Why House of Bread matters.
House of Bread is an artisanal Persian bakery where Westwood's Iranian-American character meets naturally fermented sourdough, traditional sangak and a bread program shaped around long fermentation and daily hand production.
Set along Westwood Boulevard near Missouri Avenue and just steps from the Persian restaurants and specialty shops concentrated along the corridor, the bakery occupies the southern reach of Westwood between Tehrangeles, the commercial blocks approaching Wilshire Boulevard and the residential streets extending toward Century City, with UCLA and Westwood Village forming the larger district to the north. A compact counter keeps the breads physically close to the people buying them, allowing loaves emerging from daily production to define the room. Sourdough forms the primary encounter through crusty conventional loaves, sesame-coated versions and breads built around the bakery's own starter culture. Persian flatbreads broaden that repertoire through sangak, placing an ancient Iranian bread tradition beside European-style fermented loaves. The result is a small Westwood bakery where Persian baking heritage and naturally leavened bread converge inside one of Los Angeles's most important Iranian-American commercial corridors.
What defines House of Bread.
House of Bread is best known for Zarrin Shahlapour's development of a Persian bakery centered on breads baked in-house from the bakery's own sourdough starter. Shahlapour established the Westwood operation in 2016, placing it within the Iranian commercial corridor that has made this stretch of Westwood Boulevard a center of Persian food in Los Angeles. Naturally fermented sourdough became one of its signatures, with the dough produced. Sangak connects the bakery directly with Persian breadmaking through the broad, thin whole-wheat flatbread traditionally baked against heated stones. Sesame loaves extend the sourdough program through a dense coating of seeds that adds nuttiness and a markedly different crust to the fermented bread beneath. Croissants and almond croissants move the repertoire into laminated pastry, giving a bakery strongly associated with Persian bread a second technical branch built around butter and folded dough. Daily production has created an unusually time-sensitive retail cycle, with the bakery's most sought-after breads regularly disappearing well before the end of service.
Sangak depends on an exceptionally wet dough spread into a thin sheet before intense heat creates a bread with crisp blistered sections, softer pockets and enough flexibility to fold around herbs, cheese or grilled meats. House sourdough moves through a different fermentation structure, using the bakery's maintained starter to develop acidity and leavening before heat builds the loaf's crust and open interior. Sesame changes that loaf primarily at its surface, where toasted seeds bring fat, aroma and crunch against the tang of fermented wheat. Croissant dough relies on repeated layers of butter and dough, allowing steam generated during baking to separate the folds into a richer pastry structure. Almond croissants deepen that branch with nut-driven sweetness against the butter-rich laminated base. House-made feta and preserves add savory and sweet accompaniments produced under the same small-bakery model, connecting Persian bread, naturally fermented loaves and pastry through foods intended to be eaten alongside them.
How House of Bread fits.
House of Bread works as the anchor for an outing connecting a pioneering Los Angeles art-house cinema with a cemetery whose modest acreage became inseparable from Hollywood history and a 1929 clubhouse transformed into one of the city's major nonprofit theaters.
Begin at Nuart Theatre, which opened on August 21, 1930 with Sweethearts on Parade and appearances by Mary Pickford, Douglas Fairbanks and Alice White. Forrest W. McManus developed the theater after operating the nearby Tivoli, joining M.E. Baylis and Edward A. Johnson in the Independent Theatre Corporation during the same year. The Nuart spent decades as a neighborhood second-run cinema before becoming an art-house institution and eventually the flagship of Landmark Theatres. Its distinctive marquee dates to 1939, and a 2022 renovation installed new seating within the 303-seat auditorium. Continue to Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park, where burials predate the cemetery's formal establishment as Sunset Cemetery in 1905. The Westwood Memorial Park name arrived in 1926, a first mausoleum followed in 1952 and Pierce Brothers acquired the property in 1959. Marilyn Monroe's burial in 1962 dramatically altered its cultural profile, and the grounds subsequently became the resting place of figures including Dean Martin, Natalie Wood, Truman Capote, Jack Lemmon and Billy Wilder. A chapel added in 1961 centers on a 30-foot white quartz wall, and the property received recognition from the Los Angeles Cultural Heritage Commission in 2002. Conclude at Geffen Playhouse, constructed in 1929 as a Masonic clubhouse for UCLA students and alumni and among the first twelve buildings erected in Westwood. The Combs family acquired the property in the early 1970s, restored elements including its courtyard and tiled fountain and created the Westwood Playhouse inside it. UCLA received the theater in 1994, and Gil Cates built the nonprofit company that reopened it as Geffen Playhouse in 1995 with John Patrick Shanley's Four Dogs and a Bone, featuring Brendan Fraser, Elizabeth Perkins, Parker Posey and Martin Short. A $17 million campaign subsequently funded restoration and the Audrey Skirball Kenis Theater, with both performance rooms opening in September 2005. The progression moves from an independent cinema shaped by Los Angeles film culture through a small cemetery transformed by generations of entertainment history and culminates inside an early Westwood building reinvented as a permanent professional theater.
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