Located in a historic house in Yorkville, Little Loaf Bakehouse at 101 W. Center St. made a little history of its own by celebrating its one-year anniversary on Dec. 17.

Situated just 300 feet from Yorkville Town Square, the bakery is in a house built back in the 1860s which has undergone a makeover after serving as a dental records office.

Owner Bailey Knapp, 28, said she grew up in Yorkville and worked at four different pastry shops throughout the last decade before deciding it was time to explore her entrepreneurial side and start something on her own.

"It got to the point where the owners didn't understand the pastry end of things and I wanted to open my own place to do them how I thought they should be done," she said the day before the one-year anniversary of opening the business on Dec. 17, 2023.

Knapp said she worked at Alliance Bakery in Chicago; the GT Prime Steakhouse in Chicago and the Hexe Coffee Co. where she "worked in pastry at both;" and Newport Coffee House in Evanston.

"I was working at different places in Chicago and in Evanston and did pastries for them for a long time and then I just kind of felt like I needed to do my own thing instead," she said. "I decided to move back home because there is a lot of competition with new and trendy in the baking side of things in Chicago, and I decided Yorkville would be nice because we didn't have anything like that."

A pastry chef trained at Kendall College, Knapp said she did her internship at Alliance for half a dozen years where she learned "how to clean and how to be more organized and my boss taught me other things I didn't understand."

"Kendall was a really good school and they taught me a lot there," she said. "As far as getting into pastry, both of my grandmas cooked a lot, and so I liked cooking because of them, but it was either (a pastry shop) or marine biology. I could do some math, but I can't do super-hard math so I thought, well, this is it."

Knapp said financial conditions imposed at other places made choosing the Yorkville location easy.

"Looking at other places, they wanted all this money to build-out for them, and we wouldn't get it back if we moved to a different location. This house ended up being for sale, and we wound up deciding to purchase it and make the upstairs an apartment," Knapp said. "The house was apparently built in the 1860s which is kind of cool and then there was a bunch of things that needed to be done for this bakery."

Knapp said the space inside the house "looks completely different than what it used to be - a dental filing office and it had carpets in there and everything was uneven and it looked gross inside because they really weren't using it for anything, and now it's completely different."

"We've got a garage door and a mural on the side. It's full of color and it's open and super-nice," she said, believing the spot has "a little Chicago feel brought into Yorkville, which is nice."

While having an early lunch and a smoothie recently as she did some work on her computer, customer Yadi Nevarez said she likes the feel of the bakery.

"I've been here at least three times. I love the atmosphere and I always come here to do my homework and sit down," she said. "I go to school out-of-state and I like to come here when I'm on break. The food is so delicious and I'm trying a new drink today. I'm comfortable with the menu and feel there are so many options and there is something here for everyone. I try something new every time I come here, and the pastries are so fresh and so big."

Andrew Lupole of Yorkville stopped in on the recent one-year anniversary of the bakery after his wife asked him "to check it out."

"I wanted to see what they have and I thought they were just doing pastries and breads but they have drinks, sandwiches and a number of other things," he said while leaving the shop. "I was surprised, definitely. Yorkville is always growing and we've been here about four years after moving back from out of state, and we're happy to see home-grown commerce. We always traced the progress here as they were drawing the mural on the outside wall."

Ariana Maggio of Yorkville also stopped in on the one-year anniversary of the business and said her husband was involved in the restoration of the building.

As a patron, she said there is "a nice community atmosphere."

"Everything tastes delicious and she is always coming up with new things," Maggio said about Knapp. "We usually have pastry or a breakfast sandwich and the coffee is great."

Knapp prides herself on doing things the old-school way and not taking shortcuts.

"I know some people use things that aren't from scratch like boxed croissants and pre-mixed things. Everything we make is made is house. Even our coffee business is from a small business owner as well," she said. "Everything we do is super-ornate and detailed compared to other places where they're not doing specialty items like chocolate croissants and specialty Danish things. For others, it's just vanilla and jelly doughnuts. We laminate our dough for pastries. There are places around us where things are microwaved but all our stuff is made from scratch."