By David Jerome | Idyllwild Town Crier
Idyllwild will soon welcome a new artisan bakery: Almost Heaven. Gabrielle and Richard Marcin, who have been supplying stores in Alpine with artisan baked goods for the last year, will begin hosting “pop-up” bake sales in the parking lot and until their new space in Victorian Square starting this Saturday, April 12—a preview of what’s to come once their new space is ready.
Gabreille recounts that both of her grandfathers were wheat farmers in Minnesota, and her Grandmothers taught her to bake. Like most kids, she loved sweets. “I loved baking. The love language was instilled in me of pleasing people through sweets.” Bread came later. Her grandmothers made buns with cultivated yeast, “now, I use wild yeast, you work with it and it gives you something that is uniquely your own, a signature. The same recipe with different people will taste completely different, the energy that each baker puts in creates a different signature.”
The move to baking happened slowly. It began when Richard bought a pizza oven and spent time perfecting dough. “He is the one who brought dough into my life. He has a different career, but his mom is a baker.” The couple share an ideal, “We wanted to have a bread that tasted good and felt good.”
Gabrielle went to the San Francisco Baking Institute for technical training. “You learn in school and then have to adapt to your own equipment and kitchen. I spent the last year doing that in Alpine.” She ordered a commercial oven, and began selling locally at three stores in Alpine.
During Covid, Richard built out a Sprinter van to travel the southwest, and the couple began to feel that something else was out there for them. “We had been to Idyllwild once before, but in winter, and I didn’t get out much. We did hike the Ernie Maxwell Trail, but I didn’t feel the call then. After the year of baking, we went back in the beginning of November, and I felt the call, I felt the mountain.”
Things fell in place quickly. “That night my husband began looking at commercial real estate, one foot in front of the other each day. We saw three buildings, the last one, we knew right away it would be our bakery.” They had not planned this, having just converted their home theater into a bakery. “The mountain said ‘this is where it’s going to be.’”
For now they continue baking for the stores in Alpine. “To leave where we are now it had to be a big call, and it was. We are leaving a place we love dearly.”
The Marcins understand that the remodel of the space, which now has only a kitchenette, may take at least 6 months for permitting alone. In the meantime Gabrielle has getting to know the community “I’ve been visiting and handing out samples since December. I’ve met some really nice people, everyone has been super welcoming.”
The Saturday pop-ups will feature French pastries, croissants, cruffins (a cross between muffin and croissant), pretzels, sourdough bread, scones, and cookies. “Each baker has their own energy I believe we’re being called there to share the experience I have every day, which is almost heaven.
To learn more visit: www.almostheavencalifornia.com. Almost Heaven Bakery pop-up: Saturdays from 10 AM, Victorian Square, 54545 North Circle Dr.
