Baking Done the Right Way
Breakfast, bakery, bierocks, vegan & vegetarian options, bread pudding, pastries, City Market
Sleek. Modern. Country-hip. Beautiful. That’s the Bloom Baking Company at 15 E. Third St. in Kansas City’s City Market, an urban oasis that continues to provide a home for local, family run businesses. Bloom Bakery, with its gorgeous breads, pastries, desserts, cookies, torts, toffees, and croissants, stands out for its dedication to quality ingredients and enchanting foods.
Bloom Bakery was opened nearly three years ago by Janet O’Toole and Steve Zaragoza, two corporate vets tired of the ever-shifting job market, and boasts of having the best flour in the city and baking things the right way. “Most of our products are a two day process,” O’Toole says. “We don’t take any shortcuts and none of our products contain additives or dyes.”
That best flour comes from Stafford County Flour Mills in Hudson, Kan., they say, not far from where Janet grew up in Woodston, Kan. In Woodston, she learned to make a Volga German dish, bierocks, which she features on the lunch menu. Consisting of hamburger, garlic, onion, and fresh shredded cabbage inside of a homemade dinner roll, the bierock epitomizes comfort food. Yeasty and golden brown, the roll is the perfect vehicle to soak up grease from the hamburger.
The bierock is one of several steady lunch options, along with a chicken salad on a house made croissant, a variety of quiches, ham and Swiss croissant, and grilled steak and vegetables with fresh avocado and tomato on the Bloom Bakery steak bun. Vegetarians can order the broccoli and cheddar quiche as well as spinach and feta empanadas. Several loaves of bread are vegan. The bierock will satiate your lunchtime cravings, but this is a bakery, and the desserts will turn lunch from good to fantastic.
Made from fresh baked brioche combined with Missouri pecans, raisins, a brandy cream sauce, and custard, the Bloom bread pudding is the lightest, tastiest bread pudding I’ve ever had. At $7.95, it might seem pricey, but the portion is huge and the taste will convince you of money well spent.
You may well find Janet and Steve in front of Bloom handing out free samples, talking people up, and wrangling customers inside. That’s how they got me: samples of Italian bread and a pineapple danish. The danish comes unadorned with sugar or frosting, allowing the pineapple to drive the flavor. I can’t emphasize enough the quality of the food Bloom bakes in its kitchen, an open space available to public viewing. “I don’t trust closed kitchens,” Janet says, “so when we opened this place I wanted anyone who wanted to, to be able to see what we were doing in our kitchen.”
In less than three years, Bloom has found success through the oldest advertising method: word of mouth. “We wanted to create an atmosphere of personal service,” Janet says, “where we really get to know the customers and they get to know us.” Welcoming. Inviting. Delicious. That’s the Bloom Baking Company. Stop in and explore Bloom for yourself. You’ll probably make a couple new friends in the process.