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Published on 08/14/1995 All articles from this issue

Walking the street with

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By Clyde Noel / Town Crier Staff Writer

a Le Boulanger baguette

Working parents and singles on their way home get in line at Le Boulanger and pick up their sourdough French bread for dinner. They can also fill the Le Boulanger shopping bag with muffins, croissants or Danish for breakfast.

Since biblical times, bread has been considered the "staff of life." The rounded, crusty, fragrant loaves of bread lined many a pantry shelf, but today it's more convenient for home makers to buy their bread.

There are 16 different Le Boulanger locations in the South Bay. All feature a cafe for sandwiches, homemade soups, salads and a coffee bar. All bread items, however, are made in one location. Le Boulanger bakery is in Sunnyvale at 305 N. Mathilda Ave.

Le Boulanger opened last November and bakes bread 24 hours a day seven days a week. The 35,000-square-foot two-story building houses the bakery and a cafe. While diners eat their sandwiches they can watch the dough being mixed and the bread baking.

As you walk in the bakery there is a meeting room on the right that serves as the starting point to tour the bakery. Pre-school students to senior citizen groups are shown through the bakery by Ray Montalvo, director of marketing.

"Kids love the smells from the bakery," Montalvo said. "Before we start the tour, we give each child a small ball of dough so they can make their own shape of bread. Seniors, however, prefer listening to the theory of how to make bread and the process it goes through."

Le Boulanger history started when Paul Brunello came from Venice, Italy, and established a bakery in Weed, Calif., in 1922. In 1957 he moved his family to the Bay Area and opened El Real Bakery in Palo Alto. Six years later, Roger Brunello joined his father in the bakery business. Roger's younger brother, Dan, joined Roger in 1981, and they founded Le Boulanger.

Roger Brunello, Los Altos Hills resident, is president and chief operating officer of Le Boulanger Inc. and Roger's son, Scott, a third generation Brunello, joined the company in 1987 as comptroller. A cousin, Larry Ceccato, is in charge of Le Boulanger's wholesale business.

Bread recipes begin with basic ingredients: water, flour, salt and yeast. To this short list, the bakery adds a variety of ingredients that will give the breads individuality. Seeds, nuts, dried fruits, raisins, dates, apples, berries, herbs, spices, vegetables and bran are just a few of the ingredients that can create muffins, Danish or Le Boulanger's signature item- sourdough French bread.

Bread making uses many machines. The mixer checks for the correct ingredients, proper timing and consistency of dough. The mixer can hold up to 500 pounds of dough at a time.

The dough is hoisted into dough troughs and a baker breaks it up and places it in a divider where it is weighed and divided into the size and shape of the loaf of bread ordered.

The croissant bakers sheet the dough before it sits and rests for 20 minutes. Before anything goes into an oven the dough is placed in proofing boxes which are more than 110 degrees with high humidity. That creates an environment where the yeast begins to grow.

Oven times are different for each item. Sourdough bread is in the oven from 30 to 40 minutes, while croissants are in the oven from 12 to 13 minutes.

"Some of the items like biscotti and the croissants are hand formed before they go into the proofing stage. This part of baking is still labor intensive, and it's a lost art," Montalavo said.

According to Dave Hansen, director of manufacturing, the bakery produces 25,000 pounds of batter or dough a day. That makes 16,000 loaves of bread which are delivered to the different locations plus a large amount sold by the wholesale division to restaurants, catering companies, hotels and an airline company that lands at San Jose airport.

Le Boulanger won grand prize for sourdough French bread three consecutive years (1983, 1984 and 1985) at the San Francisco Fair & Exposition competition. The rules were changed in 1986 to stipulate entrants must have retail outlets in San Franciso.

Bread making is not seasonal, so the bakery employs 100 plus workers year round. The cafe will eventually become a corporate training ground for clerks and management personnel.

For a tour of the bakery, call (408) 774-9000.