After moving into a house with a wood-fired oven, Arturo Enciso was instantly inspired to bake homemade bread. Six years later, the Long Beach self-taught baker opens his own bakery in his living room where he also bakes his homemade bread with natural leaven, organic ingredients, and whole grains.
Enciso spent his spare time flipping through recipe books, taking baking classes, and eventually began selling his homemade bread to close friends and family.
Along the way, he decided to take a step forward with his passion and worked for a couple of local bakeries. Nonetheless, working at a bakery was not the perfect fit for him.
Working at a bakery was not the same as baking homemade bread in his wood-fired oven at his home for Enciso—it was too competitive and ego driven.
“I didn’t want to be in a kitchen like that and I wasn’t finding the right bakery for me, so I decided to start Gusto Bread,” Enciso said.
After shortly realizing competitive bakeries were not his ideal environment, Enciso decided to get a Food Cottage Operation permit. The permit allows him to produce his bread in his private home and sell to restaurants and nearby farmers markets.
Enciso turned his living room to a rustic village bakery that is open to the public on Sundays where pre-order is available to avoid their quick sellouts.
The level of creativity and attention to detail is shown in each loaf and pastry at Gusto Bread. The most popular bread is the California loaves, which are naturally leavened and made with hearty red wheat that is stenciled with the historic Bear Flag of California. This popular loaf is served at local businesses in Long Beach such as Wide Eyes Open, Palms Cafe and Rose Parks Roasters.
Aside from the California loaf or the sesame seed bread shaped into a sand dollar, Gusto Bread offers two of the same baguettes. One shaped like a traditional long thin loaf and the other is thoughtfully shaped like a wheat stalk. For those who prefer to eat bits of the loaf, the baguette is perfect to tear by hand. However, the traditional long thin baguette is made to create a sub sandwich.
“I think the traditional methods are really important and not a lot of people approach their bread that way. For instance, baguettes take me 24 to 30 hours to make the dough because I use the old traditional method, but if I used yeast I could make it in five to six hours,” Enciso said. “Not a lot of people know how to learn the old traditional method with baguettes, but I learned it and practiced for a long time. It takes a long time, but I think it’s very rewarding at the end and I have the drive to continue learning those methods.”
The bakery is centered in an old wooden country house that has a pastel blue accent color that outlines the architect of the house. The patio is decorated with rustic outdoor plants, furniture, and a “Bienvenidos” sign that welcomes close neighborhood shoppers.
The living room is set up with a long table with fresh homemade bread that is set out to sell and some samples to taste for new customers. On one corner of the small living room, there is a shelf of recipe books titled “From the Wood-Fired Oven” and “Bread Baking for Beginners” that were used when Enciso sparked his passion for baking bread six years ago.
Gusto Bread was influenced from a song called “Un Puño de Tierra,” by Ramon Ayala. In the song, the Mexican musician sings this lyric “hay que darle gusto al gusto,” which translates to “we must give pleasure to taste.”
“Gusto in Spanish can mean different things. It could translate to taste, joy, or pleasure,” Enciso said. “That lyric made me really like that word ‘gusto’ because it has those meanings because it could mean taste. When I looked that word up I discovered that in English gusto means artistic expression or doing something artfully.”
According to Enciso, some people have lost touch of creativity through food. He shares his recipes to his customers on how to eat his naturally leavened bread.
“When the bread is so fresh like this, it’s a shame to put it in a plastic bag because it makes it moist and loses its crispiness,” Enciso said. “I think we’re so used to keeping bread in the fridge for a long time, but it’s a fresh product and it should be eaten the first couple of days that it is baked. That is how we should be treating bread.”
Gusto Bakery embodies the pure passion and the love of traditional methods of baking. “I’m not a whole sle baker, there’s people who choose that route, but I can only use so much out of this space,” Enciso said. “I offer them this and everyone just seems so happy with it and it’s the perfect bread to work with.”
Customers would agree that Gusto Bread is the type of bread customers wish groceries will sell, but the special experience of Gusto Bread is buying it from an old cottage neighborhood bakery made with artistic expression and passion.
