Long before her mandel bread appeared on shelves at Denver International Airport, Jeanne Saltz carried the cookies through other airports in her suitcase.
Saltz, the great-grandmother of founder Jake Lazar, was a talented baker and philanthropist who lived to 102. She packed her homemade treats alongside her belongings so she could share them with loved ones wherever she traveled. Today, her photograph and story appear on every package sold by Lazar Family Bakehouse, a nearly two-year-old Colorado company that is introducing both a traditional Jewish cookie and Saltz’s legacy to a wider audience.
“I think the story with a lot of products is kind of lost on the shelf now,” Lazar said. “You pick up a product, you see a brand, but you don’t really have any sentimental, any emotional tie to it.”
Mandel bread, also known as mandelbrot, is a twice-baked Ashkenazi Jewish cookie with roots in Eastern and Central Europe. Its long shelf life once made it a practical food for travelers — an origin that echoes Saltz’s habit of carrying it in her luggage. The cookie is often compared with biscotti, but Lazar said Saltz’s version is lighter and softer inside than its Italian cousin. It can be dipped in coffee, tea or milk, although it is tender enough to eat on its own.
Unlike many biscotti recipes, mandel bread is traditionally made with oil instead of butter, making it adaptable to kosher meals. Lazar Family Bakehouse is not currently kosher certified (its products are prepared without rabbinical supervision and some flavors contain dairy), but the company hopes to pursue certification as it grows.
For Lazar’s family, mandel bread was never an unfamiliar specialty. It appeared at gatherings, synagogue events and often in the home kitchen.
The recipe passed through several generations before reaching Lazar’s mother, Victoria, a professional baker. Saltz baked largely by intuition, scooping ingredients into a bowl without conventional measuring tools.
“She used to bake measuring in handfuls,” Lazar said. “She would grab a handful of flour and a handful of sugar and chocolate chips, and she would just tell by her eye, ‘Hey, thatap enough of this ingredient.’”
Somehow, he said, every batch came out the same. Victoria eventually translated those handfuls into a written recipe. The chocolate and almond varieties the company sells today remain almost identical to Saltz’s originals.
Friends and relatives encouraged the family to package the cookies for years. Lazar, who studied business and grew up with an entrepreneurial father, eventually acted on their advice. After graduating from college in Indiana in 2025, he moved to Denver and began selling mandel bread at farmers markets. He asked friends and food-industry mentors for recommendations for independent stores, then traveled around the city introducing the product to retailers.
Those efforts led to placements at Spinelli’s Market and Leevers Locavore, both in Denver. The cookies are also sold at Sky Markets at Denver International Airport — an especially fitting destination for a treat Saltz once toted in her luggage. Customers outside the Front Range can order them nationwide through Goldbelly.
So far, sales have been best during the final three months of last year, driven by the holiday gifting season, especially corporate gifting, Lazar said. But he’s interested to see how things go during the Jewish high holidays in the fall.
Lazar, who lives in Idaho and frequently travels to Denver, balances the bakehouse with a full-time job at Procter & Gamble. The company now bakes once or twice a week in a South Denver commercial kitchen, where Victoria works with a small team of contractors. “[My mom] has been amazing throughout the process, and has been very, very supportive,” Lazar said. “She’s really liking seeing her grandmother’s recipe come to life.”
Customers have shaped the company’s products, too. Along with traditional full-sized mandel bread, the bakehouse sells MandelBites in four flavors. The bite-sized version emerged after shoppers said the longer, biscotti-shaped pieces could be awkward to eat on the go.
For Lazar, mandel bread was less a holiday specialty than a taste of home. His family ate it year-round. Now he hopes people who didn’t grow up with the cookie will come to love it, too.
He also hopes it might inspire people to preserve their own family recipes — and perhaps build businesses around them. “I hope people just are able to sit down and really appreciate the story and the product,” Lazar said, “and feel connected.”
Saltz once filled her suitcase with mandel bread because she wanted to give something sweet to the people she loved. Generations later, her family is still sending those cookies out into the world.
