It’s a wonder that Clémence de Lutz never met Tony Hernandez before scrolling Hinge. The two pillars of Los Angeles’s tight-knit baking community had been running around in similar circles for years before swiping right on the dating app. Hernandez worked in some of the city’s best bakeries, including Bread Lounge in Downtown, Atwater Village’s Proof Bakery, and Friends & Family in East Hollywood, while de Lutz owned and operated the Gourmandise School in Santa Monica while consulting for countless local bakeries to nail down their recipes and systems, earning her the nickname “the pastry doula.” Now, after two years of courtship, the couple is opening a bakery together in Santa Monica. Petit Grain Boulangerie debuts on Wednesday, May 1, at 1209 Wilshire Boulevard.

Though de Lutz and Hernandez were born on opposite sides of the globe — he in Veracruz, Mexico, and she in Paris, France — both developed a keen sense for food and hospitality growing up in family-owned restaurants and frequenting local artisans for bread, meat, and the like. Petit Grain’s place in the community is influenced by their formative years. “When we think about this space, we just think about a small neighborhood bakery where people walk up, they get their bread or their pastry, their coffee every day,” says de Lutz. “We feel deeply rooted to our community and [the bakery] is a reflection of that.”

Much like their chance meeting years ago, acquiring the Wilshire Boulevard storefront was serendipitous. When the owners of Broadway Baker, Jim Osorno and Tom Mueller, were ready to hang up their aprons and retire, Osorno contacted de Lutz to offer her the bakery’s location. Osorno had previously taken a class de Lutz taught on running a food business and wanted to leave the space in her hands. “It’s definitely a lease that we could afford, which is super rare and with a proprietor who’s just a great, stand-up guy,” says de Lutz. Best of all, everything inside the bakery was up to code — all that needed to be brought in were two pieces of equipment: a proofer and a sheeter.

In the weeks since Broadway Bakery vacated the premises, de Lutz, Hernandez, and their team have spruced up the 900-square-foot space some but largely left it as-is due to permitting. “It’s very much an open kitchen where you’ll see us bake and you can ask us questions. And there’s that nice feel where we get to meet up with the community and not just bake in the back and take it to the front,” de Lutz says. A newly installed shelf is lined with products from local makers like Koda Farms and Malibu Honey.

By design, the focal point of the operation is the pastry counter — a wondrous visual feast amply stocked with all manner of viennoiserie, including croissant au beurre, pain au chocolat, croissant jambon Gruyere, strawberry pistachio Danish, bostock, and cardamom buns. With over two decades of professional baking under her belt, de Lutz has her techniques and formulas down cold. “We’re not looking to create some Instagram-worthy wackiness,” she says. “It’s more like honoring the quintessential, classic technique and then using that as a platform to really show off the produce that’s here in Southern California.” De Lutz is looking forward to filling seasonal Danishes with Lanham apricots ripening the second week in June and Persian mulberries arriving the first week in July. “We’re really opening the perfect week because cherry season will have started the week before,” she says. “We can’t reinvent the wheel, but we can certainly use it to highlight everything that grows around here.”

Lining the pastry case are an array of morning treats (blueberry ginger scones, Boursin and herbs scones, maple pecan coffee cake, conchas) and pan loaves, including Japanese sweet potato shokupan, sourdough brioche, ciabatta, and seeded sourdough loaf. Petit Grain will also stock heartier options like quiches and sandwiches, along with cookies (chocolate chip, honey sesame) and hand pies filled with prepared fruit or jam. Everything will be packaged for takeout since the bakery’s small footprint doesn’t allow for seating.

Petit Grain uses 100 percent organic flours and will source its fruit and produce from the Santa Monica farmers market. (“It’s my church,” de Lutz says.) The bakery is also committed to the California Grains campaign and will use 20 percent locally sourced and milled flours from purveyors like Grist & Toll and Tehachapi Heritage Grain Project, which is fitting given that “petit grain” means “little grain” in French. (Petitgrain is also the French word for the bitter juice of an orange commonly used in Mexican cuisine, a nod to the bakery’s French and Mexican founders.) “Some of our cookies will be 100 percent whole grain and some of our bread might be 20 percent,” says de Lutz. “We’ll be really clear about how much whole grain is in each item.” The bakery is sourcing dairy from Straus Family Creamery, butter from Isigny Sainte-Mère, and chocolate from Conexión and TCHO. “Sourcing and being transparent is key to our operation,” says de Lutz. The bakery will brew Civil Coffee.

De Lutz and Hernandez are placing as much focus on developing their employees as the bakery’s line of products. “We’ve been working so long in this industry that sometimes we’ve come across environments that are not really meant for employees to thrive,” says Hernandez. “I want to make our employees feel like they can contribute and feel empowered.” To that end, the bakery’s two employees are paid $23 an hour, plus tips; benefits are not available currently but will be in the future. Further, the couple will include their small team in developing new menu offerings and make space for their voices to be heard.

Looking toward the future, Petit Grain will begin baking sourdough loaves in a few weeks and slinging New York-style pizzas on Friday and Saturday evenings starting in June. Hernandez, who founded the Chicago-style pizzeria Dough Box in 2016 and previously worked the ovens at Triple Beam, Grá, and Friends & Family Pizza Co., plans to make 16-inch pies topped with an ever-changing array of seasonal produce, all on a sourdough crust; the bakery will sell pizza dough for at-home use, too. Petit Grain will welcome bakers to use its space for pop-up events on Tuesdays when the bakery is closed for business.

“Our focus is just really clean, simple, delicious, technique-focused pastries,” says de Lutz. “We just really want things that are delicious.”

Petit Grain Boulangerie is located at 1209 Wilshire Boulevard, Santa Monica, CA 90403, and is open Wednesday to Sunday from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.