Hour 20®
A family bakehouse in El Monte, California
Our story
Three mothers, ten children
Hour 20 began at a friend’s dinner table, when one bite of Jasmine’s sourdough would not let go of Lia. What started as loaves passed between families became a licensed bakehouse in El Monte, California.
We are three mothers with ten children between us, and they are our toughest tasting panel — the batch only leaves the bakehouse if they come back for a second slice. One rule holds above all the others: if a third-grader can’t read the ingredient list, we don’t bake with it.
Our bakehouse
One licensed bakehouse in El Monte
Everything we sell is mixed, shaped and baked in our own licensed bakehouse in El Monte, California. No co-packer, no outsourced production, no bake-off of someone else’s frozen dough — the people who developed each recipe are the people who bake it.
German stone-deck ovens give the bottom heat that builds a deep, crackling crust; the rest is bakers working through the night so the bread finishes at first light.
We have no storefront yet. For now the bakehouse is both kitchen and counter: order online, and it is on the road by late morning — or collect it from us in El Monte.
The 20th hour
Why we are named after a wait
Most commercial bread is rushed through in about three hours. Ours rests for twenty and more: a long, cold ferment that builds complex flavor, an open crumb and natural keeping quality no additive can imitate.
When a loaf is ready is a baker’s judgment, read by eye and by hand, dough by dough. The clock never decides — it only tells us how long we were willing to wait.
Our levain
Wild cultures we raise ourselves
Every rise begins with levains born from nothing but flour and water on our own counter, fed by hand every single day. We have never used commercial yeast.
Each culture passes from one batch to the next — the same living starter that raised last week’s bread raises today’s. Starting and steering that fermentation is the most technical part of a baker’s craft, and the reason our nights are long.
Our ingredients
A list a third-grader can read
French T65 and stone-milled whole grains, real butter and milk, sea salt, water and our own levain. No dough conditioners, no preservatives, no softeners, no colorings — nothing whose job is to hide a shortcut.
Fruit, nuts and cheese go in whole and generously, because flavor should come from what is in the dough rather than from what was added at the end.
Frozen at the peak
So it arrives the way it left the oven
We bake each loaf to one hundred percent, then flash-freeze it at its peak the same morning. Freezing pauses the bread at the exact moment it left the oven — no preservatives, nothing added to buy shelf life.
It travels through an unbroken cold chain and comes back in minutes of reheating: a crust that cracks, a crumb still moist. Baked overnight in El Monte, at your California door the next morning.
