A Day in the Life of Philly’s Rising-Star Baker

Saif Manna, owner of Manna Bakery / Photography courtesy of Saif Manna

Saif Manna of Manna Bakery has had no formal training as a pastry chef, and yet the 27-year-old is one of the most promising emerging bakers in Philadelphia right now.

The Temple graduate began baking cookies in his student apartment during the pandemic after his girlfriend at the time asked him to make her some; she liked his cookies so much that she asked him why he wasn’t selling them — and so, he did just that.

A couple of months later, he started expanding his repertoire, crafting baked goods inspired by the flavors of his grandmothers’ Levantine cooking. Now, Manna takes an array of treats — including manakeesh (flatbreads) tinged with harissa and za’atar, sweet and savory buns (the chicken sumac is a standout), and slices of rich Basque cheesecake, in addition to perfectly crisp, chewy cookies — around Philly’s farmers’ markets, where they draw long lines. (In the past, he tells me, people have waited as long as two hours to get their hands on his pastries, but better planning has cut that time down to 30 minutes or less.)

Since graduating, Manna has been focused solely on these pop-ups, but soon he’ll open a brick-and-mortar storefront in the former Essen Bakery space at Kensington’s 110 West Berks Street. He began working on the bakery in March and hopes to open to the public in May.

Interested to see what it takes to get a bakery up and running, I asked Manna to break down what a typical day looks like in the lead-up to opening. Naturally, it involves rising before the sun, a lot of problem-solving, and, somehow, hitting the gym.

Manna Bakery raspberry Basque cheesecake

4-5 a.m.: Manna gets up when most of us are still sleeping. “That is the baker’s schedule,” he says. He used to wake up as early as 2 or 3 a.m., but is hoping to start later once Manna Bakery is open. At such an hour, you’d think Manna would reach for coffee, but instead the pastry chef knocks back a glass of water and a few supplements. “It puts me in a good state of mind and body so that I’m able to do the work that I’m doing,” he says. “The work is intense.”

6 a.m.: After making the 10-minute walk from his Kensington apartment, Manna arrives at his new bakery. “Right now, we’re really in the middle of organizing everything, which is very difficult moving from a commissary [at Char Pizzeria] to a big kitchen,” he says. “I just want to make sure everything is laid out perfectly because one of the most important things for a smooth operation is organization.” Walking around the space, Manna considers how the layout of the kitchen will impact the production flow for his team, and how guests will experience the dining area. He’ll also “identify the pain points of the day,” and write them down. “It’s always easier to tackle these things when you have a list,” he says. Fixing the bakery’s counter is among Manna’s top priorities. “That thing is caving in and it’s going to collapse at one point in the near future,” he says. He’s upgrading the fixture by adding cream travertine tiles — a nod to his late father, as it was one of his favorite stones — that’ll bringing an earthy feel to the space, and changing the shape to “get a curve on it to give it a more warm, welcoming vibe.”

7:30-8:30 a.m.: Manna goes to his local gym to squeeze in a workout — a habit he sticks to three to four times per week. “It just gets the blood flowing, it gets me feeling better, it gets me awake,” he says. “I was a former student athlete, so being active and moving and exercising is a very important part of my weekly and daily routine.” Manna played tennis at Temple, where he majored in political science; and before that, he was on the Division I tennis team at Texas A&M. He hasn’t picked up a racket in a while, though. “The past year has been extremely busy,” he says, and he wants to find time to play more often. At the gym, Manna limits himself to an hour of exercise. “Sometimes my workouts can go easily over two hours, but I don’t do that to myself anymore,” he says. His job is physical enough. “What I do is exhausting,” he says. After working out, he heads home; when the bakery is open, Manna expects he’ll go straight there.

9:30 a.m.: Manna is back at his apartment for a little something to eat — and no, he still hasn’t had any caffeine. “For me, coffee is a luxury thing,” he says. He’s more likely to reach for a cup of matcha or mushroom coffee, but when he does have the traditional stuff, it’s often a latte; he’ll take it hot in the cooler seasons and iced in the summer. “A lot of work goes into crafting the perfect cup of coffee, which we’re going to try and do in the bakery cafe,” Manna says, noting that he’s still mulling over a few options for the coffee they’ll pour there. In his home kitchen, Manna will whip up a quick breakfast of eggs — either scrambled or boiled and drizzled with olive oil and za’atar, or made into a cheesy omelet — and avocado. On the side, he’ll have some sheep’s yogurt (growing up in Dubai, Manna developed a taste for “a nice sour yogurt”), topped with seasonal fruit and toasted almonds or hazelnuts.

10 a.m.: After breakfast, it’s back to the bakery, where Manna starts running down his to-do list. Between tasks, he lets in plumbers, the contractor who’s there to fix the counter, and others working on the place. “It’s a lot of people walking in,” he says. Meanwhile, Manna and his team of two bakers focus on organizing everything from the walk-in fridge to the package room. When he got into the bakery in March, Manna says, “nothing was where it should be.” Of course, it was helpful moving into a space that was set up as a bakery — he also bought most of the existing equipment, which made things easier — but there’s still work to be done. “Now we’re in that reorganization phase,” he says. “I stand there and stare and say, ‘Yeah, this doesn’t make sense being here,’ and then we end up thinking another way.”

