Inside a corner building along Kamas Main Street, a new bakery is humming to life with the gentle whir of ovens, fridges and proofers, the small space a monochromatic silver of stainless steel.
Three days a week, the lights to this little shop turn on at 4 a.m., well before the street opens, and Emile Levisetti gets to work making his specialty: focaccia.
But it’s only been his specialty for a few months. Levisetti only became a baker nine months ago.
He developed, produced and directed several television series — with a director credit on shows such as “Bones,” “Suits” and “Shadowhunters” — in Los Angeles for more than 30 years.
When he retired in October 2024 and moved to Park City, he knew he wanted, and needed, to keep working. He’d always loved to cook, in his younger years growing up in Chicago and working in kitchens, so he brainstormed a few ventures.
His first thought was to open a coffee shop with a niche in French pastries. That was his first foray into baking, a croissant and a pain au raison, which weren’t half bad. But when he didn’t see a good spot for a coffee shop, he abandoned the idea and started considering a focaccia sandwich shop, a trend he’d noticed across the country.
So he taught himself how to make focaccia and found that the same perfectionist mentality that served him in Los Angeles was well suited to this pursuit.
“I’m a little OCD when it comes to that stuff. … Whether it was my career in Hollywood or this, it’s always, ‘How can I do it absolutely the best?’” Levisetti said. “It’s always the pursuit of excellence. I don’t want to do it if it’s not the best. Period. And that takes a lot of work at times. It’s a pain in the neck.”
He also tapped his Italian roots: His maternal grandmother was from Genoa, Italy, and his father was a holocaust survivor from Milan.
To make the best focaccia, he started with quality ingredients, ordering flours from Italy, researching Italian chefs and poring over YouTube.
“I tried 10 or 12 different Italian flours. I went to the pizza show in Vegas because this one flour I liked, I knew they were going to be there. They didn’t take me very seriously,” he joked. “I hadn’t opened yet.”
Part of the reason for sourcing flour from Italy was authenticity, he said, but it was mostly about quality, something he knew all too well.
“I had given up on bread in the U.S. It makes me fat. I don’t feel well. I just stopped eating it. But then if I was in Europe, in France or in Italy, I could eat bread, pasta, pastries, no problem,” he said.
He learned that European producers have stricter regulations about flour production compared to the United States. Here, wheat for consumption can be desiccated, or dehydrated, with pesticides still on it. Also, most commercial mills get rid of the wheat germ and bran — the highly nutritious, concentrated byproducts of milling — and then grind the result at such a high temperature that the natural ingredients are burned off, Levisetti explained.
“What you ultimately have is wheat powder with zero nutritional value, and then they put in … a bunch of vitamins,” he said. “And they got the FDA to allow them to call that ‘enriched.’”
The flour he sources from Italy still washes the wheat before it’s milled, then processes it slowly at lower temperatures to preserve the nutrients.
In addition to high-quality flour, Levisetti keeps his recipe as simple as possible: flour, yeast, water, salt and olive oil, plus rosemary in some cases. That’s it.
All those ingredients were tested for best flavor, too, like a sea salt and rosemary from Sicily, Italy, an Italian brewer’s yeast and olive oil from Mountain Town Olive Oil, which is some of the highest rated he found.
When it came to dialing in his process, Levisetti looked to Genoa, considered the birthplace of focaccia. Theirs is a thinner loaf with a thicker crust, also known as a schiacciata or a Genovese.
He starts with a biga, an Italian term for a pre-ferment, which is a simple mixture of flour, water and yeast prepared before making the final dough.
“I pre-ferment the dough for 36 hours before I bake it, which also helps develop flavors, makes it easier to digest, develops more enzymes. It gets a nuttier flavor over time,” he said.
Before baking, focaccia is topped with olive oil, and Levisetti decided to pull from the Liguria region in Italy, which uses a salamoia, an emulsion of olive oil, salt and water, drizzled over the dough. This method ensures the bread fully bakes without over-crisping the top and bottom.
Once he was happy, he had a few tastings with friends, testing the different recipes until he found a hit. It was so tasty that one of his friends suggested, instead of making focaccia sandwiches, “Why don’t you just sell the bread?”
So he did. He came up with the name, Marvelli Artisan Italian Breads, and started baking out of the Christian Center of Park City’s commercial kitchen. He began selling through Mountain Town Olive Oil on Main Street, Talisker Club and The Stock Exchance in Kamas. It was the latter who tipped him off to the space opening in Kamas, and he moved there at the beginning of the month.
Sales picked up quickly, so he brought on his friend, Corinne Zinn, formerly the owner of Park City Creamery, as a part-time employee.
Zinn said that after selling her cheese business to Ballerina Farm at the beginning of this year, quicker than she thought, she was looking for a way to stave off boredom. Trouble was, she’s not really a morning person.
“Be careful what you wish for,” she joked.
Levisetti agreed to have her come in around 8 a.m., or an hour earlier on busy days, and taught her everything he’d learned. Zinn said she was never a baker but found a lot of similarities with her life as a fromager.
“You need patience and the fermentation, so I really enjoy it,” she said. “It’s like meditation.”
Both have spent time in France and speak French, so in the mornings they listen to FIP, France Inter Paris, an ad-free French public radio station.
“She’s my lifeline. I couldn’t do this without her,” Levisetti said.
In his Kamas location, the baker has a small retail space that will be open from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Thursdays, Fridays and Saturdays, selling salt and rosemary focaccias, priced at $12 a loaf, as well as a few of the ingredients he imports from Italy.
He hopes his bread becomes a local staple, much like the baguette in France. It’s great for sandwiches, dipped in olive oil or mopping up pasta sauce, he said, and freezes great, too. Some days, he’ll only eat his bread, he said with a laugh, and those quality ingredients keep him plenty fueled.
“My grander vision is to try and help change the way America thinks of bread. Most of the world either buys or makes their own bread on a daily or every-other-day basis,” he said. “That whole tradition of, every day you go to the corner store bakery and you buy yourself the baguette for the next day or two, or your croissant.”
As for expanding, he’s taking it slow and organic. His focus is on making good bread and ensuring he stays passionate about it.
“I have withheld trying to expand too quickly. It’s a very labor-intensive process between the dough making, the proofing, the day of. It’s all handmade,” he said. “I need to make sure I can deliver the quality I want consistently, and it will grow as it grows.”
He said he plans to release a few more flavor options he’s already tested and loved, like a spicy Calabrian pepper, a cacio e pepe and even a churro raisin for a sweet option. Eventually, he’ll try out some other Italian breads, like sweet breads, and maybe work in some of the French breads he loves.
“It’s very creative for me. Having been in the director, producer, creative my entire life, I can’t do something I’m not passionate and creative with,” he said. “I love it, and I hope it explodes and grows, and it does scale, and people love it, and I can turn people on to what really good bread is.”
