It’s a beautiful thing to wake up one morning with full commitment to one thing and one thing only: dialing in a pleasant three-part series about bread. Is there other important news out there probably breaking as we speak? Absolutely. But it’s mid-August and I am hot. I am tired. Perhaps Mercury is in retrograde, seems like these days it always is. Coincidentally, at about exactly this time last year, I experienced a similar sort of nervous breakdown, which I self-medicated with a “cat journey” as some astute readers may recall.
Cats and bread share many similarities: They are warm. They are soft. They are often loaf-shaped. They ask very little of us and, in return, provide enormous emotional support. Neither has ever sent me an angry email, or asked me to take a position on a zoning matter.
Unlike the myriad urban skirmishes that occupy our imaginations, bread has no sworn enemies. Perhaps we ALL deserve a nourishing and delicious lil bready snack break.
In part I yesterday, we checked out Stephanie Carlson’s new SoKno Sourdough storefront off Sevier Avenue. Today we’re hop-skipping back downtown, where KoPita Authentic Mediterranean has opened a bakery downstairs from its restaurant inside the Embassy Suites.
Credit to Alan, who contributed to this report. He’s doing great by the way, traveling a bunch and enjoying friends, family and music, most recently including the Newport Folk Festival which he described as a sort of religious experience. Next, he’s off to New York and then … Canada? Spain again? Italy? It’s hard to keep up, and I love that for him and his lovely wife Karen. Well-deserved.
KoPita Bakery
KoPita Authentic Mediterranean, located at 507 S. Gay Street inside Embassy Suites, took its time rolling out its ground-floor bakery retail space. Sunny and good-smelling with a door that opens to Union Avenue, it’s a nice place to keep in mind when you’re craving a baked good.
Alan spoke with Avi Zenatti, who owns KoPita with Ilana Brodt, a couple months back. Avi said the idea for a bakery came, appropriately enough, from their customers. He said diners were happy with the freshness and quality of the food, and he began thinking about what else downtown was missing.
His answer: “some good bakery.”
More specifically, he wanted real sourdough bread and the kinds of baked goods he grew up with, prepared with the same emphasis on quality that guides the restaurant upstairs.
He pitched the hotel on carving roughly 400 square feet from its Union Avenue lobby into a small street-facing bakery. A new exterior door was added, along with a production kitchen, display space and a service window allowing hotel guests to order without going outside.
The result is a tiny “jewel box” of a shop, which Avi seems perfectly happy about.
“I don’t need a big space,” he said.
The lineup will continue to evolve as the bakery gets its legs under it, but Avi expects four daily sourdough varieties — plain, olive, onion and whole grain — along with baguettes, Jerusalem-style bagels, focaccia and assorted filled phyllo pastries. There will also be a rotating assortment of cakes and sweets, including babka, chocolate and halva pastries, baklava and other desserts.
Eventually he also plans to offer several grab-and-go sourdough sandwiches each day, such as egg salad, antipasti, mozzarella and tomato and avocado.
While freshly squeezed orange juice is on tap, one thing you won’t find here is coffee.
Avi is deliberately trying to complement his downtown neighbors rather than compete with them, noting the abundance of excellent coffee within a few steps of the bakery. His vision: come in, choose something delicious, grab your bread or juice and head back out into the world.
The ingredient list is equally intentional. Avi said he plans to use high-quality flour imported primarily from Israel or Italy while sourcing eggs, cheese and other ingredients from local farms and producers whenever possible. He also avoids processed white sugar in his recipes, relying instead on ingredients including honey, coconut sugar, dates and monk fruit.
He has other ideas percolating, too. Down the road, he hopes to add shelves of house-fermented pickles — cucumbers, lemons, okra, radishes and more — as well as olive oil and other pantry goods. He’d also like to devote some space to breads from other local bakers, giving small producers another downtown place to get their goods in front of customers.
For all the newness, though, the bakery’s roots go back several generations.
KoPita itself was named, in part, for Avi’s mother, Koti. She grew up in Morocco before moving to Israel as a child and, he said, baked fresh breads and cakes for her family every weekend.
“Every weekend we had different cake, different bread,” he said. “Simple, simple, not sophisticated. That’s why we love food.”
His daughter in Israel has carried that tradition forward as an accomplished professional pastry chef, and Avi said she has helped him with ideas and recipes for the new bakery.
There is a large photograph of Zenatti’s mother on the wall and a screen that shares the family story, creating a visual thread from Koti to Avi to his daughter: three generations connected through the act of feeding people.
GET BREADY for even more bread soon! In Part III, we’ll head to K Brew’s new bakery and retail storefront on Broadway and explore even more of the urban bread scene.
Discover more from Inside of Knoxville
Subscribe to get the latest posts sent to your email.