THE SOURDOUGH JOURNEY IZOLA sourdough is crafted over a three day period, beginning with the team tending to the leaven. The natural leaven is just good ole' water, flour and the local microbes unique to our location in the East Village in San Diego. In place of yeast, the leaven is what will power the sourdough to give it its loft. The team keeps an eye on the growth of the leaven - when it's 2.5-3x in size it's good to go!
On day 2, our sourdough team kicks the morning off with the autolyse step - when a mix of organic high protein flour, whole wheat flour and dark rye are combined with water and we let them chill for a bit before the leaven and salt are added. This allows for the enzymes to start doing their thing and contributes to a more extensible dough.
The leaven and salt are then added to form the final dough. After a short rest, this is when we add the extra flavor bumps - like whole cloves of slow roasted, heritage garlic. Or whole Castelvetrano and Kalamata olives, pecans, fresh lemon zest and herbs de Provence for our Olive Sourdough. Our team hand shapes each loaf, then cold fermented overnight.
Bake Day! The IZOLA bakers score and stencil each loaf, load them into our Salva stone deck ovens and bake them throughout the day so that we can serve them to you hot-from-the-oven. And when the loaves are ready, they must pass our QA check - checking them against defined parameters for minimum length, width and height, target color and interior crumb structure. Hungry for a hot slice of sourdough?? Pre-orders for the week are open now. Have a pre-order and in a hurry? No problem! Double park downstairs and call us at (619) 289-8358, we'll run your order down to you with a smile. We call it IZOLA DRIVE-BY.
SEE YOU TOMORROW!
Join us tomorrow to learn about the state-of-the-art dough innovation center and bakeshop we're building called IZOLA Main. It's the beating heart that will feed a dozen IZOLA Bread Cafes throughout Southern California, plus retail and direct-to-consumer channels. It will be powered by technology enhancements like -
FOOD TECHNOLOGY: We are automating our croissant and sourdough production with cutting-edge equipment from the USA, Japan, Germany + the Netherlands. Our tests show the ability to raise our production by 10-20x and improve our quality.
OPERATIONS TECHNOLOGY: Develop scalable, enterprise-grade technology. My beloved Jenny, co-founder, and powerhouse COO, built the IZOLA Operating System (izOS). It tracks every croissant and sourdough loaf on its multi-day journey from production all the way through the bake so it arrives hot from the oven to your plate every time. Now it's time to rebuild our existing software workflow on a more robust and scalable platform.
ORDERING TECHNOLOGY: We want to make it fun and seamless to order hot croissants. One-click for bread and it will point you to the nearest IZOLA where your hot from the oven order will be waiting for you when you arrive.
WHY? We want to improve our guest experience, enhance wages and the workplace for our team and lessen our environmental impact while increasing our profit margins and the quality of our Croissants and Sourdough. GUIDING PRINCIPLES: We are Justice Driven. For us, that means taking action on Environmental, Racial, Sexual Orientation, Economic, and Gender Justice. It's in IZOLA's DNA...so much so that we added it to our Operating Agreement. Over 400 members of the IZOLA family have already joined us in our equity raise and have become owners in IZOLA. We have now raised over $1.2M solely from the IZOLA community and we are humbled...We still have roughly $3.5M to go to fully execute on the IZOLA Main vision. So join Jenny and me tomorrow, Wednesday September 13th, at 3p on Google Meet to learn more about where IZOLA has been, where we're going and why we're coming to you, our IZOLA community to help get us there.
*Please only invest an amount you would feel comfortable losing. Investing in private businesses involves risk. Though potential returns are designed to reflect that risk, there is a possibility that you will lose your entire investment.
MAKE-A-WISH WINE AND WISHES GALA The Make-A-Wish Foundation of San Diego is celebrating their 40th anniversary this year. Celebrate and support their amazing work at their upcoming Wine and Wishes Gala on Saturday, October 14th. Tickets are almost sold out....
IZOLA MUSIC SATURDAY Every Saturday IZOLA hosts live music - come see how diverse and talented our San Diego community is. We post our full musical line-up every Friday night on Instagram - follow us here!
THE TVK
Our Tahitian Vanilla Knots, also known by the team as the "TVK," is a favorite here at the bakeshop. Made with a croissant dough that has been infused with Tahitian vanilla beans, the sweet, perfumed scent wafts through the entire Dojo when the team is working with the dough. It is laminated with Beurre D'Isigny, the same butter from Normandy that we use in our croissants, creating super thin layers of butter and dough. The layers puff up in the hot oven to create a pillowy soft interior. The team hand cuts the dough into strips (5 cuts for each Tahitian Vanilla Knot!), they are then braided and knotted before being proofed and baked. The final step is our house-made Tahitian vanilla glaze, made with hand-scraped Tahitian vanilla bean caviar. As the knots make their way out of the oven, they are enrobed in this icing for an extra bump of sweetness and delightful vanilla flavor. Hungry?? Pre-orders for the week are open now. Have a pre-order and in a hurry? No problem! Double park downstairs and call us at (619) 289-8358, we'll run your order down to you with a smile. We call it IZOLA DRIVE-BY.
