A new Filipino bakery has opened. Why it’s on a mission to introduce its bread to Fresno
The owners of Fresno’s newest bakery want you to know you can eat bread whenever you want.
Eat it for breakfast. Or dessert. Or with coffee or tea, or as part of a meal.
“There’s no time frame for eating breads,” said bakery co-owner Mark Sanchez.
In the Philippines, there’s a bakery on every corner and it’s not unusual to find people noshing on pastries at 2 a.m., he said.
You can find Filipino sweet breads and other baked goods at Bread and Butter, a bakery that opened late last month in central Fresno. After years of selling from an orange tent at the River Park Farmers Market, the business has graduated to a brick-and-mortar location.
The farmers markets are on hold for now while the business focuses on its new location.
Where is the bakery?
It can be a little tricky to find, however.
The best way to track it down is to look for the Sammy Quick Mini Mart on Fresno Street, just south of Gettysburg Avenue. Then go to the back, right side of the convenience store building to find Bread and Butter. Look for the tables and chairs outside.
Or, as co-owner and Sanchez’s wife Jamna Sanchez says, copy what people in the neighborhood are doing when the scent of fresh-baked bread hits their nostrils.
“They smell it and they’re like, ‘Where is it?’” she said. “Just follow the smell.”
So far, their bakery is attracting people from the neighborhood and beyond. About 50% of its customers have followed them from the farmers markets.
The menu
The owners grew up in the Philippines, and their recipes are traditional and authentic.
They nabbed the bakery space after seeing the nearly 8-foot-long oven. Inside, five revolving metal trays bake massive amounts of breads and pastries, many of them sweet.
Customers’ favorite? The Señorita bread, little rolls with butter and sugar inside.
“They will have tantrums if we don’t have that,” Mark Sanchez said.
There’s also the Ensaimada bread, a pumped-up version of the Señorita that’s even more fluffy and rich and smothered in butter and sugar.
Ube, a type of yam, infuses some baked goods with a bright purple color. They include the popular ube brownie and ube rolls.
“Filipino breads are all dessert breads, but we treat it as a bread-bread,” he said, meaning, you can eat it whenever you want.
There are a few breads that aren’t super sweet. The pandesal rolls can be used in sliders or sandwiches. There’s a tuna melt with tuna, cheese and a boiled egg wrapped up inside a roll.
And the “pig pie” is a savory roll that doesn’t have any animal products in it at all. It was once made with pork lard. But it’s evolved to use vegetable shortening instead and has a filling made from onions.
The Spanish influence in the names of the breads comes from more than 300 years of colonization of the Philippines by Spain.
What about lumpia and pancit?
When Sanchez — or Chef Moki as many people call him — first came to the United States, he was on his wife’s visa. She worked as an occupational therapist.
Because of the type of visa, he couldn’t work. So he took the time to perfect his baking, getting good enough his wife’s co-workers would request he bake for her work events.
Eventually, the couple became citizens and he could legally work. They launched Bread and Butter and started selling their breads at the River Park Farmers Market.
But American customers weren’t familiar with Filipino pastries.
“They say, ‘OK, where’s your pancit and lumpia?’’ he said, referring to the traditional noodle dish and the Filipino version of spring rolls.
They started selling those dishes, preparing them in a rented kitchen at the Clovis Culinary Center.
Pancit and lumpia aren’t on the menu at the new location though, and it’s not a Filipino restaurant. The business doesn’t have the right exhaust hood over a cooktop to do hot food (and it would cost upwards of $30,000 to buy and install one).
Regardless, it’s the breads and pastries that truly motivate this couple. If they need to explain what the food is to customers, he is happy to do it.
All about the bread
“Our mission is to spread the word that Filipinos have pastries and breads,” he said.
Early on, someone suggested they take the word “Filipino” off the banner out front. Jamna Sanchez remembers the person explaining that it might “put people off” or drive away customers unfamiliar with their breads.
No, she said. They’re not going to do that.
They’re confident they can get anyone to fall in love with their breads, regardless of their background.
And judging from the mix of customers filling up large bags with pastries, it’s working.
In fact, they’ve already expanded their hours.
Originally, the bakery locked its doors at 3 p.m. They rejiggered their closing time — staying open until 6 p.m. — after people kept knocking on the door and shouting through the glass to buy pastries.
“It has not just become a Filipino thing now, but it’s a local thing,” she said of the bakery. “We start worrying when nobody’s knocking anymore.”
Details: Bread and Butter is at 4573 N. Fresno St. Hours: 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sundays, 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesdays through Saturdays. 559-712-0221.
This story was originally published October 24, 2022 at 5:30 AM.
