About.
Who we are and how we got here
About Our Bakery
Dominik and Michelle Lauener were born and raised in Switzerland. Dominik’s mother had emigrated from the United States to Switzerland to get married in the 70s. As such, a strong connection to the US already existed before the decision to move here.
Dominik graduated from the University of applied sciences in Bern with a Bachelor’s degree in Computer Science. During his studies, he decided that working with computers was not his only passion and that he would like to work more with people than with machines.
Michelle completed an apprenticeship and became a certified book seller. She worked in that profession until expecting her first child, when she decided to be a stay-at-home mother.
In October 2017, both Dominik and Michelle had a strong feeling that they should move to the US. During the preparations to move, which took several years, Dominik had begun to develop interest in opening a bakery in the US. Having arrived in the US in November of 2021, the Laueners quickly realized that many everyday products from Switzerland were unavailable, most notably Swiss style bread. Since baking their own bread was already a habit in Switzerland, they set out to find the right ingredients to produce fresh, authentic Swiss braided bread and in the long run, let their friends and neighbors enjoy the fruits of their passion.
Our Products
We strive to provide authentic Swiss products, made from simple and fresh ingredients. Our main product is Swiss braided bread, or “Zopf” (pronounced as Ts’opf), as it is called in Swiss German.
Braided Swiss bread goes back to fourteen hundreds, when it was made in the Bern region for special occasions like Christmas and New Year’s. Since ingredients like butter, milk and eggs were expensive, it was often a gift for special occasions only.
To distinguish the more exclusive Zopf from regular bread, it was braided. Or as a more romantic legend says, this bread was braided and put with a deceased husband as a burial gift. It was to symbolize the widow’s braid and should create an eternal connection for two lovers.
