Crusty Breads

Joule adds downtown Dallas bakery-cafe with butcher and artisan breads

A new bakery-cafe is coming from the folks at the Joule Dallas hotel.

Photo courtesy of CBD Provisions

At long last, Dallas Design District restaurant Sassetta is fulfilling its original mission of being an "all-day cafe" and going the full nine yards by opening for breakfast, lunch, and dinner.

This means it's open all day, every day, from 8 am-10 pm Sundays-Thursdays, and 8 am-11 pm Fridays and Saturdays. All the hours!

This means you can now stop in for a café-style breakfast, working lunch, early-afternoon cocktail, or festive night out. All the meals!

Owned and operated by Joule Dallas hotel owner Headington Companies, Sassetta is a European-inspired Italian eatery with pasta, pizza, house-cured meats, seafood, Italian cocktails, and wine. It's part of a trio of restaurants at the corner of Oak Lawn and Hi Line Drive, along with siblings Wheelhouse restaurant and Go Go, a market opening soon.

In its new role as an all-day café, Sassetta will incorporate a coffee bar, topped each morning with pastries, and manned by baristas serving Counter Culture Coffee, the nationally-known specialty coffee roaster from Durham, North Carolina.

The breakfast menu includes house-made granola and yogurt alongside toasted brioche topped with ricotta, seasonal jam, and burnt honey; a chicken sausage egg sandwich on focaccia bread; and a roasted mushroom-, spinach-, and fontina-stuffed frittata.

The lunch menu features all the dinner favorites – freshly made semolina pasta and signature wood-fired pizzas – in addition to Italian sandwiches that range from chicken parmesan and caprese to tuna conserva topped with arugula, roasted bell pepper, and black olive aioli.

Artisanal bread, pastries, and specialty desserts are made daily by pastry chefs Sarah Green and Ruben Torano at Commissary, an off-site bakery and butcher shop for Headington Companies restaurants and new grab-and-go café concept opening to the public downtown this fall.

Yes, downtown Dallas is going to get a bakery-cafe.

Commissary will be a bakery in the heart of Dallas, located at 1217 Main St., aka the Synn building, producing artisan-style breads using high-quality heritage grains, that are all naturally leavened and by hand. They'll make breads and viennoiseries daily, meaning artisan hearth breads, sweet breads, and sandwich breads.

Commissary will serve as the production center for Headington restaurants and hotels, and house a full butcher shop and bakery as well as a cafe/coffee shop that serves a full menu from morning to night.

The facility will also prepare from-scratch charcuterie, ground meat, and extruded pastas. A spokesperson says there is no opening date, but that's what Headington spokespeople always say. It's definitely going to be open by the end of 2017, possibly by November.

desserts

Pizza News

Donatos Pizza totes its unique crust to new location in Flower Mound

dallas.culturemap.com

Donatos

A pizza chain with a quirky obsession on its crusts is coming to Flower Mound: Donatos Pizza, the franchise famous for spreading its toppings to the very edge of the pizza, will open a location at 1400 Long Prairie Rd. #160.

According to a release, it'll open on December 17.

Donatos Pizza was founded by Jim Grote in Ohio in 1963 from a single stand, and remains family-owned. Their signature is to place the toppings on their pizzas "edge to edge" — for clueless diners who do not like plain crust edges. (Come on, the crust is the best part.)

Their menu features more than a dozen varieties of pizza such as veggie, four cheese, and pepperoni with hot honey. Their signature crust is a thin-crust but they also offer thicker alternatives as well as a cauliflower crust. Pizzas come in a 7-inch individual and go all the way up to a 14-inch large. Prices range from $15 to $25.

Fans appreciate their better-than-average ingredients and describe it as more flavorful compared to other corporate pizza chains, with a crisp thin crust and generous toppings.

In addition to pizza, Donatos' menu includes oven-baked wings, sub sandwiches, including meatball and Italian cold cuts, plus appetizers and salads.

The Flower Mound location will be a family affair, owned by Lynne and Ralph Pence, whose son Travis will oversee day-to-day operations. The Pence family has deep connections to Donatos including the fact that Lynne's sister used to work for the company, while her brother-in-law still does.

"We're from Columbus, Ohio — it is where our kids grew up and where our family is—it also happens to be the hometown and birthplace of Donatos Pizza," Lynne says. "Our daughter in Oklahoma found out Donatos was coming to Edmond, where she lives, and called us. She was so excited that Donatos was finally coming down south and we wanted to be a part of it."

This is the second Donatos in the Dallas area: a location opened in Frisco in November — the first in Texas.

There are currently 470-plus locations in 28 states. That includes 175 stores plus nearly 300 non-traditional locations nationwide, including select Red Robin restaurants, sports, and entertainment venues.

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