The Village Breadhouse brings a dive into the past, detailing a family's history with baking, as well as the challenges they face at opening a bakery in Los Baños. Detailed with vivid imagery as warm as freshly baked bread, the story forms to be a sweet and heartfelt bite of reminiscence.
Image credit: Molly Bryant
An intriguing smell and the faint buzzing sound of the oven woke me up and led me outside my room. Half-awake, I walked downstairs and to the kitchen to check – it was the whiff of the very first batch of pan de sal my parents made at home; I was six years old at the time. The following days after that they made their other trial batches, some were too toasty, some were too bland, some were soft as a pillow. They didn’t have a lot of background on baking during that time, as they were still exploring and trying out new recipes.
A few months after the trial phase, my mom started to prepare for the opening of her very own bakery. She bought stainless steel baking appliances, a huge oven, and wooden shelves, then decorated her small rental space with light green paint and sunflower decorations. Just a few steps away from the university, the area commonly known as Raymundo Gate had a lot of foot traffic, especially around 5 PM when students come out of class. The bakery’s eye-catching yellow signage with cursive writing would swing back and forth, on which it wrote: “The Village Breadhouse”
My mom’s bakery was not the typical Filipino panaderia. Although it offered the usual pan de sal, pre-sliced classic white bread, and Spanish bread, The Village Breadhouse also championed Italian bread such as focaccia, ciabatta, and panini at affordable prices. And sometimes, my mom would also sell baguettes if she felt like it, inspired by The French Baker stores we would find in Manila. She would recount her days when she was working in Makati and enjoy a quick bite of their croissant, a simple yet satisfying treat after the hustle and bustle in the city. Although croissants were one of her favorites, she never dared to sell them here in Los Baños as she felt like the process was too complicated and sophisticated to do. Crispy yet soft layers with the right amount of flakiness? It was difficult to achieve without proper French baking techniques, and my mom wouldn’t sell baked goods she can’t perfect.
A plain pan de sal recipe had to go through so much development and trial, as she wanted the pan de sal to be not too airy yet soft, not as sweet as the usual ones, not too oily, and had the perfect size that shouldn’t deflate or be too stuffed in the packaging. She was keen on the smallest of details and has a very specific standard that even she could not attain at times.
“Baking isn’t the same as cooking,” my mom would say, “it’s a science. Everything has to be exact and measured.” A small change in measurement could affect the entirety of the bread.
The bakery often engaged with the older health-conscious people in the area, with my mom marketing her Italian artisan bread as a healthier option since it has no added sugar, no preservatives, and has olive oil instead of lard or shortening. Aged university professors and grandparents even requested whole-wheat grain versions, and my mom happily obliged and offered a whole-wheat and multigrain product line. Frequent customers later became kumares, who would then refer and recommend the healthy bread to their other kumares, in which some were small restaurant or cafe owners in Los Baños. In a few months, the bakery started to regularly supply bread to other locally owned businesses, providing them with whole-wheat burger buns of their preferred size, herb breadsticks, and dinner rolls. The selling point of the bakery grew from healthy bread for customers who walk nearby the university to healthy bread for businesses in our small town, with my mom delivering the bread to various businesses herself.
A distinctive memory of the bakery I had growing up was that the huge steel mixer always had a loud repetitive clang, and as a kid, I hated the noise it made. The loud mixer would go on together with the scorching heat of the oven, as I would sit around our small bakery and feel uncomfortable with the heat, sweat, and clanging. The only perk I had was that I was able to eat unlimited amounts of bread whenever I want. I would enjoy myself with my bread of choice while watching people walk by until sunset, reveling in the orange hues of sunlight passing through the bakery’s glass doors. In that sense, I felt like the torturous clanging was all worth it.
For other kids, their childhood consisted of games and running around screaming with kids their age, while mine consisted of spending time inside the bakery– sometimes watching the process of baking, doodling on my notebook, or observing customers– munching on free bread, constantly seeing the mixer’s silver bread hook going round and round, forming the ingredients into a new kind of mixture. Years of hearing that mixer noise turned from an unbearable sound to a nostalgic beat now that I’m in my twenties.
The Village Breadhouse was like my mom’s newborn baby, dealt with love and anticipation, yet terribly demanding. Going to the office at her IT company during the morning, then managing the bakery right after was overly taxing, so she hired a few employees — one lady as a cashier handling customers, and two other part-timers who were trained to bake bread. She had to juggle two businesses and three kids, and until today I can’t imagine how she did it.
While I knew my mom was excited about all the potential of the bakery, I also noticed ample amounts of frustration. A year and a half after opening The Village Breadhouse, a competitor emerged just a few steps away from the bakery — selling cheaper pan de sal and other baked goods, “but low quality” my mom would whisper to me.
