What if the nearest bakery was in your kitchen? A play on the French pronunciation of “At Home,” where the H is silent, gave co-founders of Atome Bakery the idea for its name. Lucas Navilloz and Alice Couderc’s goal: Good bread for all — at home. Their simple idea has birthed a business that sells baguettes and loaves of organic sourdough, perfectly formed, frozen, and ready to bake, so anyone, anywhere, can enjoy fresh loaves as the couple enjoyed growing up in France.

While many Vancouver bakeries offer delicious and artisanal options, not everyone’s neighbourhood benefits from those offerings. Atome Bakery’s concept fills that gap, providing convenient ordering online and local delivery. There’s no physical storefront; the service is strictly online—and the bakery is in your own home.

But how does a baguette baked in a home oven stand up to one prepared in a commercial steam oven? The secret lies in the baking tin, provided with the first order. Originally, Navilloz, an industrial engineer, had bolted together two loaf tins. Now the company supplies a pullman pan, like those typically used for sandwich loaves. It fits the baguette perfectly and is lighter than the cast-iron Dutch oven many will be familiar with when baking sourdough.

Atome Bakery co-founders Lucas Navilloz and Alice Couderc created frozen, ready-tobake baguettes and sourdough loaves so customers can enjoy fresh bread at home using a simple pullman pan. Made with Canadian strong flour and a long fermentation process, Atome Bakery’s baguettes and loaves bake up crisp and chewy in under 40 minutes, offering an easy way to enjoy high quality bread every day.

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“The idea is to keep the natural moisture of the bread, because bread loses about 30 to 40 per cent of its weight through evaporation during the baking process,” Navilloz explains.

The tin helps create a steamy atmosphere for the bread to bake in, and the final result is a crisp crust and slightly chewy texture. The slow fermentation of the dough prior to freezing adds a flavour that is not too sour.

Their idea first took form in 2018 with Navilloz realizing that it was hard to find the bread he wanted, when he wanted it. With no baking experience, he set out to make his own bread at home, improving his recipe as he went along and experimenting with various baking tins. He fell in love with his bread and the process of making it, but recognized it as a full-time job — which he already had. He wanted his bread to be readily available, without having to make it each time. Freezing was the answer.

Couderc explains that they were also inspired by the way some bakeries in France operate. “Many get frozen proofed dough, and they just bake it,” she says.

According to Couderc, this allows bakeries to control their costs and meet consumer expectations for price while meeting the requirements of décret pain, the French regulation that specifies the permitted ingredients (prohibiting additives/preservatives) and production standard for a traditional baguette. “We wanted to find the middle ground between convenience and maintaining the highest quality possible,” she says. To that end, they use Canadian strong flour from Saskatchewan and a long fermentation process for their sourdough.

The couple never anticipated that a business would grow from Navilloz’s love of bread-making, but when friends (and later friends of friends) asked to purchase some, he started offering it on a small-scale basis. Gradually it became more than he and Couderc could handle in their home, and he knew that to make it a legitimate business he needed to take the next steps.

They formed a business in 2023, with a simple website and product delivery through partnerships with local retailers Pete’s Meat, Dalina and Vegan Supply. Navilloz left his engineering job to focus on baking full time, setting up at YVR Prep in Burnaby and originally branding as Peak Bakery. Soon Couderc would join him, bringing with her considerable experience in operational and sales logistics gained while managing the Canadian sales team for DoorDash. Finding their own facility, buying professional equipment, increasing the volume of production, and hiring staff were essential for growth. The couple also had to learn a lot about the health and safety aspects of production and local requirements.

With all this came new employees, some experienced in baking and some not. But with each new employee, train-ing for the first two to three weeks focuses on developing shaping techniques and learning the feel of the bread. Navilloz tells them, “You have no targets in terms of number. You just need to do a nice bread.”

“They actually get the feeling pretty soon by themselves. It’s almost natural — they get the feeling by just doing it,” he says.

Today the company offers a range of products in addition to baguettes and organic sourdough loaves, from flaky croissants and pain au chocolat, to brioche and fresh pasta. Among their customers, they count busy families who enjoy the pleasure of good bread and baking it with their children, or who have experience with and appreciation for sourdough but don’t have time to fit sourdough production into their lives. The company also serves quite a few older adults who like the convenience of delivery, as well as French immigrants who enjoy a taste of home.

Indeed, the resource that Navilloz originally looked for has proven true for their customers as well. “It started with me looking for a solution to have fresh bread every day,” he says.

By early 2026, Atome Bakery, now with 14 employees, expects to be in a new 10,000 square foot facility that will serve as their online centre of operations, customer service, bakery, and packaging and shipping hub. With that comes the capacity to exceed their current production ability of 1,000 baguettes a day. They are now shipping across Canada using eco-sensitive thermal liners and dry ice to keep their product frozen.

“The mission we set for the company is to make it the most convenient to have good bread, and so the most convenient for getting the box at home,” Couderc says.

“The nice thing about frozen is that we don’t have to get up at 2:00 a.m.,” she says. And what’s true for Atome Bakery and their employees is true for those baking at home. It’s as simple as removing the packaging from the frozen loaf, placing the loaf in the tin, and baking it in a preheated oven. The frozen loaves don’t require proofing, and they bake up in under 40 minutes, making fresh quality bread at home each morning an easy and convenient, not to mention delicious, endeavour.

As anyone who has baked bread knows, there’s a feeling of satisfaction that comes with it. “It’s what we call the a-ha moment,” Navilloz says, referring to the moment when the baking tin’s lid is pulled back, the scent fills the air, and the golden-brown baked bread is revealed.

So while convenience is a big part of Atome Bakery’s success, there is no underestimating the way that good bread makes us feel — and that may be more valuable than anything else. “I had a customer tell me our baguette reminded her of the one she ate on her honeymoon in Paris,” Navilloz says.

That’s valuable stuff indeed.

Atome Bakery
atomebakery.com | @atome.bakery