Found Treasure: Otto’s Bread Company

Sept. 5, 2025—The bread will get you on sight, smell and (eventually) texture and taste.

But what gets me is the white board.

The board hangs on a side wall at Otto’s Bread Company bakery, in its Oldtown Salinas bakery, not far from Main Street, in a spot that’s a testament to patience Siddhartha would admire: Otto Kramm baked for years out of his studio apartment before he could afford the production space.

Some of the timeless reminders written in impermanent dry erase:

The task at hand is all there is.

Comparative thinking only leads to suffering. 

Always ask. Never assume.

For the non-Buddhists out there, the mantras offer an optional additive to the main attraction, namely incredible breads, sweet and savory pastries and—of late—sandwiches and cookies too.

Those are available 7am-4pm Tuesday-Friday, until 2pm Saturday, but weren’t exactly part of the plan. Production baking was the driver of Kramm’s dream. 

“Retail is cherry,” he says. 

His list of wholesale clients speaks for itself. These spots pride themselves on A+ baked goods, and the long roster of outlets slanging Otto’s Breads keeps his delivery chief Sharron hustling all week.

We’re talking destination like Grasing’s, Salt Wood Kitchen & Oysterette and Bernardus Lodge, fun hangs like Wedo’s Tacos, Wine House and Estéban, and outposts that work wonders with bread as a foundation, like Stokes Adobe, Patria and—last but far from least—La Bicyclette. 

Then there are also linchpin grocers like Bruno’s in Carmel, Star Market and Windmill Produce in Salinas. 

“We’re kind of all over the place,” Kramm says. 

And at the same time, grounded in the process.

This isn’t some wannabe contemplative influencer. This is an authentic operating system Kramm holds close, and one that surfaces organically in conversation.

The phrases were there on the board when I visited last year. And there they remain.

“I have been thinking about refreshing them, but I haven’t,” he says. “They’re simple on the surface, but the more you think about them, the deeper they go. They’re reminders for me.”

Kramm started meditating not long after he started commercial baking, and is now more than a half decade into the quiet that fuels the frenzy. 

“It’s a personal practice,” he says. “[Buddhism] really resonates with what I was looking for—practicing calm without knowing what was going on.”

Now, as business booms, and the bakery’s retail items broaden—including breakfast brioche sandwiches with Zio Meats sausage, or mortadella with provolone, or BLTs with Baker’s Bacon—the white board channels Thích Nhất Hạnh: No mud. No lotus.

Kramm embraces the tedium that involves waking up at ungodly hours.

“It’s a lot,” he says. “But you’re not going to be able to produce a beautiful product without going though the ‘mud.’”

Pastry assistant Nichole Winn is feeling the flow as she helps churn out butterscotch pecan cookies, snickerdoodle and chocolate scones. 

“When you can share what you make—and make people happy—it’s a good feeling,” she says.

Mary Duan gets all of this on a cellular level. She’s a longtime colleague I admire, and a 13/10 bread nerd and food writer who’s tracked Kramm from the starter.

“I think it’s cool that someone learned the art of sourdough and fell so in love with it, [that] he’s made it his life’s mission,” she says, putting his bread on the level of her prized producers like Acme of Berkeley, which was founded by the original baker at the famed Chez Panisse, and Balthazar, one of the better restaurants in New York City. “Otto’s has invigorated a semi-dead space in Salinas and it’s been great watching his offerings expand.”

She also adds: “Don’t sleep on the savory morning pastries,” which include a Zio sausage-pesto-jack cheese beauty.

It’s cliche to say you can taste the thought and love that goes into any given prepared food. But here it’s real. 

That gets at another writing on the white board: My product is happiness. My medium is bread.

“My goal is to instill joy,” Kramm says. “What I realized when I started with bread—when I’d give away loaves, which is my favorite thing to do—it would bring people into the current moment. It’s a beautiful gift to give something to someone you made with their hands, that’s good and wholesome. If you’re having a bad day, or a good day, you can come in and hopefully your experience with us, and in consuming the product, can lead to a small moment that lasts the whole day.”

As one last phrase on the board puts it: The Dharma is in the process.

Otto’s Bread, 215 Monterey St. Salinas | More via Otto’s Bread on Instagram.