Sitting at the counter at Razava Bread Co., a new bakery and cafe on Grand Avenue, head baker Omri Zin-Tamir got a little philosophical: Bread, he explained, should not just be a vessel to deliver other flavors.
Good bread should stand as an ingredient on its own, he said. And developing a nuanced, hearty loaf of sourdough takes time. There are no shortcuts, and no coverups.
“It’s all about flavor, in the end,” he said. As he put it, “bread doesn’t lie.”
So he sources fresh-milled grain from regenerative farms in the Midwest, including Meadowlark Farm & Mill in Wisconsin’s Driftless Region. He periodically rejiggers his recipes to adjust to the quirks of each new harvest, and he keeps four separate proofing chambers in the kitchen at different temperature and humidity conditions so he can maintain precise control over the loaves as they rise.
“There are many steps in our process that we could’ve done in an easier or less time-consuming way, but that’s not really our vibe,” said Alex Baldinger, the bakery’s director of operations and a cousin of owner Steve Baldinger. “We like to do things the long way.”
A cook at Razava Bread Co. in St. Paul places small protective mitts on a ramekin of shakshuka in the wood-fired oven on Dec. 20, 2024. The shakshuka, a traditional Middle Eastern tomato dish, takes 18 hours to prepare from start to finish, Razava general manager Loren Bunjes said. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)
And boy, it pays off. The miche, a French country loaf, is sturdy and almost malty; the San Francisco sourdough is perfectly tangy and has a bouncy — but not dense! — texture from a much-higher-than-average 85 to 87 percent hydration. And the Razava house loaf, based on an Eastern European style of dark bread, boasts an unbelievably nutty depth from spelt and buckwheat and is a reminder, frankly, of what other breads can aspire to be.
Everything served atop and alongside the bread is also carefully concocted with a similarly time-consuming approach. For example, the uber-rich shakshuka takes about 18 hours from start to finish, general manager Loren Bunjes said.
A New York-style bagel is served with lox and other toppings at Razava Bread Co. in St. Paul on Dec. 20, 2024. Rather than defaulting to plain cream cheese, the house schmear is a well-seasoned concoction inspired by classic Caesar dressing. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)
That shakshuka and the roasted tomato toast are highlights of the menu — the latter was one of our top dishes of 2024 — and the honey-lavender and ricotta toast pulls off a rare feat as a sweet breakfast that does not feel like it could double as dessert. Razava also nails its cream cheeses: Instead of defaulting to plain, the cafe’s house schmear has a brilliantly savory, herbaceous Caesar-ish seasoning that rocks with the lox, and their beet-horseradish cream cheese will redeem you from any Passover seder trauma you might have.
“When you look at the menu, everything is in service to the bread in one way or another,” said Alex Baldinger, the bakery’s director of operations and a cousin of owner Steve Baldinger. “Bread is the foundational component of everything you’ll have at Razava.”
‘The family baking legacy’
Rebecca Baldinger, great-grandmother of Razava Bread Co. owner Steve Baldinger, stands in the doorway of the family bakery as it appeared in the years 1909 or 1910, the family said in 2012. With her is her daughter Helen. The store was at 369 Carroll Ave. in St. Paul. (Photo courtesy Baldinger Bakery, 2012 / Pioneer Press Archives)
In 1888, just after emigrating from Europe, Steve Baldinger’s great-grandparents started a bakery in the old Rondo neighborhood — and Baldinger Bakery has been producing bread ever since.
For its first several decades, the bakery remained a small storefront, but over the past half-century or so, it’s shifted toward industrial wholesale production. By 2012 — when Baldinger Bakery took over its current headquarters on the East Side, and around the time Steve Baldinger took over from his father, Bob Baldinger — the company was producing hamburger buns and loaves for customers ranging from McDonald’s to Cargill, the Pioneer Press reported at the time.
Steve Baldinger had a different vision for the family’s next steps.
“The idea was always, in Steve’s mind, to return to the neighborhood where the family baking legacy began and to return to the roots of the types of bread that would’ve been made back in the old country or back in St. Paul in the 1920s,” Alex Baldinger, a cousin of Steve’s and Razava’s operations head, said.
Bakers Breah Ramsey, left, and Abby Lundebrek, right, prepare dough at Razava Bread Co. in St. Paul on Dec. 20, 2024. The bakery offers a variety of styles, from the house razava loaf to sourdough to New York and Jerusalem-style bagels. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)
The Baldinger family are no longer bakers themselves, so they needed an outside expert. Zin-Tamir, Alex Baldinger said, is “the link between what the Baldinger family used to do and what we’re trying to get back to today.”
But if you would’ve asked Zin-Tamir about his future a few decades ago, manning an artisanal sourdough bakery in Minnesota would not have crossed his mind.
Born in Israel, he grew up for much of his school-aged years in Kenya and Nigeria due to his father’s construction job.
After attending art school in Israel, Zin-Tamir moved to the U.S. in the early 2010s for a master’s degree in sculpture from Virginia Commonwealth University. But as arts funding became more scarce, especially after the 2008 recession, he said he began to feel that working as a professional sculptor consisted more of the administrative drudgery of grant applications than of the hands-on process of creating.
He’d begun baking bread in grad school, but started taking it increasingly seriously during a period of intermittent employment in the late 2010s, he said. And then, through a “strange and amazing turn of events,” he said, he landed a brief apprenticeship with sourdough bread master Richard Bourdon of Berkshire Mountain Bakery in Massachusetts.
When Zin-Tamir and his wife moved to Minnesota — she, also a sculptor, teaches in the art department at the University of Minnesota — he went all-in on bread.
He launched The Bakery on 22nd Street out of his home in 2021 and began selling at the weekly Mill City Farmers Market in Minneapolis. Offering fresh-out-of-the-oven bread at an early-morning market was not easy — “When you stay up all night baking, the sun rises and you’re getting ready for the market, and you start to question some decisions,” he joked — but eventually, he began selling out earlier and earlier.
By the time the Baldingers pitched Zin-Tamir on collaborating to open Razava, he said, “I was already looking for options to reach more people than I had the capacity to do in my basement bakery, essentially.”
Current and future plans
Shakshuka, a traditional Middle Eastern slow-cooked tomato dish topped with a poached egg, is served with housemade bread at Razava Bread Co. on Dec. 20, 2024. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)
In the spirit of taking the time to do things right, Razava Bread Co. is starting slow.
Current hours are 7 a.m. to 3 p.m., Wednesdays through Saturdays. Eventually, general manager Bunjes said, the plan is to be open five or six days a week with hours stretching into the evening. He’s planning a wine program.
Bread production is also ramping up gradually. Staple offerings, like sourdough loaves, pita and bagels, are available now. By the time the bakery reaches full production capacity this spring, the bread lineup will also include traditional baguettes and challah.
Razava Bread Co. is located on Grand Avenue, as shown Dec. 20, 2024. (Jared Kaufman / Pioneer Press)
Because the bread production process is so intensive, when they sell out for the day, they’re out. But the kitchen staff reserve loaves for the cafe menu, so even if the register bread baskets are empty, the full food menu is likely still available.
In addition, Razava also offers drip coffee and espresso beverages, with beans roasted by SK Coffee in St. Paul and Slow Burn in New Mexico.
Razava Bread Co.: 685 Grand Ave; 763-338-0853; razavabread.co (please note this is not a typo; the URL ends in .co, not .com.)
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