Brothers Bakery

Or maybe they’re from the light-as-a-feather Danish pastries with cream cheese or cherry filling. Or possibly the savory kolaches stuffed with sausage and cheese.

Ever-so-delicate croissants and sinfully yummy cinnamon rolls invite you to get a cup of gourmet coffee from the thermos pots in the corner, take a seat at one of the tables, and try them on the spot.

And that’s just for starters. If you just happen to be in the neighborhood between 11 a.m. and 3 p.m., you can get generous sandwiches on your choice of bread, freshly made salads, and homemade soups. Tomato-basil and chicken tortilla soups are always offered, plus a changing daily special. From the number of customers lining up just before noon the day I was there, it was obvious that a lot of locals make it a point to “just happen to be in the neighborhood” at lunchtime.

All the baked products at Brothers Bakery, with one or two tiny exceptions, are made on site.

“We buy only a couple of specialty items elsewhere—labor-intensive products like petit fours, which have elaborate icing, for instance,” says Ryan LeCompte Malamud, Brothers’ owner and chef. “Everything else we make here. We use no preservatives or mixes. Everything is made from scratch.”

Brothers Bakery is the fulfillment of Ryan’s long-time dream. He was born in New Orleans 31 years ago, but, as the saying goes in Texas, he got here as quick as he could. The family moved to Georgetown when he was five years old.

Ryan says he has always been interested in food. One of his earliest memories is of cooking with his grandparents, and the smell of dark-roasted coffee and beignets on a Sunday morning.

His first jobs, while he was still in high school, were in restaurants: Café on the Square in Georgetown, which has since closed, and Walburg Mercantile, a restaurant in nearby Walburg owned by a German master chef.

Ryan went to the CIA straight out of high school—no, not that CIA. This was the prestigious Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, where he earned a culinary arts degree in 1997. (If the TV series Cooking Secrets of the CIA shows up in your TV schedule, you might spot Ryan lurking in the background in several of the episodes.) His courses included baking, and he says that the wonderful smells of baking breads, cakes, and pastries “got me hooked.”

So in 2000, he went back to the CIA—this time the Greystone campus in the Napa Valley—to earn a baking and pastry degree.

Before and after his CIA stints, Ryan traveled extensively in western Europe, visiting bakeries mainly in France, Spain, and the Netherlands, soaking up ideas and techniques—and eating lots of wonderful breads and pastries. Returning to Texas, he was determined to open his own bakery. The only question was where.

He worked in Austin for a gourmet grocery store and for a catering and baking company until he finally decided on Marble Falls, because of the vitality of the town, which has about 5,500 permanent residents. In recent years, Marble Falls has acquired a number of upscale restaurants for its increasingly sophisticated local and visiting diners, but it had no scratch bakery.

In 2002, Ryan opened Brothers Bakery (so named to include, and honor, his brother, Kurt, of New Orleans) on US 281, the main highway through town. And he has been creating those wonderful aromas ever since.

Besides the retail bakery and lunch counter, Brothers offers catering services and has a growing wholesale business that provides baked goods to fine-dining restaurants and resort hotels in the area. “And,” Ryan adds, “wedding cakes are a specialty of ours.”

Although Brothers features a wide selection of enticing sweets, Ryan says that he is primarily a “bread guy.” Bakers’ racks just behind the front counter hold artisanal breads. Rustic loaf, sourdough, and baguettes are baked daily; other varieties vary with the day of the week. Some days, Ryan might offer multigrain, home-style white, or rye; on other days, you might be able to score kalamata olive-rosemary, honeywhole wheat, or challah.

The sourdough at Brothers Bakery is a Hill Country original, made from a starter based on Fredericksburg peaches. Ryan says it’s delicious for making ham sandwiches, but I can’t wait to try it for French toast.

Ryan’s six employees are cross-trained. “With a small staff,” says Ryan, “they all have to be able to do all the jobs.” They all pitch in to mix and shape the doughs, make sandwiches and salads, serve lunches, work the front counter, and even clean up.

Looking around the bakery, you see no hint that the comfortable space was once occupied by a cosmetics boutique. The walls hold an ever-changing assortment of work from several local artists. One of those is Ryan’s mother, Paulette Malamud, whose exquisite flower and nature photographs cover part of one wall.

Tables and chairs fill the middle of the room, augmented by a banquette along one wall. Dining counters, with tall stools facing the busy highway, fill the windows on either side of the front door.

And the chess set that sits on one of those window counters? “I brought that set in last July so the staff could play chess in their spare time,” says Ryan a bit ruefully. “We had so little spare time that one game between me and Marian Lively, the bakery manager, took three months to complete.”

As Old World as handmade breads seem to be, Brothers Bakery is up-to-the-minute technologically: Wireless Internet access is available for anyone toting a laptop.

But there is also a whiff of nostalgia: Atop walk-in coolers behind the front counter perches a collection of small kitchen appliances, including several Mixmasters, the famous electric mixer-on-a-stand that was once a cherished machine in middle- and upper-class kitchens. “That one,” says Ryan, pointing to a really old Mixmaster, “belonged to my grandmother. And the avocado one over there was my mother’s—from the ’60s, of course. I’ve been collecting them over the years, and I’m hoping to eventually put in a kitchen-appliance museum.”

When I ask Ryan what he considers the most satisfying part of running a bakery, he replies without hesitation: “Making people happy,” he says, “and I like knowing that what I make is healthy, too. It’s something I enjoy doing, and it puts a smile on people’s faces.”

Judging from the smiles on the faces of the customers I saw, he must be very satisfied indeed.

BROTHERS BAKERY is at 519 N. US 281 (southeast corner of US 281 and 6th St.) in Marble Falls. Hours: Mon-Fri 6:30-4, Sat 7:30-3. Lunch is served Mon-Sat 11-3. Pastries and coffee are available all day. Call 830/798-8278; www.brothersbakery.com.

See the full article in the March 2007 issue.

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