Upper Cust Baking has been an existence for nearly 37 years and is showing no signs of slowing down, recently opening a new Winters location in September 2022.

Trudy and Maurice “Mo” Kalisky opened Upper Crust in 1986. In 2019, the Kalisky’s opened their first storefront in Davis.

“My parents had come to Davis in the early 1970s as graduate students,” Lorin said. “They moved to Davis from New York City and they missed the good bread and baked goods that they were use to in New York and on the East Coast at that time. When they were done with school, they had an entrepreneurial spirit and my dad baked at home as a hobby for many years. By the mid 80s, they had decided to try their hand at opening a bakery.”

Now over three decades later, their son, Lorin, has returned to his first job and led the charge for the last six-plus years since 2016. Lorin came home to help his parents after spending 14 years in Paris, where he met his wife and his two daughters were born. He also spent years working in the San Francisco tech industry.

“In 2015, my parents were getting older and they had not put a lot of energy into the bakery for a while, they were struggling a little bit,” Lorin said. “It was a good time for me to get involved and they really needed the help. Over the course of a couple years, we decided it would be good for me to take it over. That gave them the ability to retire.”

Upper Crust serves various styles of pastries, including French baguettes and Jewish deli rye. Other styles of Jewish delicacies include pumpernickel, challah and babka.

“In the early days, they would go out to dinner at the better restaurants in Sacramento to see what kind of bread they were serving,” Lorin explained. “They would go back home that night and my dad would go into the bakery and whip something up that was much better than what the restaurant was using. Then my mom would go out the next day and drop some samples off. Invariably, they’d get a standing order. That’s how they got started.”

Lorin mentioned that in the 80s, Northern California’s options for artisan bread were slim to none. Which is when the Kaslisky’s started selling their product at various farmer’s markets around the area.

“The world of bread was nothing like it is today,” Lorin recalled. “It was really dominated by factories and corporate manufacturers of bread. There was a real demand for good artisan bread.”

When the Kalisky’s opened their Winters location in September, they had no choice but to add another option to the menu.

“We’ve had a wonderful welcome to Winters,” Lorin said. “The community at-large has been great. The funny story with Winters is that the property that we bought had been a bakery for many years. The community was use to having a bakery there that was very different from us. They did pies and donuts, things like that. When word got around that we bought that property, people were excited because it was another bakery and not a yoga studio or something like that.”

After taking over the former Lester Farms location, the Kalisky’s added donuts to their menu at a very economical price. For example, you can snack on five tasty donut holes for a dollar.

“A lot of people were very concerned because they knew us in Davis to be a French-Jewish bakery,” Lorin recalled. “We didn’t make donuts. There was a big debate and discussion among the community in Winters about merits of donuts and whether or not we’d make them. We didn’t have any plans to make donuts, we had never made donuts in the history of our bakery. Through all these discussions, there were crazy debates on Facebook and people had very, very strong opinions about donuts.

“At one point, they used the term, ‘Rioting in the streets,’ if we didn’t make donuts. So we kind of caved and learned quickly how to make donuts. In Winters, we make donuts now and it’s a new thing for us. The fact that we gave in to the needs of the community, they were very appreciative. Winters has proven to be a fabulous place to be and we’re very happy.”

Vegan options are also available at Upper Crust.

“There’s a lot of things that make us unique,” Lorin said. “As far as I know, we are the only second-generation, family-owned bakery in the region. Our specialties make us unique and set us aside also. We call ourselves a farm-to-oven bakery. We specialize in a variety of products. Our experience at farmers markets for the last 37 years have given us great connections to farms and agricultural producers. Those connections are how we’ve been able to source a lot of our ingredients.”

Future plans for the Winters location include adding an outdoor patio and bringing “Pizza Night” to town, which they have in Davis every Wednesday evening.