Commune restaurant will open bakery with “endless bread” and airy Roman-style pizzas

Kevin Jamison’s sustainability-obsessed Commune will open a pizzeria and bakery in Virginia Beach.

Opening as soon as October, Commune Bakery will be the third location in as many years for the local, seasonal restaurant. The bakery will be located at 532 Virginia Beach Blvd., across the street from Commune’s original ViBe Creative District location, whose vast brunch line on the weekends can look like a casting call for a Zooey Deschanel movie.

In part, says Jamison, the bakery will be an extension of something Commune already does: bake good bread. In-house baker Ishiah White had been making the restaurant’s house brioche and sourdough breads since the restaurant began, as well as a seasonal potato bread that executive chef Barry Smith uses on the restaurant’s summer tomato sandwich.

But Jamison says White’s bread was so loved he started getting inquiries from all over town.

“We’ve had requests from lots of other restaurants and markets for quite a while now. About six months ago we decided to go ahead and take all the bakery operations out of each restaurant. We found the space right across from Commune in Virginia Beach: It was the perfect space.”

That space, a former party rental store, will include seating for around 40 people, significantly larger than the restaurant’s first location. In addition, there will be 500 square feet of seating on the back patio and another 500 square feet of outdoor space on the side, where Jamison hopes to install a miniature bocce court. The interior, he says, will be rustic.

“We’re doing the build-outs ourselves,” Jamison said. “We’re using all this old wood from the 1800s, torn from a farmhouse on our farm. Lots of big massive 9- or 11-inch beams. Ceilings are 14 feet tall.”

Jamison says the art will be “very unique,” including projections on the wall, but says he doesn’t want to ruin the surprise by describing it further.

During the day, Commune Bakery will bake bread for the other two locations, as well as for other restaurants around town, but it will also serve as a retail bakery, selling “endless types of bread.” This will include the standby brioche and sourdough, but also ryes, whole wheats, multigrains and dense Danish-style breads.

“We’ll do a good version of soft white bread,” Jamison said. “A grilled cheese with better Wonder Bread is the ultimate thing.”

They also plan to sell fresh pasta and house-made pickles to take home.

But in the evenings, when the other Commune restaurants are closed, Commune Bakery will become a Roman-style pizzeria with patio seating, beer and wine.

“The Roman, square-cut that I grew up with is something I’ve been dying for,” Jamison said.

Very few pizzerias in America serve the square, airy-crusted style of pizza slice served in Rome, which Jamison encountered while living in Italy as a student.

The hallmark of the style is its long, slow, low-temperature fermentation, which allows the crust to be both firm enough to handle a wealth of tomato and cheese, but also puffed up and airy with a wide-open crumb structure. Jamison said he’ll use a local version of Italian doppio flour and local tomatoes similar to the famed San Marzanos.

Jamison says the sauce will be a different, fresher take on tomato sauce.

“When they make tomato sauce, it’s literally crushed tomatoes,” said Jamison of Roman pizzaiolos. “Some salt and acid, not other stuff like sugar, oil, oregano. It tastes like you just chopped up a tomato. This will be a fresh thing: something very welcomed.”

Also new at the bakery is the ownership: In addition to managing the bakery, White will come aboard as a co-owner of Commune Bakery alongside Jamison. White started as an intern at Jamison’s farm four years ago while studying at the Rhode Island School of Design. After she was finished with art school, she returned to the restaurant.

“She told me, ‘I’m a really good baker. I bake at home,’ ” Jamison said. “She proved to be one of the biggest assets that this company has – not just how talented she is but her people skills, her management, her work ethic. She is a major backbone of the company. To me it was like a no-brainer going into this as partners.”

Matthew Korfhage, 757-446-2318, matthew.korfhage@pilotonline.com