OUR DEEPEST APOLOGIES For any folks who came in last weekend and had a difficult time picking up their pre-order, we struggled mightily to fulfill orders on time and we accept 100% responsibility for that failure. We have reached out to those we believe were affected, but if we missed you, please email us. If you were not delighted with your IZOLA experience for any reason, please let us know and we’ll make it right via our IZOLA Almighty Guarantee. On Saturday we had a power outage just before 10:30a, and it affected cloud based communication of all our POS ordering, inventory and packing technology. The same occurred on Sunday. At IZOLA we know that to err is human, but to recover well is IZOLA. And so that is why we've been dedicating the last several days to put immediate improvements in place - Backup power is now tested and up and running at the bakeshop. We're upgrading our main power supply. Additional team training is in work to improve our communication out to customers through both our "order ready" messaging and in person. We've adjusted our Expo screen settings to ensure closer tracking of all orders. Thank you for your grace and understanding. Regards, Jeffrey + the IZOLA Team
THANK YOU Thank you to the over 400 members of the IZOLA fam that have joined us and become owners in IZOLA this past year. Our Q2 rolling close ended with a bang, at almost $300k raised this year. We have now raised over $1.2M solely from the IZOLA community. Wow... But the hard work isn't over yet. We still have roughly $3.5M to go to fully execute on the IZOLA Main vision. So join Jenny and me next Wednesday, September 13th at 3p on Google Meet to learn more about where IZOLA has been, where we're going and why we're coming to you, our IZOLA community to help get us there.
*Please only invest an amount you would feel comfortable losing. Investing in private businesses involves risk. Though potential returns are designed to reflect that risk, there is a possibility that you will lose your entire investment.
IZOLA MUSIC SATURDAY Every Saturday IZOLA hosts live music - come see how diverse and talented our San Diego community is. We post our full musical line-up every Friday night on Instagram - follow us here!
Q2 EQUITY ROUND ENDING SOON.... Jenny and I launched IZOLA three years ago at the start of the COVID pandemic - it was a sad and scary time, and we really wanted to find a way to reconnect with our community. So we started baking in our little home kitchen and the window basket was born! We lowered our first hot from the oven croissants and sourdough out our 3rd story window, saw the joy that it brought to our neighborhood and we were hooked. Fast forward to today - we have used up every square inch of our space! There's just no more room to produce more. We are on a mission to change the way America experiences sourdough bread and croissants while propelling our justice-based mission, and so we need to make some big changes! That's where the IZOLA community comes in - and why we are asking you to walk with us on this journey together. We are raising funds through a Regulation CF equity raise that will allow us to build California's first 100% renewable energy-powered, zero-emission (except yummy smells) factory of the future.
Our Q2 round ends at midnight, this Thursday, August 31st! Join us TOMORROW, Tuesday, August 29th at 7p on Google Meet to learn more about our plans for the future. We are on track to create 170+ high-paying jobs with training and advancement, with opportunities available to all, including members of high-poverty communities like City Heights. We are on track to grow to a $38,000,000 company in 5 years, which will 20x our justice-based impact, and maximize ROI to all our stakeholders. (community, team members, investors, government) for decades to come. IZOLA is powered by our community. Your dedication to this movement allows IZOLA to plan and build for a better future. RSVP to learn more.
*Please only invest an amount you would feel comfortable losing. Investing in private businesses involves risk. Though potential returns are designed to reflect that risk, there is a possibility that you will lose your entire investment.
96.... I can't help but grin from ear to ear every time I witness the magic of our 96 layers of Normandy butter coming together to create this perfectly proofed honeycomb structure. As someone who majored in Civil Engineering I've got a deep appreciation for all the intricate steps that go into crafting this structure. Our Dojo team delicately handles the dough not once, not twice, but thrice, to perfectly encapsulate 96 layers of butter, each one thinner than a hair's breadth! And then there's the precise temperature and humidity working together during the proofing stage, creating the ideal conditions for every single layer to start its majestic ascent. And let's not forget the grand finale – the baking...It's like a symphony of flavors and textures coming together in perfect harmony. The oven's exact temperature works its magic, coaxing the butter to form steam to create those delightful pockets. Hungry?? Pre-orders for the week are open now. Have a pre-order and in a hurry? No problem! Double park downstairs and call us at (619) 289-8358, we'll run your order down to you with a smile. We call it IZOLA DRIVE-BY.