Joliene Bakery and Baker Chloe Fertel Just Might Be San Luis Obispo’s Best-Kept Secrets.
Chloe Fertel speaks softly and folds her hands on the picnic table outside her shop, Joliene Bakery. Looking back at the building, she explains how she and her husband Thomas came to own a little French bakery in San Luis Obispo. It’s obvious Chloe’s an introvert, but the Joliene menu belies her confidence, as it includes all manner of goods from sourdoughs and croissants to macarons, madeleines, profiteroles and cakes.
Joliene Bakery sits on the back end of SLO’s Creamery Marketplace, recently renovated to become a legitimate food hall in the style of Oxbow Public Market in Napa. Occupying less than one acre at the corner of Higuera and Nipomo Streets, the Creamery boasts a world of cuisines surrounding a common courtyard, in its Japanese, Mexican, Peruvian, American and Italian restaurants, cidery, coffee shop and ice cream parlor. But it all lies tucked away from the street, like a cloistered culinary playground. The Creamery does not demand attention, nor does Joliene Bakery or Chloe Fertel, for that matter.
But IYKYK.
“I went to culinary school in Napa,” says Chloe, referring to the Culinary Institute of America at Greystone. Thomas, who grew up in Lafayette, Louisiana, came to California for viticulture and enology.
“We fell in love, got married and Thomas attended grad school here at Cal Poly,” Chloe says. After their stint in SLO, they both took jobs back in Napa, but they revisited SLO as often as they could. Whenever they did, friends mentioned Chloe should start a bakery here. When Thomas was offered a job in the Central Coast wine industry, they returned for good.
Chloe hustled in the baking kitchen at San Luis Obispo’s Scout Coffee, making treats like cookies and bars for the cafe. “The more I was here, the more I felt we could have a little town bakery,” she says. One day, this place popped up and we looked inside and saw plans for the courtyard,” she remembers. “It was the right place at the right time, so we signed the lease.”
One month later, the Fertels discovered Chloe was pregnant. The race began between construction and her due date. “The baby came first and we opened the shop two months later,” Chloe says with a laugh. “It’s been go-go-go ever since.”
The bakery opened in May of 2019, named after Chloe’s grandmother Caroliene and Thomas’ grandmother, Jo Anne. Both women were bakers, with Midwesterner Caroliene leaning toward homey pies, cookies and bars, and Southern Jo Anne an ace at specialties like pecan pie and carrot cake. Several of their recipes enjoy pride of place on the Joliene menu.
As for French pastries and breads, Chloe tells, that’s where her training lies, having studied French technique in culinary school. But France is also in her blood, on her dad’s side of the family.
“I remember growing up, kids in my neighborhood would have me over for dinner at five or six in the evening, but at my house we didn’t eat until eight or nine o’clock,” she says. “We always had two courses, and we always had a bottle of wine, a baguette and a salad on the table. And we always ate as a family. My dad was the cook, and he made everything from scratch. So yeah, I get my French background from him,” she says, then adds with a wry smile, “I get my hustle from my mom.”
That hustle has been put to the test during the pandemic. Chloe explains that in the first days of COVID, the Fertels had to let most employees go, so the two of them had to run the bakery almost entirely by themselves.
“We had an online pre-order pickup situation,” she shares. “I’d prep all week, arriving at the bakery at eight in the morning, working till eight at night, coming home, having dinner, then going back to the bakery at midnight, baking all night and switching with Thomas to be with our son on Saturday. So sometimes I’d spend a good two days without sleep.”
Fortunately, those conditions have eased a bit now that Chloe’s been able to hire another baker. She’s still the spine of Joliene’s baking program, though. “I’ll do anything from mixing bread dough to making birthday cakes or profiteroles or macarons. Every day, it’s the full spectrum.”
If there’s any single baked good Joliene is known for, Chloe says it’s her English muffins. Made from the sourdough starter that the Fertels affectionately call “Louie” (named after San Luis Obispo), Joliene English muffins hit the hot griddle and puff up, tall and craggy, perfect for lots of butter. They also provide bookends for Chloe’s breakfast sandwiches. “People line up for them,” she says.
All other leavened goods are sourdough, as well, including breads, yeasted pastries and, partially, croissants. The Fertels have also offered sourdough waffles in the past, and hope to include them more regularly in the future.
Interestingly, the kitchen behind the bakery is quite large, accommodating not only Chloe and her employees, but also other small baking operations to which she rents space. But at the front of the building, Joliene Bakery is a tiny, warm shop, lined with a gleaming glass case teeming with pretty treats. The space includes secret nods to family, with a pew from Thomas’ brother’s writer’s retreat in Louisiana, a sideboard from Chloe’s grandmother and a pillow embroidered with the Joliene Bakery logo by Chloe’s mother.
“No one can be sad in a bakery,” Chloe declares. “We want to be that happy place. Yes, the hours can be long and the dishes can pile high. But if I make one person’s day happy, that goes a long way.”
