Nora Ellison
Head Baker & Owner · 18 yrs
Founded Flour & Ember in 2014 after years at bakeries in San Francisco and Copenhagen. Keeps “Big Sur,” the bakehouse starter, alive and grumpy.
ServSafeSFBI-trained
Our craft
A working bakehouse, not a trend.
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.
How we bake
Five things we won’t skip.
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.
At the bench
The bakers.
A small team in early most mornings — owner, lamination lead, cake decorator, and the miller who runs the stone mill and the deck ovens.
Marcus Bell
Viennoiserie & Lamination · 12 yrs
Runs the pastry bench — every croissant, kouign-amann, and morning bun passes through his hands at 4am.
Pastry diploma
Priya Shah
Cake & Pastry Decorator · 9 yrs
Designs and finishes the custom cakes — the rustic buttercream and pressed-floral look is hers.
Cake design
Sam Orozco
Bread Baker & Miller · 7 yrs
Runs the stone mill and the deck ovens — the reason 40% of our flour is milled in-house.
Milling cert
Sourcing
Local grain, local hands.
We mill close to 40% of our flour in-house from regional grain and buy the rest from organic mills in the Carolinas and Virginia. Butter is European-style at 83% fat; fruit comes from the tailgate market down the street when the season allows. The starter, “Big Sur,” is 11 years old and grumpy.
