Ripe tomatoes (just picked, still warm from the sun!), fresh herbs, good cheese, and of course...a hot loaf of bread on the table. It's my favorite kind of meal, family style. Where everything gets put in the middle of the table and people tear off pieces of bread as they talk, and somehow dinner lasts a lot longer than you expected it to in all the good ways.
We started wondering how we could put that feeling into a loaf and the flavors of late summer felt like a pretty good place to start: Tomatoes. Fresh herbs. Good cheese. Warm bread. Simple.
For the tomatoes, I wanted that deep, almost impossibly concentrated tomato flavor you get when tomatoes have been dried in the sun. We started with dry-packed sun-dried tomatoes and loved their intensity, but the texture wasn't quite right. Oil-packed tomatoes were softer and richer, but were missing those bright bursts of tomato flavor.
This is the point where we can get a little obsessive. After a lot of testing, we realized neither tomato was quite right on its own. The answer, it turned out, was both.
So that’s what we use. Both dry-packed and oil-packed sun-dried tomatoes. Together, they finally gave us the balance we’d been looking for.
Then we added fresh rosemary and oregano (none of that dried stuff!), fresh garlic, and German Gruyère for a little nutty savoriness. It all gets folded into our three-day, wild-yeast sourdough, where the tomatoes bake into pockets of flavor—some soft and rich, others chewy and intensely concentrated.
Our Harvest Tomato and Herb Sourdough tastes like those final days of summer we were chasing when we started.
The flavors of late summer, baked into every slice.
Harvest Tomato and Herb Sourdough comes out of the oven beginning Tuesday, September 15. Come hold onto summer a little longer with us!
Cheers,
Jeffrey
OPEN EVERY DAY 7AM–2PM
In a rush? Give us a call at 619-289-8358 when you arrive and we’ll bring your order out to ya. We call it IZOLA Drive By.
SATURDAY LIVE MUSIC
Every Saturday, we host live music at the bakeshop. Come on by to see how talented our local San Diego musicians are! Follow us on Instagram to see the lineup each week.
YOU CAN'T
All my life, I've been told I can't.
And I know that experience is not unique to me. We all go through our life being told that we can't for one reason or another - we're not smart enough, tall enough, good-looking enough, clever enough, funny enough, charming enough, strong enough, focused enough, the list goes on...
And that is often paired with the worst 4-letter word: "should." (I know, I know. It's 6 letters.)
"You can't do this. But you should do that."
I was lucky. My parents believed in fully supporting me and my decisions, so I learned that just because someone tells me I can't doesn't mean they get to decide whether I can.
I do.
So when I was told that you can't hold laminated pastries in a proofer all morning to bake as needed, I didn't listen.
When people told me a bakery being on the third floor wouldn't work because, "How would anyone find you?" I didn't listen.
"Shouldn't I go to culinary school first?"
I kept following my heart and my vision.
As a business owner, you get told no all day long. This week has been a tough one. We've been surrounded by a lot of that isn't the way things are done, you can't ask us for that, you should accept things the way they are, and you should do it the way everyone else does.
It drives me up the wall.
Thankfully, we've also surrounded ourselves with a team that may not always know if we can, but they're game to try. If it works, then we've grown and stretched what we're capable of. If it doesn't, we learn something and move on.
My latest little win? Our 25+ year-old espresso machine broke. We were told we should toss it and buy a new one. We decided to fix it instead. The first repair didn't do it. We dug deeper, found a bigger problem, replaced the boiler, and got that old machine running again. It worked.
But even if it hadn't, I'd still be proud that we tried. See the story here.
I guess I'm writing this for somewhat selfish reasons today. I needed to remind myself that I can. To keep on trucking. To trust the vision. To not let a week full of people telling us what we can't do convince me that they're right.
And maybe somebody reading this needs the reminder too.
You can.
Come join us at the bakeshop, my altar and living proof that we can.
OPEN EVERY DAY 7a–2p
In a rush? Just give us a call at 619-289-8358 when you arrive and we'll bring your order out to ya - we call it IZOLA Drive By.
My First Croissants Over 700+ tests later, IZOLA Croissants today
WHAT MAKES THE CUT
Our team has been deep in testing mode these past few weeks as we figure out what’s next for the menu.
That means a lot of tasting. A lot of tinkering. A few pretty tense debates about what earns a permanent spot on the menu — and what may be on its way out.
We’ve gotten to fill our bellies with some pretty incredible things — which, for Jenny, is basically her favorite part of the job — but more than anything, we just keep learning. What works. What almost works. What sounded great in our heads but needs another round. And occasionally, what surprises all of us.
