By 
⬆️ Photo credit IG @hasibread
Welcome to LA Stories, a section where I interview people from all walks of life that have made LA their home.
I’m so excited to share with you my interview with Matias, owner and founder of Häsi Bread (pronounced Hay-Zee).
From the first time I saw this bread on Instagram, I was intrigued by this colored sourdough bread. What did it taste like? Were the different colors different flavors? Does the baker use food coloring or are those natural coloring agents?
I went to the Brentwood Farmers Market on a Sunday to find the bread. I have to thank Häsi Bread because it was my first time ever buying something at the Farmers Market and honestly, I don’t know what had taken me so long! A great thing is that before you purchase it, you can sample it! I tried a little piece and decided to get the individual loaf, which retails for $6 and is a great value if it’s just for yourself. Michael, the guy who was helping me, said the bread holds up pretty well for four days, but after that, they recommend slicing and freezing it.
Michael also told me about the colors: the blue is blue pea flower and the yellow is turmeric root. When I asked Michael what he liked to eat the bread with, he said with breakfast, specifically with eggs. He also said the bread was perfect for sandwiches and that it paired really well with cheeses.
Since I decided I was going to eat the bread with eggs, I ended up getting two delicious heirloom tomatoes to go with it.
As soon as I got home, I made a beeline for the kitchen, eager to try out the bread. It was an overcast day in LA, so the lightning is not that good, but here it is!
It’s hard to pinpoint one specific word for the flavor. I could definitely taste the subtle hints of turmeric and blue pea. The real star of the show however, was the dough. Just like Matias confirmed with me in the interview, the dough is where you get most of the flavor. The texture was airy and soft, almost like a sponge. The crust was thin and rustic. I’m not necessarily a bread fiend, but the experience of eating Häsi Bread was so unique and different from any bread I’ve ever eaten before. Trust me, after Häsi Bread, you will see store-bought bread differently.
On top of that, it’s healthy! However, I definitely don’t recommend eating it with a heavy meal, because the bread itself is pretty filling and it shines on its own. If you’re not familiar with sourdough bread, I recommend looking into the history, which harkens back to the 3700 BCE in Switzerland. Here’s some information about the health benefits of sourdough bread:
“Sourdough is a healthier alternative to regular white or whole wheat bread. Although it has comparable nutrients, the lower phytate levels mean it is more digestible and nutritious. The prebiotics also help to keep your gut bacteria happy, and it may be less likely to spike blood sugar levels.” – Insider.com
“Sourdough bread acts as a prebiotic, which means that the fiber in the bread helps feed the “good” bacteria in your intestines. These bacteria are important for maintaining a stable, healthy digestive system” – webmd.com
Häsi Bread is available at Erewhon Market, Imperfect Foods, and the following Farmers Markets in LA: North Hollywood, Brentwood, Melrose and Westwood.
I went to the Erewhon location on Beverly Blvd after work, but they didn’t have it. I asked the manager, who knew Matias and had tried Häsi Bread. He said because they’re not a big company, they don’t get crazy amounts of stock. Later, when I asked Matias about this, he said:
“We’re at all 6 Erewhon locations, but sometimes we sell out early. We deliver every Monday, Wednesday and Friday!”
You can also get Häsi Bread from his parents’ driveway converted into a bakery space in Studio City. More details in the interview!
Häsi Bread carries the legacy of breadmaking rooted in the Austrian countryside, where Matias used to go as a kid and still goes every year. There, he learned the art of breadmaking in 2017.
Since weekends were the busiest days of the week for Matias, I interviewed him over Zoom on a Tuesday. I hope you enjoy learning all about Häsi Bread!
Hi Matias! Let’s start with your background.
My mom is from Austria and my dad is from Afghanistan, so I’m a first generation American. The journey started in Austria. My brother actually lives there with his wife. His wife’s family has been a baker’s family for 4 generations. They taught me how to bake bread in 2017. I’ve always been into cooking and making pizzas, so I got interested in making dough. Her family basically offered if I was interested in learning how to bake bread. They introduced me to the whole process of making sourdough, so I said yeah let’s do it. They wrote down their step by step process of making sourdough, and when I came back to LA, I just practiced making bread and sharing it with family, neighbors and coworkers. It started out as this passion project to learn and share what I’m learning with other people. That’s how the business started essentially was through my brother’s family and them teaching me how to bake bread in Austria.
When and why did you create Häsi Bread?
The when was in 2018. That’s officially when I started business. This was after having practiced making bread for a few months. My sister in-law was watching my journey, she’s the one with the baker’s family and she was like, “Why don’t you start a business? Why not?” I was like, No, no, no. That’s kind of crazy, this is just for fun. She was like, “Why not? It doesn’t hurt.” So, I started with making a logo actually. I designed my logo and at the time, I was working in an advertising agency, so I was surrounded by artists and other creative people. It was a 360 advertising agency, so I did everything around branding and marketing and I was inspired by that work to start my own business. I started with the graphical component which is designing a logo.
It’s really cool by the way, it’s very eye-catching.
