No. 5

Today is Apt. 2 Bread's 5-year anniversary.

Apr 01, 2025

Howdy,

I’m writing you from a motel room in West Texas. Today marks five years since I started Apt. 2 Bread.

Right now I’m in a transitional place and experiencing a few pivots in my life. Craving some sort of grounding, this headspace always gets me thinking about what’s most important to me.

I’ve lived in my Brooklyn apartment for nearly 6 years, where the bakery is. While the apartment as a whole is very special to me, it’s the bakery that tugs at my heart most. I’ve spent hours and hours alone in there, baking, crafting, testing. Getting into long, arduous flows. Pulling all-nighters. I’ve welcomed countless people in for interviews and shoots. Loaded the oven half-asleep in my robe. Forgotten the salt in a custom order (only once!). There’s one seat in the bakery, a red stool, where many friends have kept me company while I worked. Someone special even said I love you for the first time in there.

I love thinking about what else has happened in this apartment since it was built in 1899.

A view of the bakery window in 1948. In the 40s the city collected photographs of most buildings in the five boroughs. You can search for yours here.

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In 2019 I left my corporate restaurant job to make bread. I gave up my pricey studio apartment in Bed Stuy and I found this gem through Craigslist. In fact I moved into the bedroom that is now the bakery. It was lime green and cost $750 per month, all that I could afford with my new $30,000 per year income (a third of what I walked away from). It didn’t matter. It felt like the stars aligned.

At the time I was working 5am shifts at She Wolf Bakery. Any baker can tell you a full-time baking schedule is grueling. But I learned so much! I mixed huge quantities of dough five days a week, got super strong, even became closer with my deli guys, being the only sober person in the bodega at 4:30am. Every morning the same order: whole wheat bagel with skippy peanut butter — for fuel.

In 2020 I took over the lease and moved into the south bedroom, leaving that tiny green room open. I sold my first loaf of bread on April 1, 2020.

In 2021 I raised money through a GoFundMe (5k in 24 hours !!!), purchased size-appropriate bakery equipment, and hired a carpenter to build a custom pulley-system for my front window so I could lower the bread to customers.

Once the bakery was operational I went hard. Too hard in hindsight, and now I have a better handle on what really makes sense to produce in the space. Five years later it’s more of a playroom, less of a one-woman-factory.

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And so, I’m feeling nostalgic! Being in Texas heightens that feeling. So much of what I eat here reminds me of my past.

The other night in San Antonio my dad whipped up some cast iron cornbread, something I ate often as a kid. But this time he browned the butter and milled the corn using the tabletop mill (it goes through twice), and rye berries, too. It’s rustic and buttery, earthy and deep in flavor. Uh, it’s so good. No worries if you don’t have a tabletop mill. I’ve noted the best flours to use in the recipe, which will be sent to paid subscribers this week.

If you’d like to access this recipe and all my others, subscribe below.

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On this five year anniversary of Apt. 2 Bread, I find myself thinking again about the bakery’s future. I’m torn between my need to make bread and the feeling that it just doesn’t make sense in the space anymore. But baking keeps me sane, I really feel that! Sometime this year I will scale down further and use it solely as a test kitchen.

And it’s a beautiful thing too — to make space for new things. To allow curiosity to lead again.