Reunion Bread Inside the Source Reopens in a Limited Capacity After Oven Explosion

The team at Reunion Bread thought metal sheet pans had fallen to the floor when they heard a loud bang around 6 a.m. on May 14 — Mother’s Day, which owner Ismael De Sousa says is the busiest day of the year at the five-year-old bakery located inside the Source at 3350 Brighton Boulevard. But they quickly discovered something far worse: Its school bus-sized bread oven had exploded and caught fire.

Fortunately, neither De Sousa nor his two staffers were harmed. “We immediately went to see what was happening, and we saw the fire,” he recalls. “We grabbed the extinguishers and put the fire down in a matter of maybe a couple of minutes.”

The Denver Fire Department arrived on the scene soon after. The assumption, De Sousa says, is that the oven experienced a gas leak and an ignited…