Seed Bakery: A Place of Normalcy in the Rubble

Joseph baking the bread at Seed Bakery in Pasadena (Photo – Pam)

They opened Seed Bakery ten years ago at 942 East Washington Boulevard, built it into an icon, weathered the challenges brought by COVID, and now are coping with four of their 17 employees relocating due to the fires.

By Reg Green

They have one other problem: their Altadena home burned to the ground.

But Joseph Abrakjian, now doing all the baking himself, and his wife, Pamela, who is doing all the customer contact work formerly shared between two and sometimes three people, have never missed a day of work.

Even at the best of times, their days are exhausting. Their wakeup calls come at 3:15 am, they are in bed by 7:30 most nights. “As soon as my head hits the pillow, I can’t count to ten before I’m asleep,” Joseph comments. “You get used to the hours,” he adds calmly.

But nothing could have prepared them for their home, high up in Altadena with its view as far as San Pedro, being directly in the path of the Eaton Fire. Nothing is left. “We loved that house,” Pam says simply but with a depth of meaning.

Partly their drive is due to the urge for perfection — he in all kinds of baking, from the lightest of baguettes through sourdough to complex pastries, she in treating customers as friends. Partly it comes because doing everyday tasks restores a sense of stability. Partly it is because it is the right thing to do.

They have even found something positive in the midst of all this. As Pam puts it, “Our bakery has become a place where people can find normalcy. It has provided the community with a sense of neighborhood that they long for.” The way their customers have coped with their own suffering is “inspiring,” Joseph adds. Certainly, the way this couple is dealing with what has happened to them is one of the most inspiring stories to come out of the whole calamity.