La Tour Bakehouse / Thanh Quoc Lam shows me an article from 24 years ago, when his only business was a Ba-Le sandwich shop in Chinatown. He was 27 and had been living in the States for only seven years but he told the writer he would grow his business to be as big as Love’s Bakery, then the largest commercial bakery in the state. “You wait,” he is quoted as saying in the article.

Today, he owns an 80,000-square-foot production facility in the former Weyerhaeuser building. It is part of his new brand, La Tour Bakehouse. The new name distinguishes his wholesale business from his ubiquitous Ba-Le franchise.

“My dream was someday I will do wholesale…a 35,000-square-foot bakery,” Lam says. “Now we have 80,000–bigger than Love’s, I think. Still can’t believe it’s true.”

His two sons, Trung, 29, and Brandon, 26, are partners in the business. Trung works on the finance side (daunting, given that the Lams own half the Weyerhaeuser building, which they bought for $20 million). Brandon works on sales.

“When people asked me if I would take over the business, my answer was always yes,” Brandon says. “Maybe it’s just my dad’s work ethic and business model–I want to be a part of this business and see what I can do. A lot of it is a challenge. If he started this business from nothing, how far do I have to take it to even compare to what he’s done?”

The Café

In addition to wholesale, the Lams plan to open four La Tour cafés. The first opened on Jan. 11 on the ground floor of the Weyerhaeuser building. It is open from breakfast to dinner and serves beer and wine.

The menu at La Tour is more European than those at their Ba-Le franchises: Sandwiches are tartines, fries are pommes frites, pizzas are flatbreads that emerge from an Italian deck oven and the display case reveals macarons, delicate French sandwich cookies made of meringue and almonds.

The Bread

Ultimately, the menu is best tasted as a showcase of Ba-Le’s artisan breads; the accessory ingredients are almost inferior to the breads. From the French-Vietnamese baguette with a delicate crust and soft interior, (perfect for banh mi), to the paper thin, crisp crust of the flatbreads, all of the breads are standouts.

Although Thanh Lam baked Ba-Le’s original baguettes in his Chinatown shop, these days the artisan breads and pastries are made by Rodney Weddle, baker and partner in La Tour Bakehouse.

“When I joined them, we weren’t doing any of this…especially the artisan breads,” Weddle says. “We’ve really created a following. It’s what we’re known for: all-natural whole-grain, sourdough, old-fashioned breads.”

Weddle was responsible for landing the Whole Foods’ account. La Tour supplies the supermarket with cranberry-walnut, fig, and kalamata olive loaves, as well as sliced breads.

Weddle has been baking since he was 13. He worked the hotel circuit as a pastry chef at the Mandarin, Sheraton, Hawaii Prince and Ritz-Carlton in Kapalua and Seoul.

He’s particularly proud of La Tour’s flour from Central Milling in Utah. It’s a small mill that offers mostly organic flours and maintains a close connection with its farmers.

“We can trace our one flour bag back to the farmer,” Weddle says.

La Tour now provides breads to Hawaiian Airlines, pizza dough to Papa John’s Hawaii and supplies approximately 80 other wholesale accounts, including hotels and restaurants.

The Bakeshop

Where once Lam didn’t have enough space to fulfill the demands of such potential clients as Foodland, now the bakehouse feels like it has room to grow: It’s a cavernous, fluorescent-lit space. Every piece of equipment is massive (the ovens are the size of rooms). Were it not for rack after rack of golden baked goods and the warm smell of butter and yeast, the place might feel institutional and cold.

The company employs 120 people and during the day about half of them are mixing dough, sheeting (using a machine to roll out dough), laminating (the process that gives puff pastry and croissants its layers), cutting and forming loaves.

They move racks of product from the proofer (a warm box in which dough rises) to ovens to cooling and packaging areas and, ultimately, to the freight elevator which goes straight down to the loading dock.

“We went through 50 revisions at least,” Brandon says about planning the bakehouse space. “We cut out walk-in (refrigerator) dimensions in cardboard to play around with…My father planned everything, how it should work…from experience.”

The flow is designed so that the finished product always ends up closest to the loading dock. The walk-ins are both front- and back-loading for maximum accessibility and efficiency.

In the end, what’s so remarkable about La Tour/Ba-Le is not the immense and efficient production facility, nor Weddle’s obsession with the quality of his flour, nor the expansive vision of a young immigrant over two decades ago. What distinguishes La Tour/Ba-Le is how all ingredients come together to create Ba-Le’s success and ubiquity. It’s a result that is as extraordinary as the chemistry created with water, yeast, flour and salt to form a loaf of bread.

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