The Baking Hours: Last Call Baking Co.
By Amber Wilson
Owner Chanah Willis
While most of the city is still fast asleep, Last Call Baking Co., a lively bakery that opened in downtown Birmingham, Alabama, in 2022, just blocks away from Bake from Scratch headquarters, is slowly waking up for the day. Chanah (pronounced “honna”) Willis, the 27-year-old owner, leads a crew of passionate and energetic bakers. Together, they turn out delightful, unpredictable, and consistently delicious pastries. Each artfully captures the maker’s identity. They’re delicious proof that baking can reach incredible creative heights and deep spiritual feelings when translated through flaky, layered pastries.
To ensure locals have their fill of pastries, the staff at Last Call works in the middle of the night, prepping and baking trays of hand-glazed cinnamon rolls, coffee scrolls, morning buns, and the holy trinity of croissants—butter, almond, and chocolate—all of which have brought overwhelming praise and success to the new bakery. Last Call’s baking schedule is seemingly never-ending, blending seamlessly between night and day, and we get a glimpse behind the scenes to see how these artists create pastry magic.It’s 3:16 a.m. on a clear and brisk spring morning, and the contrasting warmth from the bakery’s ovens and the inescapable scent of dough and butter welcomes us as we open the pale pink front door. At the start of his shift at 11 p.m., Jonathan, one of Last Call’s three full-time bakers, began mixing croissant dough. And by this time of the morning, he is showering massive muffin pans with sugar for their glorious kouign amman. He deftly shapes each square of dough by pinching the edges together, nestling them into the sugar-coated pans, and letting them proof while neatly brushing a legion of shaped croissants with egg wash. By his nimbleness, you would guess he’d been doing this for years, but Jonathan didn’t have any experience baking before this job. He fell in love with the friendly atmosphere of the bakery and knew he wanted to be a part of it.
Timers punctuate the relative silence as Jonathan continues to prepare glazes for the coffee scrolls and cinnamon rolls and the cinnamon sugar and fennel to dredge the morning buns; the baked pastries patiently await their final touches as they cool on a rack next to the ovens. By 5:14 a.m., a heavy haze of fragrant steam drifts to the ceiling and fills the space with the aroma of caramelized sugar as the kouign amann come out of the oven and get a scattering of flaky sea salt.
When Chanah arrives at 5:25 a.m., they exchange hugs and smiles, throw on an apron, and get to work. Chanah’s assurance is captivating as they whip piping hot baking sheets of massive coffee chocolate cookies out of the oven, banging them on the countertop and gently flattening the tops with a wide spatula. Their passion for baking began as a child, and by the time they were a tween, cooking and baking until all hours of the night and experimenting with pastry that even some advanced bakers would find intimidating became the norm. Freedom to create was Chanah’s natural foundation growing up, as they were surrounded by a family of musicians, artists, and extreme hobbyists.
The food-obsessed child inside had them flirting with the idea of dropping out of Samford University and enrolling in culinary school. However, they persevered through their classes and graduated with a fine arts degree. Quickly after graduating, they realized their true muse—baking—had been quietly brewing away for years. Chanah immediately immersed themself in restaurant culture to make ends meet and eventually poured all their energy into working in as many local bakeries as possible while working night shifts as a bartender. Last Call is a play on words of whenever Chanah shouted “last call” during their bartending days before closing for the evening. “I eventually lost my night job and morning gig once the [COVID-19] pandemic was in full swing,” they say. “The shutdown forced me to meditate on my journey up until that point.”That’s when Chanah began baking at home, sharing playfully flavored yet refined pastries on social media and selling their boxed-up goods at local markets. They infused their pastries with a sense of personality, and the city embraced it. Soon after, Chanah realized they needed more space, and luckily, a local commercial kitchen offered a free space to make pastries and test new techniques. Before long, it became clear that Chanah had to expand to a brick-and-mortar to keep up with the overwhelming demand, and they found a home for Last Call in downtown Birmingham.