That’s actually the second iteration. The first logo that I created was under a different slogan so it was “Häsi: Real Strong Bread”, which is very different from the logo now. At the time I was training for strongman, I was an athlete and I love to lift weights. So I was really into that and that’s why the business was called at the time, and then later on, I changed it to “Art is in Bread” because it was more fitting for what I was doing. But it basically started with me designing the logo and getting excited about having a business. The graphical part was really inspiring for me because I was like whoa, I drew this thing with my pencil, made it official and registered it with the state. I’m a very visual person, so having that logo created made me feel like Ok, now I have a business, now I can sell this bread.
Was the bread colored at that time?
It was not colored. At the time, I was making regular bread, but shortly afterwards, I started introducing charcoal and made some black loafs, and then turmeric for yellow and pea flour for the blue. I started experimenting during that time, but I didn’t really have an identity for the current blue and yellow sourdough. In my second logo, that’s where I started honing the blue and yellow sourdough and the logo is also blue and yellow, so really creating that identity behind that and making that our thing so to speak. That was maybe a year later, when I designed the second logo.
April 2018
May 2018
October 2018
November 2018
February 2019
The why? I was just inspired. I thought bread was so cool. I mean I’m still learning to this day. It was a constant learning process, every time I baked it was different: taking notes, adjusting, process and fermentation. It’s just a simple product: flour, water, salt, but there’s so much technique and timing and temperatures… It’s a real science you know? I like to call it the creative science because there’s only so much you can do with calculations. The creativity behind it it’s just being intuitive and adjusting as you go. So yeah, I was really inspired and bread is just so beautiful. The colors for me represent how beautiful bread can be. And beyond the colors, enjoying a real sourdough is a beautiful thing, and the colors that I’m using are a beautiful representation of something else basically, which is the art of bread making. Making my own flour and fermenting the dough and techniques involved…it’s really fascinating. Other bakeries do that too, but I’m kind of leaning into the art component of it.
Why did you choose the name Häsi?
Häsi is actually what my family calls me. My real name is Matias. I speak German and my mom is from Austria, and most of my family is still there. Hias is the Austrian slang version of Matthias, but my brother couldn’t pronounce Hias growing up, so he called me Häsi and that basically just stuck with the family because they thought it was fun and cute and different. So that’s what my family calls me, that’s what people close to me call me.
What’s the best way to describe Häsi Bread?
I’d say it’s inspiring. Whenever I get a first-time customer, who hasn’t tried the bread yet, the first thing I like to mention is that we mill our own flour. That’s where most of the flavor really is in my opinion. You get a little bit of the grainnes, but not too much. Man, it’s just the best. It’s so hard to describe (laughs). Toasted, you get the “smunch”. It’s soft and crunchy. It will change your life, it will change the way you see the bread when you try it. The turmeric gives it a little bit of a… I can’t put my finger on the flavor, but it’s there. I don’t know how to put it into words, it’s just incredibly orgasmic haha. I think toasted is a whole new level, you should definitely try it next time. I don’t know how to put it into words, I need someone else to describe it… slightly nutty? The aroma, a lot of it it’s in the smell. When I try someone else’s bread, the first thing I do is cut it or tear it off and I smell it. You can get a lot of personality and quality from the smell. So if you’re looking for earthiness…I don’t know, I’m not good at this, sorry (laughs).
What’s your favorite way to eat it?
My favorite way is sliced, toasted, cold butter, honey, and a little bit of flaky salt. That’s my favorite way to enjoy it. It’s also incredibly good as an avocado toast.
Do you have any specific brands you use?
I normally use Kerrygold butter and for honey, I’ve been using a honey that comes from an area in Austria where I learned how to bake.
What is your earliest memory of bread?
Definitely Austrian bread for sure. I’m inspired by the breadmaking there. The bakeries there, you wake up in the morning and you can get a fresh roll of rye bread. The smell, the good butter…up until Kerrygold butter came out here in the US, there wasn’t very good butter on the market. But in Austria, every time I went as a kid you could get fresh bread and butter that came from grass-fed cows, and it was just the best. Fresh bread, good butter…so good.
How does it make you feel that Häsi Bread sells out most of the time?
It’s the biggest source of fulfillment for me. We work so hard to make all this bread by hand and it’s such a long process. It’s very physical, we put a lot of physical effort into it. When people come back, they buy it and it’s gone because people are enjoying it at their homes…it’s the why behind everything basically. That means that we shared it, and people brought it into their homes, they sliced it, they shared with other people, and they talked about it. When there’s no bread left and it’s in the hands of someone else, that means we succeeded. I know that people love it and will enjoy it. I can imagine how they’re enjoying it and who they’re sharing it with. It’s a great feeling.
How did the pandemic affect Häsi Bread?
Man, it changed everything. It was a rough patch for sure, but everyone had to deal with it. A lot of businesses were hit in different ways. For us, we had actually started a bakery in Burbank right before the pandemic.
January 2020
It was January of 2020, we signed the lease, we were just getting started to build it out, and then March came around and that was when everything closed down. They shut down the farmers’ markets for a while, and the whole business was affected basically because no one was going out. So we terminated that lease, essentially, took a couple weeks off, reevaluated, and rebuilt the bakery in a new location that I actually built with my dad and some friends from the ground up.
