In the late 1980s independent filmmaker Charles Kaufman — owner of Bread & Cie — was at a crossroads. The movie industry was changing and his passion for moviemaking was waning. With his recent marriage and a baby on the way, he was compelled to rethink the next chapter in his life. He talked to us about his transition from the world of filmmaking to breadmaking.

Q: You had a successful independent filmmaking career, why did you stop making films?

A: To get dates, obviously. Artisan bread bakers always get the hot babes as opposed to Hollywood film directors. Wait. Whoops. Truthfully, in the late 1980s the film industry changed and major companies (Warner Brothers, MGM , Fox) began churning out high-budget horror and action films, co-opting my low-budget, million dollar film genre. My independent films paled in comparison and I was shut out by the big boys who dominated the market by only showing, selling and distributing their own films. At this juncture I had also just gotten married and my daughter came along so I was compelled to re-imagine the next chapter of my life.

Q: Why breadmaking?

A: Film is ephemeral – light projected onto a screen that disappears as soon as the machine is turned off. Don’t get me wrong. I loved making films, but it was important to me in this next chapter of my life, to make something I was equally passionate about, but used a totally different side of my brain. In addition, since I had an opportunity to create totally new pathways, it was important that whatever I made would be essential to people’s everyday lives, more substantive, something you could hold and touch and something that created immediate gratification.

FOOD FINDS The U-T Superdiners share their most recent dining discoveries. Joanne Bautista, human resources professional, avid Yelper, avid diner: “Mess Royale in Hillcrest for some yummy poutine goodness. My fave: the Babe (poutine with bacon!).” Andrew Spurgin, chef, bespoke event styling & menu design, andrewspurgin.com (@Andrew Spurgin): “Pop over to Artisan Bento and order a Bento Box with Miso Salmon, or have a Boo Bun with Miso Salmon and a Spicy Tuna Temaki Wrap. Next best thing to being in Japan!”

Q: Did you know how to bake before opening your shop? What are your family roots in baking?

A: I had some basic baking skills and knowledge, but more importantly, I had a passion for baking and, to coin a phrase, I have always been a foodie. For more than a decade, I had traveled to Cannes every year to sell my films, and during that time I formed friendships with different bakers and chefs, spending as much time in the local boulangeries as I did at the film mart. So I decided that the best way to learn about this new enterprise was to dive in. I called my baker and chef friends in southern France, and they generously agreed to share their time, expertise, wine, and knowledge with me. I apprenticed myself for a year, and it was the best education a New York lad could have!

Q: What influenced you to use the traditions of European artisan bread baking?

A: I grew up at my grandmother and mother’s German knees while they baked up an artisan storm. Our home was always dusted in flour, and the tradition of hard-crusted European bread was revered. I remember my tough-as-nails socialist, vegetarian grandma Millie saying, “You aren’t eating a good piece of bread unless the side of your mouth is bleeding.” This gives you an insight, not only into my bread preferences, but also an insight as to how kind and gentle my grandmother was (not!!).

Q: You don’t use commercial ovens to bake your breads but instead you chose to import one from Europe. Why? How does it improve the flavor/texture of the bread?

A: First and foremost, the way in which bread is baked determines its crust. In our imported ovens, the bread bakes directly on the quarried stone hearth deck. Contact with the stone (along with the oven’s steam injection system) creates a hard crust and best replicates the centuries-old European bread baking traditions. In fact, Poilaine, the premier bread master in Paris, only uses the purest artesian well water that his bakers carry in buckets to his basement baking facility. That much of a purist we are not, but in order to pay homage to these traditions, we did a lot of research to find the best ovens possible. When our first oven arrived in 1994, I was expecting two or three huge crates to be delivered to our cafe. In fact, hundreds of boxes arrived one day, each with a different piece of the oven. A gentleman arrived from Paris to build and install our oven and it took him two weeks, many bottles of red wine, many Gauloise cigarettes, and a lot of French epithets muttered under his breath to complete the daunting task.

Q: What do you like most about your profession?

A: I am touched and gratified by our customer response. When we opened, I began hearing these great stories about what this kind of bread means to people. Everyone seems to have an emotionally tied story about the first time they’d tasted this kind of bread. “This bread reminds me of my year abroad in college when all I could afford was a baguette and some Camembert cheese.” Or, “This multigrain bread reminds me of weekends I spent with my grandmother in the Bronx when I was a kid.” Or, “This challah reminds me of my bar mitzvah in Cleveland.” I love hearing these stories and I am honored that our customers feel comfortable in sharing deeply felt memories with all of us at Bread & Cie. Also, I feel humbled that our cafe has become a community hub and part of so many people’s lives. One of my most vivid memories comes from 9/11. I went into the cafe, thinking that we should close for the day, but when I arrived it was packed with people — people needing a place to come and talk with each other, be together in a place that was familiar and comforting, a place that was unchanged and part of their normal routines before all the tragedies occurred.

Q: Your customers can observe bread making from start to finish. Why did you feel that was the best way to convey your product?

A: Because I had been a filmmaker, I was very invested in the visual aspects of people’s lives. When I designed the interior space of Bread & Cie’s cafe, I wanted customers to feel as if they were getting a “behind-the-scenes” peek into our bread making process. Customers could watch the entire “bread show” from our bakers mixing the dough, to hand shaping each loaf to loading the ovens, and then voilà, removing the fully baked loaves from the ovens. I felt strongly that customers should be enveloped by our process and feel part of it.

Q: Why don’t you sell “day-old” bread? What happens to the leftovers?

A: Here at Bread & Cie we have a little expression: “If there’s a more painful, time-consuming, agonizing, expensive way to make bread and pastries … we don’t know what it is.” So if our bakers are constantly improving and working to make the best and freshest baked goods, we will not allow what we make to be sold after it sits around on the shelf for 24 hours. At the end of each day, we donate our leftovers to many different local charities, including Casa de Los Pobres (an orphanage in Tijuana), Jewish Family Services food pantries, and other nonprofits serving the homeless, battered women, and homebound AIDS patients.

Q: What is your thought process in developing new bread flavors? What were your hits/misses?

A: Frankly, I would be lying if I said that we have a systematic, organized thought-process going into developing new bread flavors. Certainly, in the very beginning days of Bread & Cie when we were developing our array of different breads, we did. But today, I must confess that many of our new products are based on customers’ whims, chefs’ whims and crazy, idiosyncratic ideas that either I, my partner, Chris, our head baker, or Daniel, our pastry chef, come up with. For instance, I’m a huge fan of bacon — so, after weeks of talking (cajoling and arguing), testing, retesting, tasting, re-tasting, we came up with our Pancetta/Bacon Bread. We called it Pane Carsioni to honor a “bacon-phile” friend and very talented local chef who died well before his time.

Q: If you had to do it all over again, would you still choose bread baking?

A: Yes I would definitely do it again although with 20-20 hindsight, I am thankful that when I began this cafe/ baking adventure I didn’t have the slightest idea of what was involved. All I wanted to do was to bake fresh bread and pastries every day. Simple, no problem! I quickly realized that in addition to the cafe being open all day, every day, we were baking all night. So I brilliantly began a business where we work 24 hours every day of the week, closed only on Christmas. Simple, no problem! All kidding aside, which, if you know me, that’s a hard one, but when all is said and done, I feel very, very lucky. I am proud of our entire team — so many of our staff members have been with us for 15 years or more and they are passionate about Bread & Cie.