Starter Bakery’s retail outlet settling in just fine in Oakland’s Rockridge

Acclaimed chef and owner Brian Wood's culinary journey came from humble beginnings but is rising higher all the time.

Biting into swoon-worthy pastries created by Brian Wood, the founder, owner and executive pastry chef at Starter Bakery in Oakland’s Rockridge district, it’s unimaginable that it all started with Jiffy pancake mix scooped from a metal canister.

Adding waistband-expanding temptations, a constant threat lurks with holiday and special-occasion treats such as a marvelous carrot cake and macaroons dressed in orange zest and coated with chocolate.

“I remember waking up on weekends at my grandparents’ house,” Wood says. “I made pancakes with my grandfather. I’d stand on a stool and scoop Jiffy pancake mix out, level the cup, pour it into a bowl. When he’d crack eggs, it was like a magic trick and suddenly, there was egg in a bowl with no shell. It was a special moment for me.”

Wood grew up in Rhode Island and says he remembers baking with his sister on snow days.

“No school, warm and cozy, eating fresh-baked chocolate chip cookies, what could be better? It was dreamy,” he recalls.

Later, a summer camp job as a cook had him making three meals a day from scratch for 400 people under a head chef from Hungary who smoked a cigar in the kitchen the entire time. Wood says he loved organizing the pantry, slamming head lettuce to dislodge stem cores, cracking eggs two-at-a-time.

He took a gap year to work for AmeriCorps and toyed with the idea of becoming a teacher. In college, he gravitated to cultural anthropology but still enjoyed working with food, despite the chefs.

“In the 1990s, let’s just say the level of professionalism was lower and there was higher tolerance of crazy, unhinged, abusive chefs.”

Bounced forward by a college career counselor’s suggestion that he buck thoughts of teaching after graduation and become a pastry chef, Wood attended a community college in Seattle, earned his chef’s certificate, worked in two bakeries there and eventually landed in the East Bay.

Wood founded Starter Bakery (starterbakery.com/pages/about) as a wholesale and pop-up operation in 2010. By 2018, Starter was producing their in-demand, hand-made pastries in a 13,000-square-foot facility in West Berkeley and distributing to seven Bay Area farmers markets and nearly a dozen coffee shops, groceries and co-ops.

In 2023, Wood opened Starter’s first brick-and-mortar shop and café in North Oakland’s Rockridge. As with the company’s fine pastries, Wood was and is hands-on in every aspect of designing, establishing and operating his first retail store.

“Retail was always my goal; no one sets out to be a wholesaler,” he sais. “Building out the menu was tricky. Making decisions around the music, plants, menu boards — I took a long time. I’d had the space for about 18 months from the lease signing to opening.

“The design and construction process was intimate, and when we took down the window coverings to invite the public in … well, wholesalers fly under the radar, but when you’re a retailer, all eyes are on you.”

The 2,000-square-foot café was developed with architect Hallie Chen of Caha Design. He said having completed the finishing touches was rewarding.

“I’m not fast and furious, but my slower process makes clear the embellishments I prefer and more (that) I want to add in my next retail stores.”

It’s likely some of those features will support the safety and well-being of employees, a reasonable prediction in light of the bakery’s current operations. For the 100 employees at the Gilman wholesale location and 14 in Rockridge, worker protections include injury-prevention training, regular rest breaks and enough staff to avoid heavy overtime or backbreaking pacing.

There are dishwashing machines able to accommodate 36 sheet pans, oven racks and loads 10 times the size of a home dishwasher. There are easily pushable floor scrubbers instead of mops and hand-saving machines to pump out cookie pucks, divide dough or deposit muffin batter.

“We have depositors that can portion out 24 muffins in 40 seconds versus the 30 seconds required for a person to measure out the 130 grams of batter in each muffin,” he says. “It’s worker safety and also greater productivity. People ask if it takes work away from people. My goal is for them to do more interesting things and learn more skills instead. Our products are machine-assisted but still handmade.”

The café menu offers exploratory creativity that the wholesale business cannot address, which must always prioritize volume, customer demand and streamlined productivity. Working with a team to develop the culinary portfolio, the menu is concise.

“Some of them we were testing right up to opening. The Cardamom Pistachio croissant has the old-school flavor of a danish but more pronounced. There were probably 15 versions, and it ended up being a team effort to dial in on the flavor notes, texture, amount of butter. It’s a team product, and one person wouldn’t have come up with it in one or two tries.”

Wood says the same approach results in regular tasting of updates and testing new products of all of the savory lines — sandwiches, quiche, salads — as well the sweet and specialties sides of the menu. Passover and Mother’s Day specials include brioche, macaroons, Chocolate Decadence, seasonally-focused Twice Baked Strawberry Rhubarb croissants, mille-feuille-style Napoleon Cake featuring various unusual ganaches, fruit poached in-house and more.

Future additions include a curated line of sustainably-created and packaged wine from primarily women- and minority-owned vineyards, locally crafted beer and savory items such as jumbo pretzels with dip, gougère, focaccia, cheese and charcuterie boards and more.

“Now that we have our sea legs with retail, we’re taking on larger orders for corporations, planing to add evening hours Thursday to Saturday and looking at locations to open a second store,” Wood says.

“I can only say it will be in the Bay Area … unless it’s in Japan. I just got back two weeks ago, and it was incredible. The high level of execution on the products at the 100-year-old bakery I visited with longtime employees who are bakers by choice? it’s definitely got me thinking.”

Lou Fancher is a freelance writer. Reach her at lou@johnsonandfancher.com.