Louf: neighborhood bakery from Amsterdam that fills your oven with sourdough

Who's behind it

Louf Bakery started in 2022 on Bilderdijkstraat in Amsterdam-West. Co-owner Mourad Saber lives in the neighborhood and wanted to start a bakery with his mother. It took a different path initially, but many of her recipes still form the basis of what goes in the oven now.

By now there are four locations: Bilderdijkstraat, Wittenkade near Westerpark in the Staatsliedenbuurt, De Pijp and Molen De Otter. Louf mainly supplies hospitality and is oriented toward French style and technique. At Westerpark it's an open bakery: guests see the bread being made through glass.

What makes it genuinely different

It's about time. The sourdough ferments 18 to 20 hours and is kneaded and shaped by hand daily. That long fermentation creates an pronounced crust and crumb with character. The base breads use French stone-milled wheat, the classic loaf combines 80 percent French wheat with 20 percent French rye. The spelt sits at 60 percent spelt flour and 40 percent spelt whole grain flour.

For you it's logistically sorted. Louf delivers the breads frozen; you finish them in your own oven. The focaccia sheet of over two kilos contains semolina and Italian olive oil and takes just a couple of minutes at 220 degrees from frozen. That way you decide when there's fresh bread on the table, without depending on a delivery slot early in the morning.

How you stand out with this

Louf is more than a bread supplier. The locations are deliberately neighborhood gathering spots, where bread is given away daily and accessible pricing is actively considered. During a renovation they gave free bread to the neighbors to make up for the disruption. That story belongs on your menu.

Name it. A bread basket or an aperitif board becomes more tangible when you tell them the sourdough comes from an Amsterdam neighborhood bakery, made by hand and fermented nearly a day. Guests taste the difference in the crust, and the fact that you finish it yourself means each piece hits the table warm and fresh. That's exactly the kind of detail that lifts a simple dish.