Westcliffe sourdough bakery gains fans with co-op model and rotating loaves

At 411 Main Street, Westcliffe’s bakery co-op had become busy enough that weekend items often sold out, turning Levadura Artisanal Breads into a steady stop for locals and visitors. The shared space, which also housed Wild Flour Donuts & Co. and Back to Basics Bakery, was open most mornings from 8 a.m. to around noon and had grown into a regular part of the town’s Main Street traffic.

Levadura’s pull came from Justin Raymos, an artisan baker with nearly 35 years of food-industry experience and a certified-chef background. He built his bread line around handcrafted sourdough and rotating flavors that included jalapeño cheddar, everything bagel, Italian and cranberry-walnut. His earlier online offerings showed the same range strategy at work, with sourdough boule, rosemary parmesan garlic peasant round, walnut raisin cinnamon loaf, lemon-blueberry babka and seasonal muffins all part of the mix.

The co-op model mattered as much as the loaves. Each bakery could specialize while sharing the same Main Street kitchen, giving the operators one storefront and a broader pool of customers without forcing them into the same product lane. That structure had helped the Westcliffe bakery scene feel bigger than one shop, and local tourism listings already treated the co-op as part of the town’s food-and-drink draw.

The cooperative itself had been built by a small group of bakers with deep local roots. Marie Bowers moved to Westcliffe in 2016 and later joined Gin Huffman of Wild Flour Donuts & Co. to help grow the operation, which now included Levadura as one of its three bakeries. The partners planned to mark four years of working together and one year in their current Main Street location over Memorial Day weekend, a sign that the arrangement had settled into a durable part of the town’s economy.

Raymos also kept the menu moving beyond bread, recently adding tamales to Friday service as a way to bring his culture into the co-op. Customers could preorder through his website or walk in at 411 Main Street, a setup that balanced planned sales with the kind of sellout momentum that had made the bakery a destination. In Westcliffe, sourdough had become more than a loaf on a counter. It was the anchor of a shared Main Street business that thrived on collaboration, repeat traffic and a small-town audience hungry for fresh bread.