Now that the scrolls have cooled, Chanah hand-dips them in a coffee glaze. As quickly as they’re done with one task, another begins. They clear their station and whip out a giant pair of tweezers. Chanah starts fishing for rhubarb out of its blushing pond to top the Danish. They finish dressing them with a sprinkling of sesame seeds. It’s evident that this bakery takes pride in creativity and individuality over harsh guidelines about what should or shouldn’t be in their recipes. Tangy-spicy gochujang brushed onto croissant dough? Yes, please.
Chanah has built invaluable relationships with local farmers and providers along the way, and Last Call’s menu reflects what’s in season. “I often turn to one of our full-time bakers, Frankie, to let him know I got a text from a farmer, and he will spit out a crazy concept. We riff from there.” For Chanah, it’s important to surround themself not just with bakers but also artists and enthusiastic eaters who see an ingredient and think, “Well, what if we got weird with it?.” They say, “A lot of times, we have a base recipe—whether it’s our croissant dough or cookie dough—and play with whatever is seasonal and available to us, changing it ever so slightly.” These innovative marvels earned them a nod this year from the James Beard Foundation for Emerging Chef.
A few feet away, pillows of plush dough magically appear on the immense butcher block in the center of the kitchen, stoically waiting to be sheeted and shaped into focaccia. The crew works with a quiet intensity, pirouetting between the butcher block, countertops, and pastry case as if in a choreographed ballet. A giant mixer appears out of nowhere, and the kitchen fills with so much life, more than Chanah could have ever dreamt. They began this venture just a few years before opening the doors to Last Call, whether they were ready for it or not.“Last Call lives on my shoulders, and the surrounding weight is carried by my employees, who wake up every day and decide to help shift that weight any way they can,” says Chanah. “Now that I exist within a bakery space with others, my focus, drive, and attention are stretched and pulled in ways that I just was in no way prepared for. Opening our space has driven me to create personal boundaries, become much more empathetic and community-focused and aware of the effect that our business has in our city.”
While the bakery usually sells out within an hour or so of opening, they also deliver pastries to other local shops, including June Coffee (just next door), Punch Love Coffee, and Santos Coffee. Frankie and Chanah stack the pastries for deliveries, nestling them safely into their designated black crates. The team makes more than 500 pastries daily on weekends, including favorites like their bewitching butter croissants and kouign amann. “I remember thinking 170 on a Saturday was a lot, and here we are a year and a half later. Wild,” says Chanah.At 6:45 a.m., after all the pastries have finished baking, Frankie starts bringing armfuls of the day’s cooled pastries to the pastry case. Sweet and spicy gochujang twists, vibrant passion fruit bars, towering cheese-laden biscuits, tahini-swirled brownies, and almond croissants finished with a theatrical storm of confectioners’ sugar are carefully arranged in their assigned seats along the pastry case.
The pink hue of the morning light breaks into a beautiful baby blue as we start to see the first new faces of the day. As the opening shift begins arriving, a line of customers starts forming outside the door. At once, the clanging of pans and the kitchen chatter escalate as there’s a mad rush to clean before the bakery opens. I spy Chanah staring at the pastries piled high, ready for the day, as customers begin filtering through the door. They can’t help but feel blessed as they watch people experiencing the flavors and overall essence of what they created. It’s a very intimate expression—like giving someone a big hug and saying, “I made this for you.”
If you follow the precession that takes shape every day outside of Last Call, it will lead you someplace special: a hard-to-define bakery with elevated respect for pastries, which it shares openly with the city as a staple, not a luxury—the kind that makes waiting in line worthwhile.
Get the recipe for Chanah’s Almond and Whole-Wheat Ruby Chocolate Cookies here.
Last Call is open Tuesday through Friday from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Saturday and Sunday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. or until they sell out.
Find them at @lastcallbaking and thelastcallbaking.com
GO THERE: Last Call Baking Co. 213 25th St. N., Ste. A, Birmingham, Alabama
The post The Baking Hours:
Last Call Baking Co. first appeared on Bake from Scratch.