Buona Forchetta Hand Made Breads bakery was born in my kitchen on a summer afternoon six years ago when I found an emphatic message from a friend on my phone machine: "If you don't get this focaccia out on the market, you're crazy!" So I did. When I told my husband, Don, that I was starting small, I meant it: a plastic spoon, a bowl and a domestic electric oven. At first it was a dozen loaves to our nearby Beverly Glen Marketplace, and eventually 1000 a week to seven specialty food shops, all out of our home kitchen. It was excruciatingly hard work, but fortunately Don joined me in the nick of time to help out on a morning when I literally could not rise from the bed, and soon I found myself with an able partner. He left a successful screen-writing career of twenty five years and never looked back. It was only after our hands gave out that it dawned on us to buy a small commercial mixer and hire our first baker, who is still with us. The thousand loaves, exhaustion and an intractable cat covered in flour forced us to move out of the house into 2300 square feet at 2229 South Barry Avenue in West Los Angeles and eventually into 6500 sq. ft. at 3828 Willat Avenue in Culver City. Such adventures to come!

I spent my Texas childhood in the company of women who made bread daily, not just for special occasions. In our house, bread did not come in packages, and "store-bought" was only for emergencies. When I was five my mother taught me to make cinnamon pinwheels from scraps of her airy pie dough. My Czech grandmother, Bigmama, showed me how to make poppyseed kolache, and the other, Bessie, taught me how to make beaten biscuits and spoon bread. English muffins, country breads, rye breads, white breads, sourdough biscuits, Boston brown bread, and cream bread (which, to my delight, yielded perfect little round sandwiches for my doll's tea parties) were daily fare. All during my schooldays, my mother's New Orleans French toast (Pain Perdu), chili pepper cornbread for turkey stuffing, fruitcakes, sugar cookies, butter cookies, rich little tidbits called sand toks, and of course, fresh biscuits and rolls attracted my classmates to our house like weevils to grits - even when I, the ostensible reason for the visit, was out!

Cooking with these women from such an early age, I learned how pleasurable it was to create bread in one's own kitchen. With memories like these, it's no wonder that I ended up with a bakery. This was not a planned vocation, but I should have felt the stirrings of the future when I was eighteen and landed in Europe for the first time. It was like coming home, and when my father took me to a little French bistro for a perfect omelet, an unforgettable salad tossed with olive oil, vinegar and Dijon mustard, and a glass of Rhone wine, I thought I had died and gone to heaven. Most of the US was simply not yet eating this kind of simple, beautifully prepared food.

My husband, Don, had a similar experience. He went to Italy at the age of 24 planning to stay a month, and stayed ten years. His first wife (now a dear friend of mine) is Roman, and Don's children were born and raised in Rome. So Don claims Italian nationality by reverse heredity, and I am convinced that my blood was exchanged at birth with a Roman baby. It's not surprising that I feel like a citizen of both Texas and Italy: in both cultures, family and food are everything.

My affinity for Italy and France inspired me to learn, cover to cover, every recipe in Gourmet Volume I and II, which also included Chinese, Middle Eastern and African recipes, all of which were marvelous to explore. But I always return to the Italians for the art of simplicity.

My breads are not made or baked as others are. I have made all the classic breads of France and Italy in the traditional ways, the way you're "supposed to," so I know how. But that's not how I make bread. The recipes are all my own interpretations, developed over years of trial, error, instinct, and a desire to simplify that spurs me to find easier methods when possible, and I think people respond to our breads precisely because they are not like others. I use no fat, sugar or dairy products in my doughs, and the crusts are lighter, chewier, user-friendly; the crumb is moist, stays fresh longer, and has a more intense flavor than most breads. Naturally, our ingredients are the highest quality flour, water, yeast and salt - and, of course, no preservatives or additives of any kind. But my techniques are, well, peculiar. In fact, we prefer to hire people with little or no baking experience and train them my way, so they're less likely to tell me I'm crazy and complain that I'm breaking every rule in the book. More about this in my book, No Need to Knead (Hyperion).

The most important decision we ever made was to stick to the same recipes and techniques that I used in my own kitchen, no matter what, even if "everybody knew" that it wouldn't work commercially. It was lucky Don agreed a hundred percent, because I was never going to do it any other way. And that's why our bakery is just a big empty space with a couple of mixers that look like our first baby mixer, but bigger, at one end, and some ovens that look like my domestic oven, but bigger, at the other. And in between, just a lot of tables and bakers with flying, dancing hands. On a big production night, I feel as if I am at the Bolshoi.

So that's who we are. Our list of products isn't enormous because we only make what Don and I like to eat - and only if we think we can make it better than anything else out there. We're on a short industrial street in Culver City at Robertson and Venice Boulevard, where we have a tiny will-call counter where you can buy all of our products (there are a few products which aren't in the stores) and talk with us, or with Susan McAlindon, our office manager, Scott Briggs, our director of operations, Carlos Ruiz, our dispatcher, or Sandra Johnson, our office assistant. If there's anything you don't like about the products or the service, please let us know. You are the most important part of our business, and we can only improve with your comments and ideas.

I am happy to answer all questions. Please email me at mail@buonaforchetta.com