Fans of Saint-Germain Bakery bemoaned the closure of the longtime company last August, fearing they’d never again be able to get their cherished Japanese-French-style breads, pastries and chiffon cakes.

But they weren’t deprived for long, as a handful of core Saint-Germain employees felt equally bereft and took it upon themselves to open the Epi-Ya Boulangerie & Patisserie in March. They even managed to get back the same head baker and the old location on Beretania Street.

Many old favorites are back — anpan (red bean) buns, walnut bread, ham roll and butter-topped dinner rolls — but not the beloved Dee Lite chiffon cakes, at least not yet.

The bakery’s name combines two cultures: “Epi” comes from pain d’epi, the French name for wheat stalk bread, one of the bakery’s specialties. “Ya” is the Japanese suffix for a food shop.

“We’re the lucky ones,” said Celyn Chong Kee, a faithful customer of Saint-Germain’s for 30 years who saw the new bakery while shopping at Times Supermarket next door. “I was so happy when I saw it open. I try to come once a week for the raisin bread. It’s freshly made and it’s a treat.”

Regina Lugue, Epi-Ya’s general manager and owner, worked for the Japan-based Saint-Germain for 24 years in retail sales. Within three months of its closure, she and several other longtime employees were planning to open their own bakery. “We (were) hungry for the bread,” said Lugue, who freely hands out samples, still warm from the oven, to customers.

Saleswoman Daisy Chang put it this way: “We just wanted to bake and we just wanted to work together. We love baking, we love bread.”

Agreeing to join them was Saint-Germain’s former chief baker, Yukikazu Sato, who also managed Saint-Germain in Hawaii for 38 years. Sato had left Hawaii after the closure to work for the company in Japan as an assistant general manager, but eagerly returned to help open Epi-Ya. Why? “All local people wanted to have the pastries,” he said, looking surprised at such an obvious question.

Sato said he has loved baking since he was 18 years old — “it’s my hobby and my passion.” Toward the second half of his career in Hawaii, Sato became chief baker and fine-tuned the recipes of the best-selling products.

At Epi-Ya he’s better able to control the quality of the baked goods, as the operation is much smaller than Saint-Germain’s four locations, he said. Sato focuses foremost on improving his breads’ texture and does much of the baking himself.

Of the 70 or so products Epi-Ya offers, about two-thirds are new and the rest have been changed slightly, he said. Signs prominently scattered about promise: “No preservatives!”

Some of his new breads are made using a wild starter base Sato brought back from Japan. He has a white starter for the French bread and a whole-wheat starter for others, like a country-style pain de campagne bread.

The label on that loaf indicates Sato’s attention to detail: “Contains NO YEAST and uses a wild starter brought in from Japan, which takes 6 hours to ferment, allowing the bread to naturally rise. To create the dough we mix high-protein white flour, whole-wheat flour and pumpernickel rye. … The finished product is a little chewy with a mild acidity.”

His shio (Japanese for “salt”) butter roll is one of his new products. The croissant-like roll was a hit from the start, with its coil of soft, chewy dough contrasting with a crackly, flaky crust and sprinkling of salt.

Sato is assisted by Mike Quon, a Saint-Germain baker for 15 years who was among the employees who first discussed “how crazy it would be if we started our own place.”

Within two months, though, they were talking seriously. “We were gonna do it, it’s just a matter of time,” Quon said.

A few employees got other jobs and had to drop out of the project, which leaves Epi-Ya shorthanded. Besides Sato and himself, there’s only one other baker, so they aren’t yet able to open seven days a week.

Quon said the bakery has been busy from the start, mainly because of word of mouth, and most of the customers are new. A surprise top seller is the shop’s Family Bread, a Japanese-style loaf of soft, white sandwich bread.

Sato said almost 50 loaves of the bread sell per day, compared with the 10 to 15 Saint-Germain used to sell daily per store. “We didn’t expect to sell as many pastries or the white Family Bread. We thought we would be making more French bread, or artisan bread.”

Loaves of any bread can be custom-sliced in different thicknesses, from 1 to 3.5 centimeters.

Customers do ask about the Dee Lite chiffon cakes that came in flavors of guava, lilikoi and lime. The cakes became part of the Saint-Germain line when Dee Lite Bakery was acquired in 1990. Sato said he hopes eventually to offer the cakes, but doesn’t yet have the confidence to bake them. “I want to make more, but I don’t have time!”

David Swanson, a regular Saint-Germain customer who always considered its French bread “the best in town,” said he is impressed with Epi-Ya’s French bread, to the point that he ate his first loaf by himself in one afternoon. “Went back the next day and got the smaller product and made (myself) keep it to eat over two days.”