lardo.JPG

A Korean-style pork sandwich from Lardo. By year's end, French baker Philippe Garcia should be providing all the bread for Kurt Huffman's 10-area restaurants, including Lardo, which plans to open its third location next door to Garcia's upcoming North Portland bakery.

(Motoya Nakamura, The Oregonian)

As so many job hunters do these days, Philippe Garcia, a French baker living in California, first turned to

. Using the social networking website, Garcia sent an email to Portland restaurateur Kurt Huffman, introducing himself and laying out his dream of opening a bakery in the Rose City.

But unlike most people, Garcia already had an in. Turns out, Huffman had frequented Garcia's old bakery in Lyon,

, in the late '90s, when Huffman was

.

"Right now we're spending several hundred thousand dollars a year on bread," said Huffman, whose

group includes some 10 Portland restaurants. "I was thinking about how great it would be to buy bread from ourselves, when I got a message out of the blue from this guy named Philippe. I immediately thought, 'Wow, that name sounds really familiar to me.'"

If Portland is poised for a bread revolution -- and it looks like it might be -- Garcia's email could end up being a scene-defining document.

In the next few months, major Portland bakers Ken Forkish of

and Tim Healea from

plan expansions of their bread operations. In Southeast Portland, Forkish is putting the finishing touches on his new restaurant, cocktail bar and bakery, Trifecta, 726 S.E. Sixth Ave., where he plans to step back into hands-on baking. Downtown, Healea is taking a smaller step, leasing approximately

between the Ace Hotel and Powell's City of Books.

And now, The Oregonian has exclusively learned, Huffman and Garcia are teaming up to open a traditional French bakery in a still-in-development building on North Williams Avenue at Mason Street. The bakery -- they're still working on the name -- will sit alongside a third location of Rick Gencarelli's

, the ChefStable-backed sandwich shop that will instantly become Garcia's biggest client.

Kurt Huffman

Garcia is taking a circuitous route to Portland. The baker, who trained at the

, was happily ensconced at his three-story bakery when he met, fell in love with and married an American woman finishing her Ph.D. research in Lyon. He followed her back to the U.S., eventually landing a job at the Fort Bragg Bakery on the California coast.

But Garcia longed to return to a town with as much enthusiasm for food as Lyon, often called the gastronomic capital of France.

Huffman appreciates Garcia's old-fashioned approach to baking.

"There was a huge movement in France post-World War II toward simplifying baking," Huffman said.

"What attracted me to Philippe was he was really going the extra mile to do things in a very traditional way."

For Garcia, those old methods are really about his dedication to craft.

"Quality, taste and flavor are the first ingredients," he said. "But basically it's about time, spending an incredible amount of time working around the bread."

If all goes according to plan, Garcia will soon relocate to Portland, where he'll begin perfecting the breads served at ChefStable spots as diverse as St. Jack, Gruner and Lardo. Look for Huffman and Garcia's bakery to open by the end of the year.

-- Michael Russell