Stairway to Sandwich Heaven

New Dallas restaurant chain Bread Zeppelin reinvents the salad

When talking about salads, it's hard to reinvent the wheel. Bread Zeppelin, a Dallas chain-in-the-making that debuts in July, seems to have found a new twist.

For starters, the salads are chopped. And you can get them in an unusual hollowed-out baguette that makes for easy, muss-proof transport.

Founders Troy Charhon and Andrew Schoellkopf, friends since high school who share an entrepreneurial streak, noted an increasing demand for salad in their jobs at Central Market and Eatzi's.

"We grew up with chopped salads," Schoellkopf says. "We realized that we didn't just want chopped salads; we wanted big salads. And with our backgrounds, the quality of the food was important. We cook all our own proteins in house. We wanted to make the best quality salad at a price point people could afford."

"Wraps are cumbersome and they fall apart," co-founder Troy Charhon says. "We spent months trying to figure out how to break away from the wrap."

Charhon describes the setup as being similar to other fast-casual concepts such as Chipotle or Salata, with a line where customers choose their ingredients, before heading to a "chopping station" where they can specify salad or sandwich.

"We dump out the ingredients and chop everything up as you watch," he says. "We can chop it as finely as you want. That's another point of differentiation for us. In a good chopped salad, every bite is consistent."

That covered salads, but then came the debate about sandwiches. They knew one thing: They didn't want a wrap. "Wraps are cumbersome and they fall apart," Charhon says. "We spent months trying to figure out how to break away from the wrap."

They thought about subs, and that's when the idea of the zeppelin floated in: something with a rigid exterior but that was light – like a sub roll but not so bready, an effect they achieve by using baguettes in which the center get cored out.

"We've got a local baker making our bread," Charhon says. "We cut off one end and extract the dough in the center. That gives it a crispy skeleton that holds all the chopped ingredients together without disintegrating. We make our own dressings. If they soak into the bread, you still have the outer shell. It's self-contained — something you can eat on the go, with one hand, in your car."

The bread insides get recycled into croutons. They have about 40 ingredients and 11 signature salads that can also be made into a zeppelin. But you can also get a plain turkey sandwich — oops, zeppelin — or just a bowl of greens from a selection that includes romaine, iceberg blend, kale and spring mix.

Their first restaurant soft opens in mid-July in Las Colinas, where they'll get their feet wet, with an eye toward opening a second branch by 2014. As for the name, while it does evoke the famed rock band, it's more about the floating cylindrical dirigible.

"The name Bread Zeppelin, we're playing off on taking salads to new heights," Charhon says. "We were trying to get very creative. The name is a huge part of it."

Salad done old-school style at Bread Zeppelin.

Photo courtesy of Bread Zeppelin

Salad done old-school style at Bread Zeppelin.

unspecified

Bread News

Plano bakery and pizzeria Bread Street Boys has some amazing bread

Bread Street Boys

German rye-wheat bread at Bread Street Boys

There's a hot loaf in town for Dallas bread fanatics thanks to Bread Street Boys, a bakery on the east side of Plano at 2710 S. Rigsbee Dr. #A, that's doing amazing breads, pizzas, and sandwiches.

Bread Street is a mom & pop from husband-and-wife Yury and Tatiana Stark, who are bringing an old-world, authentic style of sourdough bread that harkens to what they grew up with in Eastern Europe.

Their menu includes sourdough bread, Italian white, German rye-wheat, ciabatta, and focaccia, along with sourdough pizzas, which they sell from their east Plano bakery.

German rye
Their signature and best-seller is the German rye-wheat, an epic bread with a crust that's crisp but not too thick, and a crumb that's moist and chewy — a perfect contrast of textures. The bread has enough artisanal style to please bread snobs but not so heavy that it will scare off those intimidated by a thick crust.

Rye bread generally has a darker color and dense texture, but Bread Boys mixes in wheat flour to create a softer texture yet still retaining rye's distinctive malty flavor.

"Our rye bread is especially popular among Eastern Europeans who grew up with it and miss it from their childhood," Tatiana says. "That's a big part of our story — we both moved here from Belarus where good natural bread is a part of almost every meal, and we couldn't find anything like that here. Yury and I would spend time with our grandparents during summer break, helping make bread from scratch, and we missed that quality and flavor."

How they met
The couple has a sweet story. They knew each other when they were young, but Tatiana's family moved to the U.S. in 2000 when she was 14. They kept in touch over the years and realized they were meant for each other.

"He moved here eight years ago, and we got married and had two kids," she says.

Yury has an entrepreneurial streak so they founded the bakery in 2022, with Tatiana leaving her corporate job to form the quintessential mom & pop.

They built the bakery in a former warehouse from scratch — it took them nearly a year — and then went door-to-door offering samples of their bread. It can now be found at gourmet grocery stores such as Jimmy's Food Store, European Delicatessen Too in Plano, Kuby's Sausage House in Snider Plaza, and Georgia's Farmers Market in Plano. (A full list of where to buy their bread is here.)

Bread Street Boys pizzaBread Street Boys

Pizza
The pizzas were a natural offshoot. They make their crust with sourdough, which adds a complexity and toasty quality, elevating it from your everyday pie, in varieties such as pepperoni, margherita, BBQ chicken, veggie, and capricciosa topped with ham, artichokes, tomatoes, and mushrooms. Prices range from $17 to $20.

"Like our breads, our pizza crust dough incorporates a sourdough starter," Tatiana says. "There's a common misconception that sourdough means it's sour, but it's really about natural fermentation, which not only creates a better flavor, it also makes it more digestible and nutritious."

The fact that sourdough is naturally leavened — with no preservatives or dough conditioners, nothing artificial — is important to them, and they also use unenriched flour.

"I care a lot about nutrition, especially for children, and we try to eat as healthy as possible," Tatiana says. "One of our dreams is to bring our bread to local schools."

The pizza can be ordered online, and Bread Street is partnered with delivery services, but Tatiana says that many customers like to drop in.

"A lot of our customers stop by and pick it up — it's kind of a glamorous hole in the wall — I guess they find it charming," she says.

Sandwiches
Their latest adventure is a line of sandwiches made on their house bread, which they sell at the Dallas Farmers Market.

"We're at the Dallas Farmers Market every weekend when the shed is open," Tatiana says. "We sell our bread there, and it's the only place where we've been selling the sandwiches. We do some unusual combinations like the Breadwinner, a sweet-and-savory sandwich with turkey, lettuce, bacon, a spread with grated cheese and pecans, and peach preserves which adds an interesting kick. People love them, so we're going to start selling them at our bakery."

The name
The name "Bread Street Boys" has a certain attitude but also weaves in a few elements, some personal.

"'Bread Street' nods to old European streets where bakeries were the heartbeat of the neighborhood — places where bread was made daily, by hand, with skill passed down through people," Tatiana says. "'Boys' reflects our energy behind the bakery: a fun, tight-knit, and hardworking crew of bakers."

Also, when they were teenagers, the Backstreet Boys were popular.

"We used to know those songs by heart, but without knowing a thing about what the words said," she says. "We liked the idea of giving the name a little pop-culture wink — kind of where old-world bread meets modern spirit."

openings desserts bakeries pizza