3 tiny Long Island bread bakeries on the rise

The longest line at Glen Cove’s Deep Roots farmers market is in front of Johnny Breads. At 9:30 a.m. on a Saturday, the Kalamata olive bread is gone, but there are still olive rolls; cranberry-nut loaves and rolls; plain and chocolate croissants; multigrain, whole-wheat and rye breads and most of the 100 loaves of Flagship Sourdough ($13) that have made baker John DellAquila’s name. The flour-dusted crust, with hues ranging from golden to mahogany, requires a knife to breach, but the ivory interior is tender and springy. The flavor? It’s amazing what complexity a great baker can coax from stone-milled wheat, water, salt and natural yeast.

Johnny Breads

WHERE TO FIND IT Farmers markets in Port Washington (every Saturday), Glen Cove and Long Beach (alternate Saturdays);  Huntington (alternate Sundays)

"It has a great crust, unbelievable flavor," said regular customer Richard Cutler, from Bayville. "You can taste the love and the passion that the baker puts into it." Nicole Szafranski, of Glen Cove, agreed on all these virtues and added some of her own: The freshly baked bread she buys at the supermarket "goes stale so quickly; this will stay fresh on the counter all week. And it is so great to come to the market, bring my dog and talk to the baker."

This relationship between customer and baker, the soul of the microbakery movement, is being forged at farmers markets and pop-up shops all over Long Island. The term "microbakery" refers to a licensed concern that has neither a dedicated commercial workspace nor a fixed retail outlet. Baking is done at home or in a rented kitchen, and sales occur in a patchwork of locations — weekly markets, local farm stands and specialty grocers. It’s an interaction that runs counter to The Way We Shop Now. Unmediated by technology, it involves no scrolling, no clicking, no AI assistance.

Sourdough bread occupies the top of the microbakery food chain, partly because it requires great skill, time and commitment, and partly because it’s an area in which Long Island’s macrobakeries fall short. Blacksmith’s in Long Beach, Duck Island in Huntington, Blue Duck on the North Fork and Carissa’s, Alpina Swiss Bakery and Armin & Judy in the Hamptons are among the very few local outfits that produce true sourdoughs — leavened not with commercial yeast but with a starter that relies on natural yeasts for its leavening power. (For more on sourdough, see box below.) All but three of those bakeries (Blue Duck, Alpina and Armin & Judy) started out as microbakeries selling at farmers markets. The new crop of microbakery sourdough stars includes 1610 Sourdough, KC Wild Bread, The Bread Shed and Serpico’s Bread Co., formerly Side Hustle Bread.

Johnny Breads is one of the oldest. Back in 2007, a high-pressure banking job and its attendant insomnia had John DellAquila waking up early and staying up late. Curious about traditional methods of making bread, he started with a plastic bucket, a Danish dough whisk and his home oven. In 2021 he began selling his bread at the Glen Cove market and never looked back. Now he sells at three farmers markets and multiple retail outlets throughout Long Island. DellAquila left his finance job in 2024 and hopes to make the leap to brick-and-mortar within a year but, for now, he is renting space in a large commissary kitchen in Plainview, where he works four nights a week.

The most important thing about my bread is the ingredients, the source, the supply chain.

- John DellAquila, owner of Johnny Breads 

In one corner, he has carved out space for his six stackable Chandley Pico steam-injection ovens. Nearby are four 20-liter buckets of starter and his army of stacked bannetons (the cloth-lined wicker or rattan baskets in which the formed loaves rise). In the walk-in refrigerator are 20 8-kilo bins in which the dough has its initial three-hour "bulk ferment" rise. His most precious possession is a bucket containing his 18-year-old sourdough starter (named Antoinette, after his grandmother) and his sacks of flour. "I can talk someone’s ear off about my process," he said. "But the most important thing about my bread is the ingredients, the source, the supply chain."

It would be a gross understatement to say that DellAquila is choosy about his wheat flour, most of which he sources from the Wild Hive Community Grain Project in upstate Clinton Corners. Even though DellAquila’s wife and children did not have celiac disease (a serious autoimmune response to gluten that afflicts less than 1% of the population), they "had a hard time digesting wheat." But the wheat savant has come to understand that "for them, it wasn’t the wheat itself, it was the additives." He shuns flour made from wheat that has been treated with glyphosate, an herbicide, for instance.

