Three bakers on the rise: The new faces reshaping Santa Cruz County’s bread and pastries

The craft of baking contains multitudes, and the three bakers in this story have little in common except for flour and ovens. 

Each has a vastly different area of obsession, from sourdough to French patisserie and American baking. But they share a head-turning ability to infuse their breads, pastries and baked goods with personality and vision. All three are fresh faces in Santa Cruz County’s culinary scene, but have quickly earned growing fandoms. And their rise is just beginning, with big plans for the future, from partnering with area restaurants to appearing on national television and reviving an abandoned restaurant.

At Melo Bread in downtown Watsonville, Kevin Grenz molds stunning loaves of sourdough and plant-based treats that sell out daily. 

Justin Lenorovitz creates dazzling pastries using French techniques and playful inspiration to delight customers at Spontaneous Confections at the Capitola Mall.

In downtown Santa Cruz, Talia Damon has transformed the coffeehouse experience at 11th Hour Coffee with elevated yet comforting muffins, cookies and cakes that defy expectations.

Their reasons for immersing themselves in the world of wheat and sugar are worlds apart. Lenorovitz uses baking to manage his mental health after serving in the military, and finds purpose in the smiles he brings to customers’ faces. After years working in high-end restaurants, Grenz left that assertive environment to seek a more sustainable life in the kitchen. His bakery is helping to revive a former Watsonville cornerstone. 

Damon, in her early 20s, already has Michelin experience under her belt, and excessive creative expression that is spreading from 11th Hour into the wider community through mouth-watering collaborations at local restaurants. 

Damon, Lenorovitz and Genz are on the rise, and are reshaping what the next generation of baking looks like in Santa Cruz County. 

Reshaping sourdough at Melo Bread

Minutes after the door to Melo Bread opened on Main Street in Watsonville, a stream of regulars began loading purchases next to the cash register. They rarely left with just one, opting for multiple loaves of chestnut-brown levain made with spelt, golden sandwich bread, and wide fougasse, shiny with olive oil, shaped into a leaf and studded with olives. 

The bakery, open just six hours a week, sold out.

Grenz, a one-man show, struggled to keep the shelves stocked. Twice a week, he produces around a hundred loaves in five or six varieties, plus treats like cinnamon rolls and cheese-less “grandma slices” of focaccia slathered in tomato sauce, garlic and basil – all vegan. “I’m trying to find that sweet spot of having enough, but not too much left over,” he said. 

It’s not hard to understand why his fans leave with their arms full. This is bread to give a friend, to cherish at the table, with a tender crumb and a rippable crust. While bakeries such as Companion Bakeshop and Manresa Bread have perfected their versions of the style in northern Santa Cruz County, there are none like it in the Pajaro Valley. 

Grenz opened Melo inside the banquet room of the former Miramar restaurant, a historic gathering place in downtown Watsonville for 51 years before it closed in 2012. The building’s owner transformed the space into a professional bakery and café for Grenz. “It’s breathing new life into something that was an institution,” he said. 

Grenz started his culinary career in his native Germany, working in high-end kitchens. He moved to California in the early 2000s seeking a fine-dining experience, and joined the team at Quince, one of San Francisco’s most lauded restaurants. But he soon discovered that the aggressive pace and lifestyle weren’t for him. “I burned out,” he said, and discovered he was drawn to bread – the soft textures, natural materials and slower pace. 

His knowledge deepened during stints at San Francisco’s Bar Tartine and Lodge Bread Company in Los Angeles, but Grenz’s baking really took off while he was stuck at home during the pandemic. He obtained a cottage food license and began selling out of his home, then at farmers markets in the Bay Area. His wife is from Watsonville, and they relocated to her hometown in 2024.

As Melo Bread grows, Grenz would like to expand the menu with loaves made with einkorn and sprouted rye, and open for more days and longer hours with a savory menu. “The dream is to be the neighborhood bakery,” he said. Grenz hopes that, in time, Melo – named after an old German word for flour – can become a new fixture in the community. 

532 Main St., Watsonville; melobread.com. 

Spontaneous Confections’ edible art

Finished with edible gold, a swirl of toasted meringue,or glossy chocolate, the dazzling pastries Lenorovitz makes at Spontaneous Confections are almost too pretty to eat. 

For the pastry chef, who launched Spontaneous Confections in 2024 alongside his wife, Stephanie, creating beautiful treats is about more than selling desserts; it’s a creative outlet that’s vital to his mental health.

“My business is art first, and my art just happens to be edible,” said Lenorovitz. A lifelong hobby baker, he dove headfirst into pastry making as a way to manage post-traumatic stress disorder after serving in the military. While taking art classes at Cabrillo College, Lenorovitz signed up for a wedding cake decorating class, and something clicked. “I thought, ‘This is where I belong,'” he said. 

He became fascinated with challenging himself with new techniques and decided to go all-in, reading student textbooks from culinary schools and taking online classes. In 2024, Stephanie, a native of France, found him a spot at a pastry school in Bordeaux. “I was educated enough to where the stuff that they were able to teach me really resonated, and I was able to bring back a lot of that skill here,” Lenorovitz said. 

