Strengthening the local community, a croissant at a time

Water, salt and flour. That’s all it takes for quality bread, said Brooks Taylor, owner and baker at Birmingham Breadworks.

Taylor said he’s been experimenting with baking variations of high-quality bread at his home for over 20 years. When his kids got older and were leaving home for college, he and his wife started talking more seriously about opening a bakery. Previously an electrical engineer, he said he was looking for a change. 

For about a year and a half, Taylor would spend all night in a kitchen baking bread and pastries with local baker Corey Hinkel, who at the time was selling bread for Pepper Place Market. In 2015, they bought a building in the heart of Southside and officially called it Birmingham Breadworks nine months later.

“We’ve had to educate people on what good bread is supposed to taste like,” Taylor said. “They have to go out of their way to come get bread; they can’t go to the grocery store for it.” 

Taylor said that since the very beginning, he’s had three goals for the bakery: to make the best product possible, to have a great place for people to work while paying them decently and to create a local community. 

Minus a few breads that keep well for multiple days, he said they make most of their bread and pastries are made fresh each day.

Birmingham Breadworks currently wholesales its bread to Melt, Paramount, Ocean, The Highlands and Chez Fon Fon. They also have a lunch menu.

Taylor said they have several local customers that come by each day for bread, and their best-selling products are the cinnamon rolls and French breads. 

To learn more about Birmingham Breadworks, go to birminghambreadworks.com.