Bread and chocolate and so much more

NEWTONVILLE -- Eunice Feller knew she wanted to open her own business. But when she first contemplated life after working as a marketing executive for an art supply company, a bakery didn't spring to mind.

"I wanted my own thing," she says, gesturing around Bread & Chocolate Bakery Cafe, its cases filled with cakes, muffins, cookies, and cupcakes. She just didn't know what. When her husband and partner, Steve Feller, suggested going to an open house at Cambridge School of Culinary Arts, she had to be persuaded. Once there, the light went on: "I had never done baking on a professional level," says Eunice. But with her art background, she thought, "Visually, I could do that."

Eunice Feller started culinary school in fall 2005. At the same time, the couple started looking at spaces. By the time she graduated in June 2006, they'd found this Newtonville spot, a good location off Walnut Street, but without a full kitchen. "We thought 'How hard can it be?' " she says. "Well, it was kind of hard."

Bread & Chocolate opened in early September, and word got around. "Our first concept was designing high-end special occasion cakes," says Eunice, but it quickly became apparent that the neighborhood needed breakfast pastries, sandwiches and salads, and treats for the after-school crowd. The shop's doughnut muffins, essentially a cake muffin that Eunice had tasted a few years ago, are very popular, and the cupcakes fly out of the cases. Before customers commit to buying a big cake for a special event, they can try a few cupcakes, including Black Forest, coconut lemon, or carrot cake. "I call it dating with our customers," says the ebullient Eunice.

Eunice says she's torn between the kitchen, working alongside her full-time baker, Joyce Ho, and interacting with the customers. Steve Feller, who temporarily left the finance world to start the bakery, works behind the counter. The couple commutes from Holliston. Steve quips that it's not too bad because "no one's on the road at 3 a.m." Eunice arrives an hour later and he insists she leave by 4 p.m.

Eunice, who was born in Seoul and grew up in the Midwest, would like to create fusion desserts, and she and baker Ho have discussed making green tea-flavored opera cakes or combining chocolate and lychee nuts. The couple is also thinking about adding take-out meals, and Eunice wants to make bread. Now they use Iggy's loaves for sandwiches.

She wishes there were more hours in the day. The cases could look more interesting, "more sculptural," she says. She'd like to have more time to chat with customers, who treat the bakery as an extended living room.

But as weary as she and her husband sometimes become, she's still exhilarated by the business. She remembers "when the space was empty, how I looked forward to being happy to just be standing behind the counter."

She wanted to be an entrepreneur. Now she is. -- ALISON ARNETT