When he returned, the couple founded Spontaneous Confections, and have steadily built their business from a pop-up to farmers markets and events, and to a brick-and-mortar spot at the Capitola Mall. In that time, Lenorovitz earned fans for his gorgeous ever-changing menu of fine pastries, from chocolate tarts topped with whipped cream and cacao nibs and sturdy Dubai chocolate bars filled with pistachio praline and tahini to mousse-filled sandwich cookies – aka “moukies.”

Lenorovitz said he’s inspired by a desire to try new techniques, and his pastries stand out because of personal twists he puts on each design, like a decadent truffle inspired by a Snickers bar. Santa Cruz, his adopted hometown, inspired a cheesecake that’s creamier yet lighter than a New York version, with a surfboard-shaped crust, filled with seasonal coulis or caramel. 

His talents caught the Food Network’s eye, and this fall Lenorovitz will appear on “Holiday Baking Championship,” where he will compete for a chance to win $25,000. He plans to use the platform to draw attention to the work of Semper Fi and America’s Fund, a national nonprofit that supports disabled combat veterans’ transition from military to civilian life. 

“They’ve been very supportive,” he said. “I want to do what I can for the next veterans.” 

As the business grows, Stephanie and Justin Lenorovitz said they want to focus on outreach through paid and free baking classes and events, in addition to continuing to delight their customers with dazzling new creations. “This year, we want to continue to grow and produce as much as possible, but we want to make sure we’re bringing the community with us,” she said. 

Food court in the Capitola Mall, 1855 41st Ave., Capitola; hotplate.com/spontaneous.

Creative coffeehouse comfort

The pastry case at 11th Hour Coffee is not like other coffee shops. The tender scones, buttery financiers, cookies and chilled mousse cakes stand out for their eye-catching flavor combinations: banana-chocolate chip cookies, tahini brownies with halva, and orange-cardamon breakfast muffins. 

These treats are all made in-house at the downtown Santa Cruz location by 24-year-old Damon, a Santa Cruz native with skills earned working at a Michelin-starred restaurant. Her eye-catching treats have elevated the café experience at the popular downtown spot, and spread into the community through a handful of collaborations with area restaurants. 

Damon’s love affair with baking began while making birthday cakes with her mother as a kid, and within days of graduating from Santa Cruz High School in 2020, she stepped into the Culinary Institute of America in St. Helena. 

Unfortunately, strict COVID safety protocols made immersing herself in her classes and with her fellow students difficult, Damon said. That spring, she interned at Aubergine in Carmel, which had one Michelin star at the time (it currently has two). At the end of her internship, the restaurant offered her a job as an assistant to the pastry chef, and Damon decided to stay rather than return for a second year of school. 

She spent two years crafting exquisite desserts for Aubergine and breakfast pastries for the associated hotel next door, but after two years she decided it was time to move on. In 2024, Damon returned to Santa Cruz to plan her next move, and started working in 11th Hour’s bakery – temporarily, she thought. 

“I pretty quickly took over the whole program,” said Damon. She expanded the menu beyond Danishes and banana bread as the business grew into a second location in Santa Cruz’s Westside neighborhood and prepared for an extensive remodel of the flagship downtown. 

11th Hour owners Joel and Brayden Estby gave her the freedom to push her creativity. After improving the original recipes, Damon added her own creations: delicate espresso mousse cakes, financiers with brown butter and pistachios, and shiny, brownie-like chocolate vegan cookies. For months she worked to create cannelés, a finicky French pastry that when she gets them right – no easy task – have a crunchy, deeply brown crust and a custard-like center. On Fridays, she puts a dozen in the case, and they sell out every week. 

More treats by Damon now appear in the community through partnerships with other businesses. At Food Talk, the upstairs kitchen inside Motiv in downtown Santa Cruz, she created her version of Choco Tacos, filling miniature taco-shaped waffle cones with marshmallows and ice cream, peanut butter and chocolate, or vanilla bourbon ice cream with a caramel swirl. At Vin Vivant in Capitola – owned by fellow Aubergine alumni John Haffey and Ryan Cooley – Damon makes sweet and savory items to pair with the wine bar’s beverages, like a Comté cheese and caramelized onion roll with whipped butter.

“I like to keep myself very busy, and I like new things and new projects. I fill all my time that I’m not here [at 11th Hour] with other side projects and baking things for other people,” Damon said. 

She has her hands full, but Damon said she’s just getting started, and she still has a lot to learn. “People ask me if I want to open my own bakery, but I’ve barely worked anywhere,” she said. “I’d like to try out different styles of baking.” 

Her collaboration with Vin Vivant is inspiring her to create more plated desserts – fresh territory since her days at Aubergine. Through it all, she’s following her gut.

“I think a lot about, what do I want to eat? I want to go to a bar and have a glass of wine or two, some bread and maybe a slice of cake,” Damon said. “That’s kind of my dream.” 

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