- 40loaves on the first morning
- 3generations at the ovens
- 1oven, rebuilt once
Est. 1961
Three generations, one very old oven
In March 1961 Rosa Valdivia signed a lease on a corner shop with a cracked window and a second-hand deck oven, and borrowed the deposit from her brother Tomás. She was twenty-six. She baked forty loaves that first morning and sold thirty-one. The rest went to the neighbours who had come to see whether the new baker would last.
She did. Sixty-five years later the oven is still the same oven, the starter is still Old Nell, and the bread is still ready before the streetlights go off.
A loaf is only done when the whole street smells like somebody's home.Rosa Valdivia, to every new apprentice
- 👵RosaFounder, 1961
- 👩MarisolPies and weddings
- 👩LucíaHead baker
- 1961 Rosa opens at 214 Marigold Street with forty loaves and a borrowed oven.
- 1974 The first wedding cake, three tiers for the family across the road.
- 1989 Marisol joins, and the pies and the Saturday cherry-top arrive.
- 2003 The oven is rebuilt brick by brick. Same bricks, new burners.
- 2016 Lucía comes home from baking school and moves the sourdough to a thirty-hour ferment.