It’s actually at my parents’ house in Studio City, we just built it in the driveway and started selling bread to the community. We downsized during the pandemic with the idea of baking bread with our neighbors. So we brought the bakery to the neighborhood, because the only thing people could do at that time last year (2020) was to go for walks and be outside. And there were a ton of people on the streets in our neighborhood. We built the bakery in the driveway, started selling it to our neighbors and people walking around, and we just grew out of that. When farmers’ markets opened up again, we went back and it was a whole new start. It was like starting from square one again.
May 2020
Is the bakery in the driveway an official brick-and-mortar?
We’re not open to the public. We’re only open on Fridays 4-6 PM for the neighbors basically. There are some things in the works for a brick-and-mortar. It’s funny you ask because I’ve just looked at a space for the second time today with my contractor. So there’s definitely stuff moving, nothing is set in stone yet. But we definitely have our eyes on growing into a space that will be open to the public.
As a food market vendor, what are some challenges that people don’t know about?
It’s challenging to bake as much bread as we’re baking out of our current space. We’re baking out of a very small space for a lot of people. A big challenge is using that space effectively and that means recycling space, so that a rack is used for proofing bread, but also storing bread. Every square inch of our bakery is used for three different purposes throughout the day. So that way, we’re using as much as we can for different reasons. That’s been a big challenge for sure. We’re getting into the swing of it, but yeah that was a big one. We’re operating out of 300 square feet or less.
What are your favorite restaurants in LA?
Hands down, my favorite restaurant in LA right now is Felix Trattoria.
I’ve been there. It’s so good! It’s on the expensive side but….
It’s expensive, but I’m willing to pay for something that ‘s actually great. I feel like I’ve paid the same amount or more at places and I haven’t been as thrilled. I got a lot of thrill out of Felix, and I can feel the passion behind it. I was very happy with it.
What do you like to order there?
I’m a baker so I obviously ordered the Focaccia, and man…it was very very good. The pizza was incredible. I pay attention to the dough. Before I started making bread, I made pizza for a long time. The Naples-style way with the wood fired thin crust… I’m familiar with the process and I know what good Napoli style pizza is, and they hit the nail on the head. The Tagliatelle pasta was also amazing. No complaints, everything was great (laughs).
What do you like about living in LA?
It’s a love-hate relationship I think. What I love about LA is that everybody is doing something unique, or at least trying to do something unique. Thinking outside the box and doing something new and different. As someone who was born and raised in LA, I think that might have something to do with my take on bread because I’m also doing something different. Yeah, just disrupting what we think is normal and shaking that up a little bit. There’s a lot of people in LA that are striving for that and it keeps me inspired. It keeps me thinking, Ok, what’s next? How do we stay forward-thinking and progressive to create something new?
Since you grew up in Studio City, what’s your favorite restaurant there?
I actually live in Santa Monica now. But in Studio City, I like Now On 9 Thai Bistro. That’s like my go-to spot when I’m over there and I need some good comfort food.
What are your favorite places in LA?
I love Santa Monica. It’s very walkable, I like to skate and surf and I have all of that here. I like the beach, I can’t see myself living far from the ocean. Burbank has a special place in my heart, it’s kind of old LA.
Is there a specific place you like going to unwind?
For me, it’s surfing because it’s the one place where I don’t have a phone, no one is trying to get at me. I’m just with the water, surfing some waves. That’s where I really unplug.
Do you have a favorite eating spot in Santa Monica?
I see myself going to Erewhon a lot for dinner. I feel guilty going there, because everything is so expensive. But it’s good because it’s clean, it’s organic, and the hot bar is always tasty. There’s always something good there. So yeah, Erewhon is where I go the most for a bite.
For someone who is reading this and wants to try Häsi Bread for the first time, what’s the best way to do so?
I would say go to the Farmers Market. Go to the Melrose or the Brentwood one on a Sunday. My first recommendation is the Brentwood Farmers Market because there’s so many vendors there and they’re great. Sundays are when we have the most selection and we do a lot of different things. So if you want to get Häsi Bread for the first time, go to Brentwood Market. Get some honey and some avocado from the other vendors.
What do you think of the bread scene in LA? What are your favorite bakeries?
Oh yeah, there’s a lot of really really great bakeries in LA. There’s a good few ones, Lodge Bread Company is great. Clark Street is also really good. There’s a new bakery called Jyan Isaac. He’s this young kid that makes really good stuff. If you can find a neighbor or someone who’s doing it for fun on the side, I always recommend supporting them, buy their bread as they’re learning and growing. That’s where I started basically.
The only reason I purchase bread now that’s not my own is to taste someone else’s bread. If I ever come across a Clark Street or a Jyan Isaac if I’m in the area, I’ll definitely support them and buy a loaf or a baguette or something. Otherwise, I haven’t gone to the supermarket to buy sandwich bread in years. I will only buy the good stuff from people who actually make it with love and in the sourdough family.
If you want to get a preview of seeing how other people eat it on Häsi’s IG stories.
