Tucson's Barrio Bread is expanding into the Phoenix market

Tucson’s James Beard Award-winning baker is tiptoeing into the behemoth Phoenix market with plans to open a one-day-a-week satellite bakery in Gilbert in September.

Don Guerra said he plans to bake as many as 300 loaves of Barrio Bread each week from the bakery space at Hayden Flour Mills‘ new facility at 932 N. Colorado St. in Gilbert. Customers will order the bread and pick it up on Tuesdays.

“It’s a chance for me to have a presence in the Phoenix market even if it’s a limited basis,” said Guerra, who grew up in Scottsdale. “It’s my hometown ... and I really would love to come back home and have an offering in the valley even if it was just one day a week. I’m starting very small to plant the seed and watch it grow.”

Guerra has been working with Hayden Flour Mills since the father-daughter owners Jeff and Emma Zimmerman resurrected the historic Tempe mill in 2009, the same year that Guerra launched Barrio Bread from his Tucson garage. Guerra has championed the use of heritage and ancient grains for all of his baked goods, including his new line of bagels that he introduced in Tucson in late June.

Hayden Flour Mills, whose history dates back to the 1870s, recently moved into a new facility in Gilbert with a bakery space that they offered to Guerra, Emma Zimmerman said.

“I’m still just so shocked that he said yes,” she said of the partnership, which has been 18 months in the making. “We are really excited. He’s always been a friend and supporter of what we do, but to kind of do something a little bigger with him. I am so curious how Phoenix responds.”

Guerra insisted he has no plans to leave the Tucson market, which has embraced his Barrio Bread and his restaurant projects with El Charro’s Flores family: The Monica at 40 E. Congress St. and Barrio Charro at 3699 N. Campbell Ave. “My base will always be in Tucson. This is just an opportunity to kind of reach out to the Phoenix area. There’s been a lot of interest; people have been asking for years if I was going to have bread there.”

Guerra recently got his business license from the town of Gilbert, and the oven he ordered from Italy has arrived in the United States; it still needs to be shipped from Ohio. he said.

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Barrio Bread Gilbert will return Guerra to his Tucson garage roots, when he worked alone producing dozens upon dozens of loaves of bread each day that he sold from his home. Guerra these days does little hands-on baking at Barrio’s Broadway Village Shopping Center bakery, 18 S. Eastbourne Ave., leaving it up to his experienced staff.

“At this bakery I will be hands on,” said Guerra, who launched his baking career in 1995 with the Village Baker of Flagstaff. “This is kind of like for me going back to what I used to do in the garage, a one-person bake team. I rehearsed it and I’m going to go back and do it.”

The satellite bakery also is next door to Arizona Wilderness Brewing Company, which follows Guerra’s grains philosophy. The brewery is collaborating with Guerra on a new beer that is expected to be released in September.

In addition to Barrio Bread, the Gilbert bakery also will sell Barrio Bagels. The bagels, a collaboration between Guerra and Neal Borenstein’s popular Phoenix bagel bakery Chompie’s, will be baked in Phoenix and shipped to the Tucson bakery. They should be available here this month.

“This is really about another community bakery investment and collaborating with the people involved in my grain chain,” Guerra said.

For more information, visit barriobread.com.