Jean and Romi Dupre's Bakery is tucked behind the Y Market in Cedar Ridge. With a thousand loaves of bread a day coming out of their ovens, the Dupres are rolling in dough. They love what they're doing and it shows.
Jean Dupre is the real thing and still makes bread the same way it was done a hundred years ago. French Canadian by birth, Jean trained in the old world tradition of artisan breads with a Swiss-born bread maker in Banff, Canada. Actually, Jean was a baker by night and a ski bum by day.
He moved to Santa Barbara where he worked as a wholesale bakery consultant. There he met his future wife, Romi, a Santa Barbara beach bum who had lived all over Europe. Theirs was a classic “green card” love story. (She really married him for the dough.) When it came time to find a place to settle down, it was a question of beach or snow? Jean won out, and they landed closer to snow in Grass Valley where housing was also more affordable.
Jean worked at Flour Garden for four years as the production manager. Meanwhile, he scoured the auctions and e-Bay for equipment he would need for his own bakery. His tarp-covered bakery equipment stash continued to expand in their driveway for several years.
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