Guillaume Patard-Legendre, one of the Los Angeles area’s finest young boulangers, lost his bakery and his home in 2025’s Eaton Fire. Join this engaging discussion of perseverance in the face of disaster as Guillaume describes his background, his dreams, his methods, his experience, and his determination to continue baking his breads and pastries for his community with the help of the superb resources that Los Angeles has to offer its bakers.
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Guillaume’s bakery, Pain Beurre, founded in 2024, was a mainstay of the Altadena community, providing local residents with an exceptional array of French breads and pastries, all created with organic ingredients and wild yeast. As word spread, his business expanded rapidly, As word spread, his business expanded rapidly, with his home-baked goods available to a growing customer base in the greater Altadena area.
All went according to this “new life plan” for Guillaume, his wife Darcy, and their two young daughters until January 2025, when the catastrophic Eaton Fire destroyed the entire community. Guillaume and Darcy were not spared: their home and the baking facility Guillaume had built for Pain Beurre in their garage burned to the ground. “The Pain Beurre journey,” according to Guillaume, “came to an abrupt halt.”
But the community rallied around, encouraging him to find a way to resume production. Giullaume worked hard to develop a new strategy, reaching out to the community of bakers in greater Los Angeles. Pain Beurre’s plight came to the attention of World Central Kitchen, the international nonprofit organization founded by Chef José Andrés specifically to prepare food for the victims of disaster. WCK offered Pain Beurre baking facilities in a shared kitchen space, and Guillaume quickly resumed baking bread for his community.
Guillaume now sells his bread exclusively through pop-up events in partnership with Los Angeles-area businesses. He returns to Altadena every Sunday morning to focus on his community, a community that needs this kind of support more than ever.
About World of Los Angeles Bread
Guillaume’s talk will be the first event in the LABB’s World of Los Angeles Bread, a series of talks, demonstrations, and tours, presented free of charge and devoted to enhancing LABB members’ understanding of the diversity of breads that are being baked on a daily basis here in Los Angeles.
