Campanile's bread gets 'hot,' so it finds a new place for its dough.

Campanile, the trendy Italian eatery and bakery at 624 S. La Brea Ave., has leased 12,000 square feet of commercial space at 5500 Washington Blvd., just east of the Culver City border.

Astute industry observers might conclude a "cutting-edge" restaurateur has finally caught onto the fact that scores of hungry Hollywood-types have recently been transferred to Sony Pictures Entertainment's fast-growing Culver City studio lot. And they have absolutely no place to "do lunch."

Such a conclusion, however, would be erroneous.

Mark Peel, co-owner of Campanile, reports his new Culver City-adjacent facility will not be a restaurant. It will be a wholesale bakery.

Campanile has been baking all its hot-selling breads at a 2,000-square-foot bakery area within its Miracle Mile-district restaurant on La Brea.

But demand is exploding, Peel reports. So the much larger Washington Boulevard bakery will open in March. It will cater exclusively to other restaurants and food stores.

Meanwhile, output at the La Brea bakery will be reduced by about one-third in March, when that location begins selling only to retail customers and Campanile diners. The variety of breads baked at the La Brea bakery will be increased, however, Peel promises.

"We're going through about 3,000 pounds of dough here (at the La Brea bakery) each day," he says. "But once we open the new (Washington Boulevard) facility, we'll cut that back to about 2,000 pounds."

The wholesale bakery will have capacity to bake more than 10,000 pounds of dough a day, he added.

Peel has ordered from Germany and France loads of new bread-mixing-and-baking equipment, which is scheduled to begin arriving in a few weeks.

"We're getting some wonderful equipment that will allow us to make even better bread than we're making now," he asserts.

Peel adds that no second Campanile restaurant location is presently being considered.

"We've been concentrating our efforts on the wholesale bakery," he explains. "Restaurants are hard and take a lot of attention. We're not like a chain kind of an operation."

Back in Culver City, hordes of Hollywood heavyweights remain without a decent place to hobnob. Granted, there is the Sony studio commissary, sources concede. But that kitchen hasn't exactly been garnering five-star ratings.

Patience may prove fruitful, however, industry sources point out. Celebrity chef Wolfgang Puck is still negotiating for restaurant space in Culver city, just a couple blocks from Sony's lot.