All Purpose Bakehouse
“Watching people eat the scones that I made for the first time in a pastry shop was the best feeling.” There is something quietly powerful about that moment - a sixteen-year-old kid standing in the kitchen at Cucina, watching something he made disappear into someone else’s morning. It was simple, it was small, but it stayed with him, and years later, it would quietly shape the path that led Eli Fuhrman to open All Purpose Bakehouse, where those same feelings now play out daily as trays of pastries sell out each morning.
Eli grew up in Salt Lake City, tucked into the Avenues, surrounded by mountains and family. His father had come west for skiing, attending the University of Utah and never leaving. But the deeper roots of Eli’s connection to food were not formed in Utah. They traced back to his father’s side of the family, to his grandmother’s home in Brooklyn, where food was central to everything.
“My dad’s got a big Jewish East Coast family and food culture is really big for them. When you wake up in the morning, the first topic of conversation was what you want to eat for breakfast… then lunch… then dinner… and where we’re going to buy all the food.”
For a time, it was less about cooking and more about gathering and sharing meals together, but Eli’s curiosity quietly evolved into something deeper.
Still, like many young people, Eli tried to follow a path that did not quite fit. He enrolled at Westminster while working in his father’s software company, attempting to step into a world that had been modeled for him.
“I was a terrible student. I would spend most of the class periods watching Bon Appétit or YouTube cooking videos.”
Eli decided to return to kitchens. Back at Cucina, where he had first started washing dishes in 2014, he continued to return over several summers, gradually moving from the sink into prep as the entire experience began to pull him in. “I just thought the people in the kitchen were the coolest. They could make things that I thought were beautiful.”
There is honesty in that, the way a young person sees a world and wants to belong to it. And then, one morning, when he was handed the responsibility of making the scones, something shifted, it was no longer just admiration, but a connection.
From there, the path was anything but linear. Eli worked for his father for several years, trying to make IT and software feel right, but the work lacked the kind of challenge and immediacy he craved, and so he drifted again, this time more intentionally, back toward food.
With a friend, he started what he laughingly describes as a “very half-baked catering company.” They made cupcakes, cinnamon rolls, anything they could sell, driving around to coffee shops and trying to convince someone - anyone - to take a chance on their pastries. When things did not work, they kept going. Underneath it all, an obsession began to take hold, with laminated dough and croissants becoming the focus. Eli wanted to master the kind of pastries that feel both impossibly delicate and deeply technical.
That desire led to something unexpected. Together with his friend, they began hosting European pastry chefs, bringing them to cities across the United States to teach multi-day masterclasses. It was ambitious, scrappy, and completely unconventional at the time. They reached out on Instagram, flew chefs to the United States, and built something from nothing that was, in its own way, beginning to succeed. Through that experience, Eli was exposed to a new standard. “I learned fast what good croissants really were, and that’s what I wanted to learn how to make more than anything else.”
Life, however, continued its winding path. There were years spent traveling with summers in Alaska. It was not wasted time; it was part of the searching. “I kind of just didn’t know what to do, so I ended up being a ski bum for a couple of years. Honestly, it was a great time.”
Eventually, though, the pull toward mastery became too strong to ignore. Eli knew that if he truly wanted to learn, he had to commit - to show up every day and work under someone who had spent a lifetime doing it right. That realization took him to Longmont, Colorado, to a small but revered bakery called Babette’s Artisan Bread, where he moved in 2021. True to form, Eli reached out cold, asked for a job, and then stayed for nearly three years. It was there, under the guidance of a seasoned baker, that everything changed. He thrived in the repetition, the discipline, and the precision. “I learned more working there than I think I have anywhere else.”
By 2024, however, something else began to surface. “I missed home.” Eli returned to Salt Lake without a plan. He had no clear roadmap, just a sense that he was not ready to leave again. He spent time skiing, reconnecting with family and friends, and slowly, the idea began to take shape. With encouragement from those around him, what had once felt like a distant dream started to become real.
“I just built the job that I wanted.” The space came through a personal connection, a building he could not stop thinking about. It was bigger than he needed and riskier than he had planned, but something about it felt right. Eli signed the lease in the Maven District in 2025, and for nearly a year, with the help of friends and family, he built it himself - tables, pastry cases, counters - a space that reflects not just a business, but everything he had imagined.
At All Purpose Bakehouse, the kitchen is visible, not for show, but because Eli did not want to work in the dark. Light pours in, guests can watch the baking process and, more importantly, he can see out. The menu is focused and rooted in what he loves most. “Croissants probably make up eighty percent of the menu.” Everything begins with the same dough, with butter folded carefully into layers. Eli uses a method that stretches the process to four days, allowing for slower fermentation and deeper flavor. “It is not the easiest way. It is simply the way I believe makes the best final product.”
Each morning begins before dawn. “I get here around 4 a.m. where everything that’s going to get baked is fermenting. I get it in the oven as quickly as possible and then start making the croissants for the next day.”
And already, just weeks after opening in the winter of 2026, the results are evident - the pastries sell out, and lines form out the door most mornings. The pan Suisse, filled with vanilla pastry cream and dark chocolate, disappears almost as quickly as it hits the case, with morning buns close behind. While the pastry case is built around laminated dough, Eli has also added a small but thoughtful mix of savory and sweet offerings: breakfast sandwiches, quiche, cookies, and a rotating selection of cakes, including gluten-free options.
While some grab and go, others linger, working or meeting in the open, inviting space. “I’m somebody who goes to coffee shops to work, to hang out, to socialize. I like that third space, so I am pleased that others are choosing to come here.”
When asked about his long-term goals, Eli answers without hesitation. “The long-term goal is just to make things that I think are beautiful and continue making great croissants and serving them with good coffee.”
For Eli, it is about getting it right and building it with care. Because for him, it was a series of moments: a dishwasher watching, a student drifting, a ski bum searching, and a baker finally settling into something that feels like his own. “My future right now is just to keep the lights on, and if I can make a career out of that, I’d be very happy.”