We’re running these tests on weekdays, and sometimes we send them straight out into the dining room. So if you’re here at the right moment, you may get pulled into the experiment too!
Our next launch is a few weeks away, and you, our newsletter fam will be the first to hear what made the cut, and what might be leaving the menu to make room for it.
And if you’re not already following us on Instagram, now’s a good time. We’ll be inviting a few people to come taste one of the new creations at the bake bar with Chef JB before it officially hits the menu.
So if you’ve been meaning to try the Kimchi Gruyère Bun — or there’s something on the menu you’d be sad to lose — this might be a good time to come by.
Nothing is ever quite as permanent as it looks...
SATURDAY LIVE MUSIC
Every Saturday, we host live music at the bakeshop. Come on by to see how talented our local San Diego musicians are! Follow us on Instagram to see the lineup each week.
BEFORE SAN DIEGO WAKES UP
The bakery at twilight...it's a time I love just before the sun rises, the streets are empty, the park next door is still, and inside the bakery, it’s just a couple of team members getting the day started.
Our bakers are the first to arrive, and actually not as early as you might think. We start later and bake throughout the day because we want you to experience our croissants and sourdough the way we love them most - hot from the oven.
One of the first things our baker does is peek into the proofers. There’s a lot riding on that peek...They’re looking at the croissants and asking: Are we where we thought we’d be? Does it need another 15 minutes? We have systems and checks upon checks to keep everything on track, but every once in a great while, something unexpected might happen, like a proofer door accidentally left open or some trays of croissants not proofing as they should.
So for all of our schedules and systems, there’s still a baker standing there in the quiet of the morning, looking at the dough and deciding what it needs.
From there, the pace picks up quickly. There are around 100 trays of viennoiserie to manage on a typical morning, plus our sourdough bake, and somehow we need to get a full first round of everything through the ovens before we open at 7.
This part is a little like air traffic control...
Every tray is labeled and scheduled. A minute-by-minute bake schedule tells the bakers what needs to go into which oven and when. Croissants are egg washed. Fresh blades go into the lames for scoring the sourdough. Oven doors open and close, timers go off, and slowly the racks begin filling with the things you’ll be eating a little while later.
Meanwhile, more lights are coming on around the bakery.
The front-of-house team starts arriving. Music goes on. Flowers come out. The espresso machine gets dialed in. Outside, we’re cleaning up the sidewalks and the park next door so everything is ready to welcome you.
And at some point, almost without noticing it, that peaceful little bakery from an hour or two earlier is buzzing with energy.
It smells like butter and coffee.
There are croissants and sourdough coming out of the ovens, pre-orders being packed, and our Front of House Lead is getting ready to unlock the front door.
Then it’s 7am.
And after all of that work to get ready for opening, we’re really just getting started. The ovens stay on. The trays keep coming. And we keep baking throughout the day.
So the next time you’re tearing into a hot croissant or picking up a loaf of sourdough, there was a whole little world humming along here before you arrived. That’s one of my favorite things about the way we do things here. Opening the doors isn’t the end of our bake day — it’s really just the beginning.
See you in the morning,
Jeffrey, Jenny & the IZOLA Team
OPEN EVERY DAY 7a–2p
In a rush? Just give us a call at 619-289-8358 when you arrive and we'll bring your order out to ya - we call it IZOLA Drive By.
ATTENTION NIGHT OWLS!
There’s something pretty special about working at the bakery after everyone else has gone home. It’s quiet, peaceful, and you have the space to settle in and focus on the work. It's Jenny and my most productive part of the day.
We’re looking for an Evening Dough Production Assistant who genuinely wants that kind of schedule.
You don’t need culinary school or professional baking experience —we’ll teach you the baking part. What we do need is someone with great common sense who can work independently, solve problems as they come up, and take real ownership of their work.
One important catch: training happens during the day. You’ll need significant daytime availability while you learn the role, and once you’re fully trained, you’ll transition to your evening schedule. So this is best for someone who wants nights long-term, but has the flexibility to train with us during the day first.
We care much more about where you want to go than where you’ve been. If you have a prior conviction, we encourage you to apply.
If a quiet bakery, a lot of independence, and learning the craft behind IZOLA’s croissants sounds like your kind of night, we’d love to meet you.
SATURDAY LIVE MUSIC
Every Saturday, we host live music at the bakeshop. Come on by to see how talented our local San Diego musicians are! Follow us on Instagram to see the lineup each week.