25 Aug 21st- Aug 27th, 2025 phoenixnewtimes.com PHOENIX NEW TIMES | NEWS | FEATURE | FOOD & DRINK | ARTS & CULTURE | MUSIC | CONCERTS | CANNABIS | shops and restaurants around the Valley. Chacón opened a brick-and-mortar bakery in the former La Belle Vie Bakery in Scottsdale late last year. When he toured the space, located on Roosevelt Street and Hayden Road, it was outfitted with a large deck oven and a heavy-duty stand mixer. “If we have access to all this bread equipment, maybe this is the universe telling me that I should start a bread program,” Chacón says he remembers thinking. He reached out to Beitcher about a possible partnership with his award- winning bakery and a move to the Valley. “He’s got a lot of poise and grace,” Chacón says of Beitcher. “Of course, he has incredibly high standards, and he has a real innate feel for the doughs that he’s handling.” Beitcher arrived in the Valley in March. Since then, he has incrementally built a selection of naturally leavened breads that started with baguettes and country bread and has grown to include focaccia, loaves of deli rye and boules made with jalapeno and cheddar or porridge and flax seeds. “I feel like it’s just like planting the S.F. roots here. That Tartine-style bread is what I know and, I think, what Mark and I both really love,” Beitcher says. “We’re just kind of bringing that to Phoenix.” A ‘more nourishing’ career Before he started baking, Beitcher worked at some of the country’s most prestigious restaurants, including Thomas Keller’s three Michelin-starred fine dining restaurant Per Se in New York and Alice Waters’ pioneering farm-to-table restaurant Chez Panisse in Berkeley, California. In 2012, Beitcher was burned out from cooking but wanted to stay in the world of food. He decided to explore breadmaking. “It just kind of dawned on me that, compared to cooking at a restaurant, I really loved making a product that people would take home and just plop down on the table,” he says. “It felt like a more nourishing, for me, way to stay involved with food.” If he was going to study the art of bread, Beitcher decided it had to be at Tartine. He started there in 2012, initially thinking that learning sourdough breadmaking would be something he’d pick up quickly and then move on. “Because, you know, how difficult can it be to make bread?” he says. “After two years, I was still completely lost.” Over time, the baker mastered those skills. That’s what led him and >> p 26 Chacónne Patisserie’s bread selection includes baguettes, country bread and loaves made with porridge and flax seed. (Sara Crocker) Beitcher’s doughs are wetter and fermented longer. That process leads to a mild acidity and “lets you taste the grain,” he says. (Sara Crocker) Raising the Bar from p 23
