September 03, 2026
By: Greater Des Moines Partnership
A Living Legacy: The Baking of a Legend at South Union Bakery
While most of Greater Des Moines is still asleep, a team of bakers at South Union Bakery is turning hundreds of pounds of dough into bread that will appear on tables across the region later that day.
For George Formaro, that process started long before South Union Bakery existed.
His passion for baking bread began as a child using his sister’s Easy-Bake Oven. He fondly remembers the ruins of an outdoor brick oven in his childhood backyard and tugging on his mother’s apron as she baked. Decades later, that childhood curiosity has become a career and a bakery that supplies many of Greater Des Moines’ most recognizable restaurants.
![bread racks]()
From a Childhood Fascination to a Career
Formaro’s path to South Union Bakery took him through culinary school and some of Des Moines’ best-known kitchens. He got to know local restaurateur Michael LaValle and the two would eventually open South Union Bread together in 1996.
Along the way, Formaro worked at Winston’s, where another piece of his baking story began: a sourdough starter that is still alive today.
Named Antica, the starter is now 37 years old and has followed Formaro from kitchen to kitchen throughout his career, including the Embassy Club and ultimately South Union Bakery. Unlike breads that can be mixed and baked in a matter of hours, Antica takes nearly a week. Formaro begins feeding the starter on Monday for bread that will be baked on Saturday.
It’s a living connection between where his career began and the bread his team is making today.
![George Formaro rolling bread]()
Bread Across Greater Des Moines
South Union Bakery Bread reaches restaurants throughout the region, including Angry Goldfish, Baratta's, Bix & Co., Center Grove Orchard, Cheese Bar, Embassy Club, Graziano’s, Say Cheese and Skip’s, in addition to Formaro-affiliated restaurants including Centro, Gateway Market and Zombie Burger.
For all the light, airy bread that leaves South Union Bakery, the numbers behind it carry some serious weight.
Today, 17 South Union Bakery employees produce more than 40 unique items daily and supply as many as 70 restaurants each week. The bakery makes around two dozen deliveries a day and can go through more than four tons of flour and up to 100 pounds of garlic in a week.
On a busy day, a single batch of garlic Focaccia or Italian bread dough can weigh as much as 900 pounds.
Yet for Formaro, breadmaking remains a hands-on craft.
Recipes still come to him in the middle of the night, and he once spent nearly a month tweaking a potato brioche recipe. When someone asks for help recreating a bread, Formaro turns to his collection of well-worn cookbooks, researching old recipes and figuring out how to bring them to life again.
![George Formaro holding tray of bread loaves]()
Bread That Connects People
Three decades after South Union Bakery opened, Formaro still finds the greatest satisfaction not in how much bread the bakery produces, but in where that bread goes. For him, one of the best parts of making bread is knowing it will be shared with others.
A loaf may leave the bakery on a delivery truck, appear on a restaurant table or become part of a family's holiday meal. For Formaro, seeing his bread become part of those moments feels like he's been invited into thousands of homes.
That connection between food and people is what continues to drive him. It keeps him baking, experimenting and waking up in the middle of the night with a recipe running through his head.
It all traces back to that little boy tugging on his mother’s apron, fascinated by what was happening in the kitchen. Formaro listened to that curiosity and followed it, and 30 years later, his story is a reminder of what can happen when we pay attention to the interests that keep calling us back.
Learn more about Chef George Formaro’s artisan South Union Bakery breads at southunionbreadcafe.com.
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