“That’s what I remember in that period following Hurricane Katrina. We were pretty beat up—the whole city—but people would walk into my bakery and smiles would appear. Old men with challah bread loaves under their arms, just chatting away, dropping the day-to-day anxieties if only for a few precious moments. A little boy eating his first solid food—a croissant—and the priceless expression on his face of that first bite.

“This is the only place that makes sense,” I heard more than once during that time. These people, my people, were coming from the chaos of flooded houses and insurance adjustors, and the bakery provided a community space. We lost something from the old days when a neighborhood bakery served as a valuable part of the community. It’s time for a resurrection.

People want preservative-free, homemade baked goods made from high-quality ingredients and they deserve it. They deserve to see, smell and taste those delicious baked goods that parents and grandparents still savor. They deserve a bakery that serves the community and becomes part of it, not a corporate box building that could be dropped anywhere else in the country.

That’s what Laurel Street Bakery will deliver. I put my heart into everything I bake and my kitchen will become your kitchen, where you are welcome to stop by, enjoy fresh from the oven baked goods, chat with your friends and neighbors and come back to a time when a local bakery still matters.”

– Hillary Guttman