Ad Astra Bread Co. owner Ron Mendoza draws many parallels between working in the kitchen and skateboarding. Growing up in Long Beach, where he seriously considered the idea of trying to go pro, he’d find himself skating day and night until the sun came up, pushing himself to master tricks and get creative. He says the same goes for the kitchen: he started with the basics, honed his technique, and eventually worked at acclaimed restaurants like Patina, Sona, the French Laundry and Aubergine.
A stint on the pastry station at Patina 20 years ago set him on the path to baked goods. “I just thought we could be super creative,” he says, explaining the ways one could manipulate the dough, shape it, crumble it. “And I probably have a slight sweet tooth, as well.”
That passion led to sourdough, and Ad Astra was born in 2018 – first in the small kitchen of Other Brother Beer Co., then to their downtown Monterey storefront and their recent expansion into Carmel Valley. Today, Ad Astra supplies bread to farmers markets in Carmel and Pacific Grove, grocery stores, and a long list of restaurants.
Weekly: Before Ad Astra, at which restaurant do you feel you learned the most?
Mendoza: Sona Restaurant [in Los Angeles]. You know that indie rock band that influenced everyone else, like the Velvet Underground? That restaurant was like the Velvet Underground of restaurants. We were creative and pushing things in all these different ways of what we thought a restaurant could be in Los Angeles. I think that everything that I do came from there, it really cemented how I see food.
When did you start experimenting with sourdough?
Around 2018 I started experimenting at home. At Aubergine we were doing bread trays. I wanted to learn how to make a starter and feed my starter, but I didn’t have the real ovens to do it or even the best kind of equipment, but we made do with what we could.
I took some of the starter home and I started making one, then four, then you start giving them away. It’s actually super duper simple after you get it, it’s almost like you need to crack a code and go, OK, I get it.
Ad Astra is well known for its old-style bread, organic flours, wild yeast, good ingredients.
The reason why I use certain things is because of my background in fine dining. You’re closer to having a better product using better ingredients. Then you put your technique into it, and then there you go. Hopefully, that’s pretty good.
What has the success been like for your kitchen space?
At Other Brother, we had 400 square feet. Now we’re just under 3,000 square feet. My whole thing was, if we’re gonna really do this, I want to build a production place, have a team that has all the tools that they need to do their work and to create a good product. I wouldn’t say we maxed it out, but we could run comfortably at producing a certain amount and do that well, and keep up. I wanted the big glass so people can see, “Hey, they’re making a bunch of bread in there.”
Favorite thing to make?
Ice cream. You can do so much with it.
To eat?
Our cinnamon rolls, which is kind of funny. I chose our cinnamon roll to be Cinnabon-style, with a soft, squishy dough, cream cheese icing. I really like that. It’s half nostalgic.
The show The Bear. How often do you get asked about this?
A lot.
Thoughts?
Somewhat unrealistic. A guy works in fine dining then goes into a deli and he’s trying to get those people to work fine dining. I thought, that will never happen, because those people don’t want to do that. That’s not the environment – there is a difference.
But an episode I thought was great is called “Forks.” [The character] learns how these people work at this high level, and the respect that they have for the customers, the product, the service. I thought that was great, because I’ve always thought that anyone who has even a slight interest in hospitality should go to a [fine dining] restaurant and see what it’s like to work at a very high level, see the attention to detail and care the workers do to create this kind of experience. It’s unbelievable.