Santa Rosa’s Sarmentine Bakery, known for its Parisian baguettes and luxe patisserie, will open a second Sonoma County location at The Barlow in Sebastopol.
It will replace Red Bird Bakery, which had ceased using the space and is consolidating its operations between a recently opened Santa Rosa locale and its existing Cotati bakery.
“We really weren’t looking, but The Barlow reached out to us and said they were very interested in having a French bakery. It all happened very fast,” said Louis Zandvliet, who co-owns Sarmentine with his wife — and head baker — Alexandra.
The expat French couple opened the bakery at 52 Mission Circle in 2021 after their Kickstarter campaign raised more than $30,000 from community supporters.
A former midwife, Alexandra sold fresh baguettes and sweet pastries as a cottage business during the pandemic.
The 3,500-square-foot building at the multiuse restaurant, shopping, wine and maker venue includes retail and production ovens. In addition to Red Bird, the expansive bakery has also been home to Acre Pizza (which recently moved to a smaller kitchen across the street) and Village Bakery, which left after a catastrophic flood destroyed the business and several others in 2019.
Linda Cermak, co-owner of Red Bird, said that she’d found a “forever home” for her growing retail and wholesale baking business in Santa Rosa after taking over the former Criminal Bakery & Noshery earlier this year.
She said the kitchen now has commercial bread ovens and space to grow.
“We’ve been looking for a place for 10 years, and when we landed in Santa Rosa, we knew we loved this area,” she said of the offbeat SOFA District on Sebastopol Avenue.
“It’s a space as big as the Barlow, and we were barely surviving there,” she added.
Sarmentine’s owners, excited to start a new venue, hope to open in October. “October-ish opening,” he said.
Still, Zandvliet said they’re concurrently expanding their existing location by nearly double, taking over the vacated suite behind them and adding additional kitchen and staff space, so the couple is busy with those plans as well.
“We were already in the process of expanding in Santa Rosa, but we just had this opportunity, and it would be crazy not to go because, well, it’s the Barlow,” he said.