The House of Gluten Free

WHERE TO FIND IT Farmers markets in Northport (Saturday)

It’s easy to view artisans like DellAquila as part of a trendy baking vanguard when, in fact, what they eschew — enriched flour, industrial agriculture, chemical pesticides and fertilizers, commercial yeast, mechanized baking — are all relatively new practices. From the dawn of baking (the Egyptians were probably the first people to make leavened bread, around 5,000 years ago) until the 20th century, all produce was organic, all breads were sourdough and formed by hand. But lest you get the impression that no innovation is good innovation, meet Bethany Sallese and her microbakery, The House of Gluten Free.

Thanks to an explosion of alternative products to wheat and dairy, Sallese does the seemingly impossible on a weekly basis: She produces crusty, lusty rustic sourdough ($14) with no gluten in it, and tender shortbread, biscuits and scones with no milk or butter. She has seen customers cry at her Northport farmers market stand. "They are so happy to be able to eat the bread here, to eat it fresh because usually their only option is the freezer case at the supermarket," she said. Sallese bakes in her own gluten-free kitchen in Stony Brook. Well, she starts in her kitchen and, during baking days, presses her dining room and laundry room into service. There is no gluten anywhere in her house: Neither she nor her 11-year-old daughter can digest it. (As for her husband, "he gets his gluten out of the home. In the garage, he has a fridge where he can store it and a Home Depot bucket that he can turn over and sit on to eat.")

She had been a passionate home baker for as long as she can remember and, shortly after she discovered she had celiac, 12 years ago, she began tinkering, first with quick breads and cookies. They are relatively easy to make with other flours because their tender crumbs don’t depend on the elastic structure that gluten is so good at providing. About five years ago, she began her ascent up Mount Sourdough. In 2022, she brought her wares to a holiday market, the following summer she joined the St. James farmers market and was off and baking.

Like all sourdoughs, hers start with a naturally leavened starter. Regular bakers will combine wheat and/or rye flour with water and let the mixture stand until it begins to come alive with the yeasts and bacteria that are naturally present in the environment. Sallese’s sourdough starter, now 3 years old, is made with brown rice flour. Three days before she begins a batch of bread, she takes out a portion and "feeds" it with more rice flour and water, letting it come to full strength before game time.

So far, so traditional, but now the process takes a sharp left turn. Sallese prepares another mixture with olive oil, maple syrup, water and psyllium husk, a natural fiber. The psyllium absorbs the water and, as the mixture rests, it gelatinizes, "holding everything together like glue" — and that, in a nutshell, is what gives Sallese’s bread its structure. Her two dozen loaves proof (rise) for three hours on her dining room table before being baked, and then it’s back to the dining room for a five-hour cool-down. All sourdough bread should be allowed to come to room temperature before being cut, but it’s essential with gluten-free sourdough, which, otherwise, will turn gummy if it’s still warm.

Aside from bread, on any given Saturday, Sallese will bring a mix of muffins, fruit crisps, scones, coffee cake, cookies and shortbread to the market. To keep things dairy-free, favorite alternatives include Melt Organic Plant Butter, Cocojune coconut yogurt, Califa Barista Blend oat milk and Trader Joe’s Organic Vegan Heavy Whipping Cream.

"I could spend all week driving to stores," she said, but her workflow demands that she fit all her shopping into Mondays and Tuesdays. Wednesday is cookie day and on Thursday she prepares, portions out and labels all the other dry mixes.

Friday, she bakes all day except for the cinnamon rolls that proof overnight and get baked Saturday morning before she leaves for the market at 6:50. "On Sunday, I do shopping and laundry for the family." Sallese is not looking to expand her business into a proper bakery. She hasn’t got one more day in the week, or square foot on her dining room table, or rack in her oven. "Right now, I sell as much as I can bake and I don’t want to hire anyone," she said. "And I am making pretty good money."

