While living in the La Brea & Melrose area of Los Angeles on the mid-1990’s, Paul discovered La Brea Bakery breads. The original bakery attached next to the Campanile restaurant on La Brea Avenue was just around the corner and their breads were starting to be sold around the city. Different from any bread he had tasted before, he became hooked especially on their sourdough baguettes. 

 

While scanning cook books at a local bookstore one day, he ran across the title Breads From The La Brea Bakery by Nancy Silverton. Intrigued, he started to thumb through it. An hour later he was determined to create his own sourdough starter and began to bake artisan loaves at home. His sourdough journey began, first baking most of Silverton’s recipes and moving on to other sourdough bakers published through the years.

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Working in technology sales and baking on the weekends he developed a fascination with sourdough and a skill level to turn out professional looking loaves of sourdough in a home oven. Eventually the Covid pandemic happily changed him from a weekend warrior to an everyday baker. That eventually led him up to the San Francisco Baking Institute where he took several classes to learn the skills of commercial bread baking and opening and operating a bakery. Established in 2021, and fully operational in April of 2022, Big Dog Artisan Breads immediately became a hit at several farmer’s markets in Southern California. Growth and expansion are the next steps and Paul is looking forward to moving the company into the next phase.