Sous-chef turned baker Yonathan “Yoni” Bustillo will celebrate his one year work-aversary at Doughregarde’s Bake Shop this month. His transition from managing hot skillets to baking baguettes is the result of a mentorship that formed with head baker, David Madrid.
Part of The Village’s redevelopment project, Doughregarde’s is the satellite bakery responsible for preparing the bread, pastry and viennoiserie served at the property’s seven restaurants, including high-profile chef Junior Borges’ Meridian. Doughregarde’s also has a bakery counter at the Roundhouse Food Hall, where carb-loading opportunities abound with gourmet sandwiches, croissants, kolaches, and sticky buns. The property’s Mogo market also sells Doughregarde’s whole grain sourdough country loaves.
During Bustillo’s first tryout shift — a common bakery interview process called staging — he pleaded with Madrid for the position, promising to become the team’s hardest worker and to always show up.
At the time, Madrid had intended to bring in talent from previous connections in San Francisco, but, convinced by Bustillo’s earnestness, he gave him the job. For the past year, he’s been picking Bustillo up at 3:30 a.m. on the way to work each morning, a routine Bustillo says he appreciates because it allows him to soak up more time with his mentor.
“I want to go in at the time he goes in. I want to be there first, so that I can get as much info as possible from him and be a part of creating the system,” Bustillo says. “I look up to him. He’s a good role model — a great leader, father, and husband — and I want to carry that.”
In addition to seeking out a mentor when he applied a year ago, Bustillo was also in search of a lifestyle change. For years, he worked as a sous-chef at fine dining restaurants like Uchi, Top Knot (rebranded as Uchiba), and Một Hai Ba.
His last shift on the line was in August 2020, during the pandemic’s second wave, a time he says a lot of workers jumped ship.
“That’s when my mentality shifted, and the restaurant industry got sour for me. Like everybody else, I was getting spread thin. I realized working a 12-hour shift on the line every day is not for me,” Bustillo says. He sometimes misses the adrenaline of a buzzing kitchen, but 2020 was the year he became engaged to be married, and he decided he needed something positive in his life.
Madrid describes Bustillo as “green,” but with good habits when he started. Today, he’s second-in-command as lead baker. “He’s the one materializing my vision,” Madrid says. “I’m really proud of him. His success is my success.”
Like his apprentice, Madrid also started in savory cooking before deciding to get serious about pastry. After learning lamination in culinary school, he found he preferred pastry’s methodical and technical approach. But like Bustillo, he knew he would need a mentor.
After a six-month waiting list, he enrolled in the country’s first-rate baking school, San Fransisco Baking Institute, founded by Michel Suas, a Frenchman who moved to San Francisco in 1987 during the Bay Area’s artisan bread revolution. Suas is “the godfather of bread and pastry,” as Madrid describes him. “Everyone doing bread in a meaningful way in this country has been to that school.”
At SFBI, Madrid says his head exploded. Teachers like Miyuki Togi and Kate Good “took a vested interest in my success, and now, I have this staff [at Doughregarde’s] showing up every day and busting butt. It’s minimal what I have to do. We are the example,” he says.
There are few people in Dallas as serious about pastry as Madrid — he has a dancing concha, baguette, fougasse, and croissant tattooed around the perimeter of his forearm. He works in a state-of-the-art bakery furnished with more than $250,000 in equipment, including a deck oven from Germany, a loader from France, and mixers from Italy.
Such equipment is helpful for projects like preparing Meridian’s daily bread selection, which could be a confit peppercorn sourdough laminated brioche or Sonora pain meunier, a type of loaf bakers traditionally made to honor their millers for delivering consistent flour. Madrid uses Sonora wheat, one of North America’s oldest surviving grains, grown locally in Tokio, Texas, for the pain meunier served at Meridian.
There could also be an order for 100 pita and chocolate babka to deliver to Anise, The Village’s Mediterranean restaurant; or sourdough pretzels for the Over Under sports bar; or shiny pain au lait hamburger buns to serve throughout the vast property.
Madrid estimates about 80 items out of his book of 100 formulas are currently in production, as Doughregarde’s begins to launch into wholesale, too.
Like Bustillo, he values the quality of life that comes with his job, in part due to modern equipment like retarder proofers that automatically switch dough from refrigeration to proofing mode, an invention that allows professional bakers to get some sleep. Madrid prioritizes a work-life balance for his team, too. He believes when basic needs are met outside of work, workers will do better at their jobs.
Bustillo says he’s learned a lot from Madrid, like how to take a “chill pill” when he makes a mistake. Madrid reassures him by saying, “We’re only making bread here.” And Madrid’s motto — to make everything 1% better than yesterday — has stuck with Bustillo.
“I’m a reflection of that. I came in here with very little knowledge. Now, I love to say to David, ‘Take the day off. I’ll cover for you.’”
Bustillo sees himself staying at Doughregarde’s indefinitely. He and Madrid are “only scratching the surface,” he says, as they strive each day for 1% better artisan breads and pastries in a city that’s possibly on the brink of its own artisan bread revolution.
