The Craft, Crust, and Culture of San Leandro’s As Kneaded Bakery

By M. Molloy Basso | Photos by Clara Rice

 

 

Craft. Crust. Culture: Those three simple words in the slogan at San Leandro’s revered As Kneaded Bakery have meanings as layered as a flaky croissant. Ask the bakery’s founder, owner, and head baker, Iliana Berkowitz, what the slogan entails, and you’ll get a baker’s dozen of thoughts. She may start with the craft that goes into a perfect baguette:

“If it’s very straight all the way through with the beautiful points at the end, that’s because someone made it by hand,” Berkowitz says in the midst of a busy day at her popular San Leandro bakery, located on the edge of a residential neighborhood just blocks from the Oakland border.

In a world that’s increasingly run by AI and robots, it’s refreshing to hear someone talk about handicraft, and what better place than the spot that Eater’s Dianne de Guzman recently cited as “arguably the most serious bread bakery in the East Bay.”

“We are craft people,” Berkowitz continues. “It means [being] bakers: how we deliver our product, how we discuss with our customers the process by which everything gets made and the history behind it. We must be experts in our craft to navigate the subtle and daily changes in temperature, weather, and even emotions.”

 

 

Berkowitz describes her kitchen as a place of “nerds and lovers of the science of fermentation and flavor development,” people who know about poolish, for instance. A fun word to say, poolish is made by a pre-fermentation technique that (no kidding) originated in Poland before it wandered into France and became a staple in French baking. “Made with equal parts flour and water and just a pinch of yeast, it sits and grows for 12 hours or more before becoming a foundational element in baguette dough,” she says. “It lends a lot of flavor, a sweetness, and a mellowness and makes it so the crust is crackly and crunchy but not too chewy and the interior is light and airy and perfect for taking a bite.”

That Crust, estimates Berkowitz, is 70 percent of the flavor of bread. As her bakers slide the baguettes into a 500° oven, they are looking for the Maillard reaction, an interaction of amino acids with reducing sugars that gives browned foods like seared meats and roasted coffee beans their appealing flavors. After the hot start, the oven gets cooled for a longer bake “to finish nailing those flavors,” Berkowitz says. “There is a science and art to breadmaking.”

Berkowitz draws a distinction between As Kneaded and bakeries that follow what she calls the “Cold Stone Creamery formula,” which relies on one main recipe and simple variations. “The recipe is the least important part of breadmaking. You need to know how to coax the ingredients with the ineffable factors such as humidity, temperature, and time. Different loaves have different stories for me,” she adds.

 

 

culture could simply refer to a sourdough culture, “literally an organism that promotes activity and is how bread comes into being,” Berkowitz says, estimating that their sourdough culture is a decade old. “It’s something we nourish and we feed [to] make sure it is healthy and alive,” she adds.

But As Kneaded also nurtures a host of cultural baking traditions: “Jewish, French, Mexican, Italian, and more,” adds this New York–born Jewish baker, who says that none of their recipes have anything to do with her childhood: “We didn’t eat a lot of bread growing up. Bread really didn’t enter my world until my mid-twenties.”

Berkowitz speaks, too, of the culture of the workplace.

“I have always liked leading people,” she says. “I like to set up systems, and the fact that I have an expertise in something—baking bread—means that I was drawn to be an entrepreneur in that way.” She describes the bakery’s internal culture as one that unifies around the quality of the baked goods. “Our excellent products all help hone a healthy culture that is positive for people to be committed to.”

 

 

Iliana Berkowitz was 9 months old when her father landed a job in Silicon Valley and moved the family there from New York. She returned East for college, where she majored in international development and anthropology.

“It only makes sense that I have a bread business now,” she adds wryly.

The call to a culinary career came on quietly as she worked in bakeries in Washington, D.C., and Philadelphia. “I came back to California because my stepfather had passed away,” she says. “I wanted to be closer to my family, and there were simply more bread opportunities in California.”

Now married, she has two children, one turning five and another who turns one in January. Her husband, Gilbert Mott, works full-time at Whole Foods and has occasionally helped out at the bakery. “[He helped] me at farmers’ markets and as a retail associate, and then as a delivery driver briefly during the start of the pandemic when he was laid off,” she says.

Berkowitz started As Kneaded Bakery in 2016 by renting time in a commercial kitchen in San Mateo and selling her breads through pop-ups, farmers’ markets, and her weekly Bread Club subscription service. With a meteoric growth in her customer base, Berkowitz realized she needed a storefront, so in 2018, she opened the brick-and-mortar bakery in San Leandro’s Broadmoor neighborhood, near her home and just blocks from the Oakland border. Many regulars arrive by foot, and lines can extend around the corner on weekends and holidays.

What draws the crowds? Customer favorites like fruity bostocks, sticky buns, cardamom twists, scones, a tantalizing array of cookies, and, of course, the breads.

“The first time I made Honey Rye Porridge,” Berkowitz recalls, “I thought to myself, ‘Yes, this is going to be a star for life,’ and sure enough, it’s become the most popular bread we have.” The challah was called out by Food & Wine writer David Landsel in his 2022 “The Best Bread in Every State” story: “Iliana Berkowitz bakes astonishingly good challah at As Kneaded Bakery.”

Giveaway programs are an under-publicized part of the bakery’s work. Quietly, week after week, they serve hundreds of unhoused and/or food insecure individuals and families in East Oakland and San Leandro through several church-based food pantries and East Oakland Collective’s Feed the Hood program. The bread is often picked up and distributed the same day it’s baked, so it’s not day-old.

“It takes a lot of effort collectively to make these baked goods, so of course we want to ensure they don’t go to waste,” says Berkowitz. “We want them to go into someone’s hands and belly.”

The bakery also participates with the Too Good to Go app, which targets unsold baked goods. As front-of-house employee Danielle Minsk explains, customers prepay $5.99 for a bag with an $18 retail value, a great deal for customers with limited means.

Berkowitz nurtures a palpable camaraderie with other bakery owners, which serves for occasional commiseration over the vagaries of running a food business as well as for real support. She has loaned bread racks to other bakeries and even loaned her delivery van when another bakery had a breakdown. At the start of the pandemic, she created Local Lady Larder, an effort to support women entrepreneurs by promoting their products through her own online store. In addition, the bakery has sponsored interns from nearby high schools.

When asked why she goes to the trouble of coordinating so many efforts, Berkowitz replies, “Giving is an important human principle and a Jewish core principle as well. Giving, sharing, and uplifting are all parts of the whole.” ♦

As Kneaded Bakery is open Wednesday through Sunday at 585 Victoria Court in San Leandro. Berkowitz recently stopped selling wholesale and is adding farmers’ markets like the Sunday market in Montclair Village, Oakland. askneadedbakery.com

San Leandro resident M. Molloy Basso retired after 40 years as a K-12 educator.  His family is bicultural, and they recently constructed a home in San Miguel de Allende, Mexico.  His paternal grandparents emigrated from Sicily, a background that along with the rich, diverse regional cuisine of Mexico informs his food and wine interests.

Clara Rice began photographing as a teen and has been shooting ever since. “I’m most motivated by creating beautiful imagery in collaboration with individuals and exciting local businesses,” she says.  clararice.com