Head to this South Bay pop-up bakery for your new favorite croissants and sticky buns
A lot of stuff had to go very wrong for Noga Bread Co. to be a success. The bakery run by Lee Begim and Avi Sabag sets up shop in Torrance, at a pop-up morning market that appears twice a week. But before there were lines forming for their merguez-filled croissants, date-caramel sticky buns and chocolate chunk cookies, the two had to navigate a pandemic, a war and a flood.
Originally from Los Angeles, Begim attended culinary school in New York City, worked in fine dining, then got a job at a bakery in San Pedro after returning home during the COVID lockdowns of 2020. He ended up in Tel Aviv after he cashed in a two-year-old airline ticket meant for a wedding that was canceled during the pandemic.
He stayed with family in Tel Aviv and spent months bouncing around Europe and the Middle East. He visited friends and eventually got a job at a Japanese-influenced patisserie in Tel Aviv.
During the pandemic, Sabag also booked a one-way ticket to Tel Aviv from Atlanta. She had a friend who had just moved there, and her professional organizing company afforded her the flexibility to travel. Like Begim, she spent weeks at a time visiting friends across Europe, Morocco and the Middle East. She eventually found herself back in Tel Aviv, opening a restaurant for the plant-based restaurateur Matthew Kenney. Begim happened to live across the street from the restaurant, and would often stop by for a protein shake after the gym.
'I'd be at the bar and we both spoke English, and that just evolved to where we are now,' says Sabag. 'Both of us were not meant to be there.'
The couple got an apartment in Noga, a moshav or cooperative agricultural area in south-central Israel, where residents can help themselves to whatever is growing in the neighborhood. They started hosting pop-up meals with brunches and elaborate seven-course tasting menus, using whatever they foraged from their community.
'There were lemon trees, every herb and citrus, pomegranates, figs,' says Sabag. 'You feel like you're in a story book. We would base the menu off of whatever was in season and the rest we would get from the shuk or fresh from farmers.'
Sabag and Begim had a big pop-up planned for Oct. 7, 2023. They spent two weeks promoting the dinner, and both of their parents had planned trips to visit the couple and meet for the first time. That morning, Hamas militants attacked Israel, killing an estimated 1,200 people and kidnapping around 250 hostages.
'Israel was shut down in a way you've never seen,' says Sabag.
Their newly arrived families were all trapped in the 40-square-meter apartment. Nothing was open. Their parents told them to come back to America, but their life, family, friends and business were in Noga. They stayed for another six months while the businesses around them shuttered.
'It was scary and eerie and devastating,' Sabag says. 'Meanwhile our friends and families are fighting in the military and we're checking WhatsApp messages to see what's going on. We still had a few bookings, but nothing felt the same.'
In February 2024, it rained for 14 straight days. The building the couple lived in wasn't properly sealed, and the walls flooded with water, causing mold to grow on every surface of the apartment. After losing nearly all of their possessions, the couple left Israel to stay with Begim's family in Los Angeles, with plans to move to Florida and bring back their pop-up dinners.
'We never made it to Florida,' says Sabag. 'Every single plan we've ever made doesn't happen. We just laugh.'
They attempted to open a restaurant in Los Angeles, but after two months of negotiating the lease, the couple learned that the owner intended to tear down the building. Their next step was to secure a production kitchen instead, and they hosted their first Noga Bread Co. bakery pop-up in September.
Noga means 'morning light' in Hebrew, and the bakery is the couple's way of honoring the time and life they built in Israel with the love of baking Begim leaned into during the pandemic.
They found a semi-permanent home at the Enclave, a business and retail center in Torrance where they pop up every Wednesday and Saturday morning. On Tuesdays, Begim visits the Torrance farmers market, then plans his menu for the week.
On a recent Saturday, they filled a table with sweet and savory pastries. Cheese Danishes looked like blooming flowers with sunset-colored citrus supremes fanned out around a center of Thai-basil-scented pastry cream. Sugar crystals glistened on top of ginger molasses cookies made with a deep, rich rye flour. There were slices of persimmon tea cake, three varieties of croissants and loaves of bread.
A rectangle of focaccia was nearly hidden under a vibrant green arugula pesto with sweet caramelized leeks, chile flakes, curls of lemon peel and dollops of whipped ricotta. Flecks of Parmigiano-Reggiano covered the bread like snow.
Begim ferments the dough for 72 hours and mills the grains himself. The focaccia is a combination of rye, spelt and whole wheat, giving the bread a complex, nutty flavor with a slight tang.
He mills hard red wheat and kamut berries for his croissants, then laminates the dough with good French butter you can smell and taste. The croissants have golden, cracked shells that fracture into shards of buttery pastry.
The lamb-merguez-filled croissant has a flavor profile that reminds the couple of their former home. Begim makes his own sausage and blends it with roasted red peppers, harissa and whipped kashkaval cheese. He scatters what he calls his 'zesty seed mix' over the top, with nigella, poppy, fennel and sesame seeds he toasts in a pan.
Begim coils his croissant dough to make sticky buns, with fillings that rotate based on what's at the farmers market. On a recent Saturday morning, there were thick, fluffy buns filled with a caramel made from California dates. The fruit was wonderfully jammy with notes of toffee and butterscotch, but not overly sweet. Over the top, he scattered a crunchy almond granola.
The chocolate chunk cookies, made with oat, whole wheat and all-purpose flours, rivals the cookie I previously declared the best in Los Angeles. They're beautifully wrinkled with big boulders of chocolate throughout a chewy middle.
While each week's offerings will change, Sabag said you can always count on croissants, a sweet Danish, sticky buns, focaccia and cookies.
The couple have found a space in downtown San Pedro, where they hope to open a bakery and cafe with breakfast and lunch.
'I'm most excited about having a space to have our community, where you can sit and schmooze and laugh and see families,' says Sabag. 'We grew up in big Middle Eastern families at really long tables, so this is us coming full circle. At heart, we're big hosts.'
They're aiming to have the bakery open in six months, but Sabag laughs and says she knows better than to make a set plan.
Whatever happens in my world, I'm going to make sure the universe brings me back to those sticky buns.
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