11:30 a.m.-2:30 p.m.: Most people are thinking about lunch around this time of day, but it’s usually the last thing on Manna’s mind. Instead, he’ll have a snack — often, a handful of almonds, cashews, or macadamia nuts, a date, and some dried fruit — to tide him over until dinner. “I’m not someone who can eat when there’s a lot on their mind,” Manna tells me. “I like to do what I call conscious eating, so I’m always looking at the food that I’m eating and really tasting and enjoying it. So if I’m not going to have that moment of enjoyment, then I won’t really sit down and eat.” Instead, from late morning into the afternoon, candidates in the running for a job at the bakery might stop by for an interview; when we speak, Manna is looking to fill a handful of front-of-house positions, as well as add two more bakers to the team. (As for the farmers’ markets, which he plans to continue when the shop is open, he has a separate team of five bakers.)

2:30-3:30 p.m.: The baker checks in on his team’s progress, and maybe gets an update from the contractors, before it’s time to lock up for the day.

4:30 p.m.: Manna closes up the bakery — a new part of his routine that he’s still getting used to. “There’s more than just one door now,” he jokes. When he’s done, if he’s not exhausted, he’ll walk around the neighborhood to decompress. And because no world is smaller than a Philly neighborhood, he’ll often bump into people he knows on his stroll. “Many of them are so happy that the bakery is opening in the area,” Manna says. “It also makes me feel really happy that people in the neighborhood are excited to see us open.” He’ll also think about how the day went and ask himself if he made enough progress. “With a food business, timeline is so important,” he says, noting that it’s essential to stay on track to pay rent and his staff. Then, his mind turns to food. He’ll swing by Riverwards Produce to pick up dinner provisions to cook at home — usually some seasonal vegetables and, for protein, lamb, ground beef, or hearts and liver (chicken and beef are his go-tos). But if Manna and his wife, Stefaniya Surikova, can’t decide what they want to eat, the couple will default to one of their favorite neighborhood spots: Kalaya.

5 p.m.: Manna and Surikova go to Kalaya to get a table before the dinner rush. They start with the shaw muang (ground chicken, cucumber, and Thai chili encased in flower-shaped dumplings) and pla muk thod kreung (fried curry calamari, long hot peppers, lime leaf, and nam jim waan, a sweet-and-sour dipping sauce). For their entrée, they’ll get the goong thod kluae (river prawns fried in brown butter, with shrimp paste and seafood nam jim), pla nung manao (steamed branzino with lime, fish sauce, cilantro, and seafood nam jim), and pu pad pong karee (a stir-fry dish with colossal crab, egg, Thai chile paste nam prik pao, Chinese celery, and crab roe) — all of which are served with jasmine rice — and gaeng pae (goat and lamb curry made with a house spice blend, toasted coconut, and pickled cucumbers and coconut turmeric rice on the side). “If we’re lucky enough to see Nok [Suntaranon] in the space at Kalaya, we may sit down and chat with her,” Manna says of the restaurant’s James Beard Award-winning chef. “If we happen to sit with Nok, she probably would have told me 10 or 15 different things that I need to get done before I’m open,” he adds. “She’s always giving me very wise advice.”

7 p.m.: After walking off dinner on the way home, Manna will sit down to respond to some emails from his phone or do some admin, like reviewing sketches for the bakery’s forthcoming new logo.

7:30 p.m.: Manna winds down for the night by cracking open one of the two books he’s reading — right now, they’re Mikhail Bulgakov’s The Master and Margarita and Aki Kamozawa and H. Alexander Talbot’s Ideas in Food. (Yes, even in his downtime, he’s thinking about work.) “I create all my recipes, so I’m constantly looking for inspiration,” he says. “A lot of it I get from my grandmothers and from memory and nostalgia and experiences, but there’s also a lot out there when you’re just reading a book and then something comes to mind that sparks an idea.” On nights when his eyes are too tired to read, Manna will put on the TV. Currently, he’s watching Being Gordon Ramsay. (Yes, more food content.) However he chooses to unwind, a cup of herbal tea is a must. Manna’s preferred blend — a mix of raspberry leaf, spearmint, and lemon balm with other foraged herbs and flowers — comes from one of Surikova’s many bags of tea from her native Russia. And if he’s feeling like something sweet, he’ll have a little raw honey, or “a small dessert” of cottage cheese with honey and berries.

8:30 p.m.: It’s time for bed, as per the baker’s schedule. Tomorrow’s a big day: He and his team will test the kitchen in the new bakery for the first time — a key step towards opening. “You can’t really figure those things out when you’re not working,” the pastry chef says. “It has to be in the moment. So tomorrow will be the first day, and I’m super excited for that.” Like always, he’ll be up bright and early.