Bakery by Textbook serves up unexpected delights in Bed-Stuy 

By Scott Lynch

You can’t miss the new Bakery by Textbook, an ambitious offshoot to Fort Greene’s Textbook Cafe that opened a couple of weeks ago on the eastern edges of Bed-Stuy. For starters, the enormous, cartoony, black-and-white mural that covers literally the entire building can be seen from a couple of blocks away.

Eye-popping exterior aside — the inside’s pretty wild too, with a steep, stadium-seating “stoop” dominating the space — Bakery by Textbook brings such a lengthy and creative menu of pastries, sandwiches, breads and coffees to the neighborhood that the place is an instant game-changer for both city-wide baked-goods fiends and locals alike.

The huge mural was designed by Wotto and painted by Annagrace (Photo by Scott Lynch)

Much of the credit for the new bakery’s appeal has to go to chef Tony Yarema, a New York City native and current Bushwick resident who brings the flavors he fell in love with while traveling along the Mediterranean coasts of Europe, the Middle East and North Africa to this corner of Bed-Stuy.

“A lot of it was influenced by the places that I visited, as well as my training in New York as a chef.” Yarema tells Brooklyn Magazine. “Those came together to make things that you wouldn’t see at a normal NYC bakery. It’s a fusion of what I love from everywhere I’ve been, and what I want to showcase and introduce to people.”

The egg salad, for example, is stained with turmeric, pepped-up with pickles and redolent with what Yarema calls a blend of Tunisian spices. It comes inside a slab of chewy focaccia, and it is excellent.

Egg salad on focaccia, $11 (Photo by Scott Lynch)

Yarema uses his focaccia for Textbook’s pizza-like shakshuka too, a Maghrebi dish he whipped up a thousand times working brunch shifts in the city but wanted to make more portable for the bakery. Other savory creations include a scone-looking pastry with kashkaval cheese, sausage and jalapeno, and a variety of sandwiches — tuna, beet pastrami, prosciutto and burrata — served on Yarema’s Persian “noon” bread, which is akin to a baguette, but even more rustic.

Shakshuka ‘pizza,’ $9 (Photo by Scott Lynch)

All of Yarema’s bread can be purchased as full loaves, and Textbook has a “name your price bread” program, which is literally just that: choose what you want, tell them how much you can pay, walk out with a fresh loaf of bread.

There are also plenty of sweet treats too. The cinnamon bun is insanely good, a sticky, gooey delight that also happens to be vegan. Rome’s famous maritozzi are here, those citrus-scented brioche buns filled with whipped cream, and Yarema makes them light and fluffy, then dusts them with powdered sugar and pistachio.

Sticky cinnamon bun, $6.50 (Photo by Scott Lynch)

The olive oil cake is dense, juicy and delicious. The laminated dough options are headlined by a regular croissant and pain de chocolate. Yarema tells us that his blueberry muffin has been one of his biggest hits here so far. The cookies, both the chocolate chunk and the toffee espresso, really hit the spot too.

Toffee espresso cookie, $4 (Photo by Scott Lynch)

The coffee program is innovative and different. In addition to all the expected varieties, there’s a brown sugar miso latte, an espresso lemonade, a rose bouquet cappuccino and, perfect on a humid summer morning, a frozen tahini cold brew. And If you’re just getting a mug of regular drip, refills are free.

This willingness to have fun with beverages will translate well to the semi-secret subterranean cocktail bar called Understudy that the Textbook team is hoping to open either late summer or early fall. Located in the basement below the bakery, Understudy will feature a food menu to go along with the booze, with snacky things like pizza and housemade pita chips and dips.

Stadium stoop-style seating (Photo by Scott Lynch)

The Textbook crew has big plans for Yarema’s baked goods. “This is kind of going to be kind of the central bakery for here and for the Fort Greene cafe,” says Yarema. “Hopefully we’ll expand and supply micro locations in other areas too.”

But what the chef seems most excited about so far is seeing all the Bed-Stuy locals coming through. “We want to be good neighbors. We’re here for the community.”

Bakery by Textbook is located at 874 Hancock Street, at the corner of Howard Avenue, and is currently open daily from 7:30 a.m. to 4 p.m.