Maya R.
The country sourdough ruins grocery bread for you. Shattering crust, custard crumb. I’m there every Saturday.
Artisan bakehouse · est. 2014
Bread that tastes like where it’s made.
Wild-yeast sourdough on a 36-hour cold ferment, croissants laminated by hand with European butter, and cakes worth the wait — all baked the morning you buy them on Lexington Avenue.
Ovens lit before dawn11-year wild-yeast starterLexington Avenue, Asheville
Fresh TodayThursday, Aug 13
- Country SourdoughPulled at 6:10am · still warm$9
- Butter CroissantTray three out of the oven$4.75
- Kouign-AmannLimited tray — daily only$5.50
- Brown-Butter CookieBaking to order all day$3.75
- Burnt Basque CheesecakeEight slices left$7.50
- Rosemary FocacciaLast slab of the morning$8
The board resets every morning when the ovens light. Reserve a loaf and we’ll set it aside under your name.
Reserve / Order Ahead →Baked daily · Before the doors openWild-yeast sourdough · 11-year mother starterStone-milled flour · Local & in-houseEuropean butter · 83% fat, hand-laminatedCounty health-permitted · ServSafe-certified kitchen
10 yrs
On Lexington Ave
11 yrs
“Big Sur” starter
300+
Loaves baked daily
40%
Flour milled in-house
900+
Custom cakes a year
4.9★
486 reviews
Browse the case
Five shelves, baked this morning.
Breads, pastries, cakes, cookies, and whatever the season is giving us. Step up to the glass.
The Loaf Shelf
Breads
Naturally-leavened loaves on a long, cold ferment — blistered crust, open crumb, a faint tang.
See the shelf
The Laminated Shelf
Pastries & Viennoiserie
Hand-laminated croissants, kouign-amann, and morning buns — folded, proofed, and baked to shatter.
See the shelf
The Glass Case
Cakes & Tarts
Slices and whole cakes from the case, seasonal tarts, and the cakes you can make your own.
See the shelf
The Counter
Cookies & Bars
Brown-butter cookies, salted brownies, and the bars that go fastest after school lets out.
See the shelf
Right Now
Seasonal
What the market and the calendar give us — bakes that come and go with the season.
See the shelfThe regulars’ picks
What goes first.
The bakes our regulars line up for — and the ones that sell out before lunch.
Signature
Country Sourdough$9 /loaf
Our flagship loaf — 36-hour cold ferment, a blistered mahogany crust, and an open, custard crumb.
Favorite
Seeded Multigrain$10 /loaf
A hearty sourdough crusted in toasted flax, sesame, and sunflower — soaked overnight for a tender crumb.
Favorite
Levain Baguette$4.50 /each
A naturally-leavened baguette with a thin, shattering crust and a sweet, lacy interior. Baked twice daily.
Signature
Butter Croissant$4.75 /each
Twenty-seven layers of European butter folded into our dough — shatter-crisp outside, honeycomb within.
Our craft
Time is the ingredient.
Flour & Ember began in 2014 with a cast-iron oven, a jar of wild-yeast starter named “Big Sur,” and a stubborn belief that bread should taste like the place it’s made. A decade on, we’re a working bakehouse on Lexington Avenue — milling a portion of our own flour, folding butter into laminated pastry by hand, and pulling loaves before the sun clears the Blue Ridge.
A wild-yeast starter
“Big Sur,” our 11-year mother, is fed twice daily. It’s the leavening for every loaf — no commercial yeast in the bread program.
Stone-milled flour
We mill close to 40% of our flour in-house from regional grain, and source the rest from organic mills in the Carolinas and Virginia.
A long, cold ferment
Our loaves retard cold for 24–36 hours. Time is the ingredient — it builds the flavor, the crust, and the open crumb.
Butter, folded by hand
Viennoiserie is laminated by hand with 83%-fat European butter over three days. Twenty-seven layers in every croissant.
Baked the morning you buy it
The ovens light before dawn. Everything in the case is baked that morning — and when it’s gone for the day, it’s gone.
Custom cakes
Build the cake, down to the filling.
Birthdays, weddings, “we did it” cakes. Pick the occasion, size, flavor, and finish in our builder and we’ll send a quote — 72 hours’ notice for standard cakes, a tasting for weddings.
In their words
From the people at the counter.
“I drive across town every Saturday for the country sourdough. The crust actually shatters and the inside is custard. It ruins grocery-store bread for you — worth it.”
via Google
“They did our wedding cake — citrus olive-oil with seasonal florals. The tasting was lovely, the cake was stunning, and somehow it tasted even better than it looked.”
via Google
“The butter croissant is the best in the Southeast, full stop. Get there early. By 10 they’re onto tray four and the kouign-amann is already gone.”
via Instagram
Catering & wholesale
For the office, the event, the restaurant.
Catering & wholesale orders need 48 hours’ notice (more for large orders). We are a retail bakehouse — we bake the food; we don’t staff or stage events.
Pastry Boxes
Mixed croissants, morning buns, and mini-pastries — the meeting that everyone shows up to.
from $42 / dozenBread Programs
Standing wholesale loaf orders for restaurants, shops, and provisioners around Asheville.
from $7 / loafCookie & Bar Platters
Arranged platters of cookies, brownies, and bars for offices, showers, and gatherings.
from $36 / platterCelebration Spreads
Dessert tables and cake-plus-pastry spreads for events, built with you.
quotedOn the wall
What people are posting.
Google reviews, the daily “fresh out” from our feed, and a few frames from the bench.
Illustrative social proof for this template. Posts reflect individual experiences; daily availability varies — when an item sells out, it’s gone for the day.
Order ahead · Lexington Avenue
Come stand at the case.
Reserve a loaf, pre-order a box of pastries, or start a custom cake. We’ll have it warm and waiting under your name on Lexington Avenue.