HOWELL, Michigan – His mother is British and his father is Greek so Scott Bitoff – and his wife Jennifer – said when they decided to open Oh Crumbs! Bread Company in the little town of Howell, Michigan, they looked at how Europeans bake and buy.

They are renovating a barber shop that closed after 30 years to get the bakery up and running, featuring “rustic hearth breads” baked from scratch and available for purchase from the storefront, said the Livingston Daily.

https://www.livingstondaily.com/story/news/local/community/howell/2023/03/28/oh-crumbs-howell-bakery-opening-soon-downtown/70052879007/

“The concept is, it’s a retail bakery. You’ll have the opportunity to come in and buy fresh-baked bread,” Scott Bitoff said. The smell alone would make you crazy to come in.

They will also sell sweet baked goods, like Danishes and cinnamon rolls, and coffee in the morning, and have plans to add focaccia bread paninis. His wife spent time visiting friends and family in Germany and saw people there prefer their daily bread and not from supermarkets.

“Every morning they get fresh brioches that they have for breakfast with either lunch meat, cheeses, jams, butter, and that’s the daily breakfast thing,” she said.

“It’s hard to find one here that doesn’t taste commercial. I know they freshly bake them at a lot of the grocery stores, but they bring them in frozen, they thaw them and then they bake them in the morning, so it’s not quite the same,” she said.

Greece has abundant bakeries preparing bread and other goods daily, preferred by many to store-bought brands that can’t compare for freshness and quality ingredients even if it means you have to finish faster.

“In Europe, people are making small, purposeful trips. It doesn’t have to sit on the shelf,” Scott Bitoff said. The couple started up the concept as a side business in 2017 at a Florida farmers market before moving their family of five back to Michigan, where she grew up.