Because she took pride in the quality of her bread, she firmly believed that she would rather keep her standard than lowering prices, causing the daily morning pan de sal sales to dip. Her usual customers wanted to try out the new and cheaper pan de sal next door. Quite pissed off, my mom would complain about how hers used to be the first and only bakery that exists near Raymundo Gate. She took the opportunity to market her Italian specialty bread even more, showing that she had a unique edge compared to the other bakery. I remember my mother cutting up until midnight sticker papers for the bread packaging with the tagline: “The Village Breadhouse Healthy Italian Bread. No sugar, no preservatives.”
Aside from the competitor emerging, my mom also experienced difficulty during weekends, summer, and semester breaks: foot traffic near the university decreasing, making it difficult to gain profit. Apparently, a lot of other small businesses in Los Baños also take a hit during that period, as most of the customers are thousands of students and employees from the university. During summer or Christmas break, Los Baños is akin to a ghost town, hush and not so great for sustaining a business, while I would unwittingly hang out in the bakery and enjoy the peace on the street of Raymundo Gate.
On top of all these problems, the bakery employees would be constantly replaced by newbies, some would resign and look for a higher wage job, while others would lie about their work or swindle money while my mother was busy in the IT office. As upsetting as it is, this resulted in spending more time on training new employees, and overall just tiresome effort on the managerial aspect of the business, losing trust and morale.
After five years of running the bakery and rushing to solve problem after problem, my mother decided to close the store at the rental building near the university. By 2010, she renovated the area near our kitchen and turned it into a small bakery space, the huge stainless steel appliances having each their own positions. She decided to have a home-based bakery instead, still taking orders from small restaurants, family, and friends. From three employees, she downsized to one, with that one leaving by the end of the year as I’m about to enter high school.
I started learning how to bake by being her apprentice. The baking sessions with my mom were ways I bonded with her, with each bake resulting in a sweet and delightful treat, making it seem that choosing a home-based bakery was a better option than dealing with the stress of retail. Throughout high school and college, I helped out in our home-based bakery whenever my mom needed me. At first, I would do bakery tasks such as repeatedly shaping and weighing bread or cookies. And when I started classes at the university, my tasks evolved into delivering the bread orders to nearby restaurants and cafes before coming to class. It was fulfilling — I felt proud seeing my other classmates and friends enjoying their pasta meal with a side of our homemade bread.
Dealing with a smaller scale bakery at home and working with a trusted family was definitely the relaxing choice my mother made; she was contented by it and so was I.
“We’re a family of generational bakers.”
I remember my mom telling me that, followed by her Lola’s story during World War II. My grandmother’s family owned a panaderia that would open by the crack of dawn at the heart of Calamba City. My great grandmother would deliver fresh bread rolls while riding a horse, with my great grandfather as the maestro panadero.
By the 1970’s, my grandmother started a small siopao business with a recipe we couldn’t replicate until today. She would wake up at around 3 AM and start kneading large batches of dough, creating a banging noise on the steel work table as she wrestled the dough with her bare hands. My grandmother would then mold the dough into plump rounds of siopao with asado or bola bola filling, pop them in the steamer, and bring these to sell with her sister at the palengke.
At school, my mom and her three other siblings would take siopao orders from their classmates, and bring a fresh batch of siopao to sell for 10 pesos each the next day, sustaining their daily allowance. It was my grandmother’s way of gaining extra income while also working at the post office, all done in diligence with no complaints.
After my mom told me that story, I realized how a family legacy has passed on. I’d like to think the art of making bread in our family has been taught from mothers to daughters, and their daughter’s daughters, generations of creating a simple yet satisfying delicacy all handed down for survival. While some recipes are now forgotten, the act of making bread has lived on, with every single one of us pouring our heart into it.
The same way my grandmother did, my mother shows love and affection through bread making. And perhaps now, I do too.
Receipts 
I love the cohesion of the work. It was an easy read from top to bottom. The author’s way of story telling felt very close to her heart as her words produced very vivid imagery that influenced how I was able to finish the reading the work without feeling mentally drained. No one wants to read limp literary pieces, right? Although I blame this work for giving me cravings over Italian breads
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A light anecdote and yet a deep dive into generational treasures that we take for granted every day. This legacy piece flows as if you’re listening to your best friend telling you about her family’s trials and hardships in running a bakery—and that makes you want to root for her and her mom even more. In the end, though the store came to a close, the author reminds us that it wasn’t the success of it that was most important, but the love she developed for the craft thanks to her mother (and grandmother) for never giving up on it.
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A lovely tale of a mother’s love beautifully interwoven with the story of their family’s history in breadmaking. Stories like this one always give you comfort and it definitely made me feel as if I was there making and eating bread with them! I commend the author for showcasing that love can come in many different forms.
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Reading this took me back to my childhood where my family would visit our relatives in Quezon and I would always buy bread from the local bakery owned by my grandmother. The scent of freshly baked bread was heavenly. As the writer described her experience in baking with her mother, I cannot help but think of my own mother and the times we spent in the kitchen, helping each other cook and bake. My mother was the reason I got into baking and reading this made me appreciate her more.
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