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The owner of Up All Night Bakery, Jonathan Highfield, is a seasoned pastry chef and former culinary instructor.
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Up All Night Bakery operates a walk-up window at 5411 Lakeside Ave. on Sundays and Mondays.
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Croissants are a menu mainstay at the newly opened Up All Night Bakery in Lakeside.
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Highfield measures and cuts dough.
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The name for the bakery was chosen by Highfield's wife, who says he was "up all night" balancing work, teaching and baking.
“It’s a very small industry,” baker Jonathan Highfield says as he whizzes around the kitchen of his 450-square-foot space in Lakeside.
So small, in fact, that the veteran pastry chef met Sub Rosa Bakery owners Evin and Evrim Dogu years ago while opening Chelsea Bake House in Norfolk, both teams acquiring wood-fired ovens from the same maker.
But the small world of baking took on a whole new meaning when he opened Up All Night Bakery. Located at 5411 Lakeside Ave., the successful farmers market venture turned walk-up window bakery that debuted last weekend is the product of a nearly lifelong adoration of dough.
Entering culinary school right out of high school, the Lancaster, Pennsylvania, native says, “They didn’t even have baking [as a concentration]; I thought I wanted to be a chef. I did ceramics all through high school, and when we got to doing breads and things like that [in culinary school], it clicked.”
That shift led Highfield on an educational journey that helped him hone a craft he would later share with the wider community.
His early resume includes a stint at a Asticou Inn in Bar Harbor, Maine, followed by work at a yoga retreat center called Omega, where he was introduced to sourdough starters, long fermentation techniques and more highly hydrated dough “long before it was cool,” says Highfield, 42.
“In the late ’90s school didn’t really teach us that,” he says. “I ended up working with an amazing baker who totally flipped my mind about bread, and I was sold. I never looked back.”
The student would later become the teacher, eventually returning to New England Culinary Institute to teach at its Montpelier, Vermont, and British Virgin Islands campuses. He also landed at the Notter School of Pastry Arts in Florida, teaching classes on pastries and sanitation, and was later recruited to open ECPI University’s culinary program at its Norfolk campus as one of five founding members.
After moving to Richmond with his wife, Highfield joined Wegmans, heading the bakery department and doubling as a company trainer. And once again he was approached to teach, this time by the culinary school at Reynolds community college.
During that time a neighbor introduced him to Early Bird Biscuit Co. owner and fellow baker Tim Laxton. For a year and a half prior to opening a brick-and-mortar space, Highfield would use the kitchen at Laxton’s Bellevue location to prep for the Dorey Park Farmers Market, gaining a few wholesale accounts along the way including Sefton Coffee Co., Jiji Frozen Custard and the now shuttered Pulp Fiction, which once operated in the same Lakeside Avenue space.
In 2020, when the owner of Pulp Fiction shared that she would be shutting down the storefront, Highfield saw an opportunity.
After officially acquiring the building, he texted a photo of the future bakery to Laxton with a message that read, “I’m finally getting my own place,” not knowing that the space had once housed an outpost of Early Bird Biscuit Co.
“[Laxton] responded, ‘It’s full circle,’ ” Highfield recalls. “I started at his original space and ended up here.”
Inside Up All Night Bakery — a name suggested by Highfield’s wife as he balanced working at Wegmans, teaching at Reynolds and running the bakery — the dough cover and dedicated production kitchen are dotted with owl figurines and a quirky painting of the nocturnal bird that he bought from RVA Antiques.
For now, the venture is mostly a one-person operation, operating two days a week but with plans for expanded hours. Croissants are a menu mainstay, with options ranging from the classic variety to Edwards Virginia ham and cheese, fruit-filled, and pain au chocolat.
“Most people do two sticks; I do three,” Highfield says proudly as he places logs of chocolate into the thinly flattened laminated dough before rolling it into crescent shapes.
A proponent of no-waste production — and no nuts due to the high volume of allergens — he uses dough scraps, adding brown sugar and cinnamon, to make morning buns, one of his top sellers. Other menu items include challah and focaccia breads and lemon-vanilla, brown sugar sourdough chocolate-chip cookies and a chewy gingersnap with a tightly guarded recipe.
Having sold out within two hours on opening day, Highfield says, “One thing I love about this city is how supportive people are of small businesses. I’m very happy to be a neighborhood bakery because I feel like I’m kind of the neighborhood baker. I work and I live here.”
Up All Night Bakery is open on Sunday from 8 a.m. to 1 p.m. and Monday from 7 a.m to noon, and can be found at the Dorey Park Farmers Market on Saturdays from 9 a.m. to noon.