As a special-diet purveyor, The House of Gluten Free occupies a niche. But the most competitive segment of the microbakery market is undoubtedly general, non-yeasted baked goods. Cookies and cakes, biscuits and scones, pies and tarts — they are all simpler to make, and there are far more home bakers producing them who are inspired (or encouraged) to take the leap into commerce.

Three French Hens

WHERE TO FIND IT Farmers markets in Glen Cove (Saturday) and Huntington (Sunday)

These bakers also face stiff competition from top local pastry shops, some of which — Hometown in Centerport, Flourbud in East Moriches, Polka Dot in Rockville Centre — got their start at the farmers market. Three French Hens hopes to follow in those footsteps. And let’s make it clear at the outset that the name refers to two women, Rebecca Martin and her mother, Lisa Martin. "If someone doesn’t say, ‘Hey, where’s the third hen?’ at every market, we’re surprised," Lisa noted. "We also get a lot of people singing ‘The 12 Days of Christmas.’ "

"We batted around a lot of names," Rebecca chimed in. This one was a tribute to her paternal grandmother and her two sisters, "who had French heritage, lived in New Orleans and were involved in the baking business." That baking gene surfaced early in Rebecca, who was working at the late, lamented Blondie’s Bake Shop (2011-24) in Centerport by the time she was in high school. She went on to study pastry at the Culinary Institute of America in New Hyde Park, after which she spent two years at Duck Island in Huntington.

"I was happy to help other people build their business, but I got to the point where I longed to start my own," she said. Rebecca and her mother joined the Huntington winter market in 2021-22 and can now be found in Huntington (in both winter and summer) as well as in Glen Cove.

While not professionally trained, Lisa also grew up baking and continued it into motherhood. She’d made buttery drop biscuits for her family for decades (now she might enrich them with Gruyère and Dijon mustard), and the Hens’ sugar cookie recipe is very close to the one she learned from her own mother. Typically, Lisa handles the cookies, biscuits and miniloaves in her Northport kitchen. She also brings loads of retail experience to the enterprise, having worked in a variety of small and large stores, from Cow Harbor Gifts in Northport to Lord & Taylor at Walt Whitman mall. If Rebecca grew up making cookies, Lisa grew up making change. "I loved playing store when I was young, pretending to ring things up on the cash register. It still feels very satisfying to use Square [the credit card processing app] to make a sale."

In her apartment about a mile away, Rebecca handles most of the pastry, macarons, complicated cookies (such as a recent Key lime — pie madeleine with speculoos crumbs — to mimic a graham cracker crust — and dipped in Key lime glaze) and anything yeasted. The Hens rarely show up without English muffins ($8 for a four-pack), baked the traditional way on a griddle and so good, she said, "They don’t need to be toasted — though they are great toasted!"

Rebecca is also chief decorator (Lisa will bake "blank" cookies and cupcakes and pass them along) and recipe developer. She’s been fiddling with her salted chocolate-chip cookies ($5 for a three-pack) since high school and now considers the recipe aced, using minichips ("I know it’s controversial, but I like bits of chocolate in every bite") and brown butter. Resting the dough, scooping it, freezing it and then baking it results in that "perfect texture, crisp on the edges, fudgy in the middle."

While the Martins have looked into renting a commissary kitchen, the numbers don’t add up. "The hourly rate is so expensive," Rebecca said. "What we’d have to charge would outprice the market." And the fixed hours they would have to commit to would "take away some of the flexibility of being self-employed." Their ultimate goal is a brick-and-mortar bakery but, for now, the farmers market works. Rebecca likes "being out there," because "whether we sell everything or not, we are making connections with people."

Lately, during lulls, she has been crocheting mesh market bags using cotton yarns that match the French Hens logo — the brown, white and soft blue of eggshells. The bags extend the brand and constitute a revenue stream (however tiny) but mostly, she said, "they keep me from falling asleep." She had started baking the previous afternoon and packed up the last English muffin at 3 a.m. After barely three hours of shut-eye, she was loading up her mother’s old Subaru Outback and heading to Glen Cove. Confessed Lisa, "Nobody has ever seen us with a full night’s sleep."