The first Altbau line is meant to leave North Eighth Street quickly, turning into a separate alleyway where guests can see and smell the bread before they reach the counter. Altbau bakery is a 7,500-square-foot Williamsburg bakery from Chad Robertson opening Thursday, October 29, at 184 North Eighth Street, between Driggs and Bedford Avenues (Substack).
Robertson and his team expect people to come for bread, croissants, cookies, and coffee. They have built the approach so the queue becomes part of the bakery’s working face rather than a sidewalk problem. The alley leads into production views, then toward a glass-and-tile pastry counter and a coffee station pouring beans from Wisconsin’s Condor Coffee.
Altbau bakery brings Chad Robertson to North Eighth Street
Robertson moved to New York from the West Coast to open Altbau, bringing a long bread lineage into a Williamsburg room large enough for production, seating, events, and late service. He grew up in West Texas, then studied at The Culinary Institute of America in Hyde Park, New York, where he double majored in culinary arts and baking and pastry.
After school, Robertson spent five years apprenticing with four mentors, beginning in Housatonic with Richard Bourdon. Bar Tartine later ran for 10 years. Since 2019, Robertson has been with Liz Barclay; the two collaborated on BREAD BOOK, published in 2022 and named by Ed Behr as one of the top cookbooks of the year (Substack).
At Altbau, Robertson is working with baker Pam Yung on breads, pastries, focaccia, sandwiches, and occasional pizzas. Jake Israel, a real-estate developer and Robertson’s partner in Altbau, has described the production view as central to the project. “Visibility into our production space is a big part of our storytelling,” Israel says.
The line, the counter, and the Condor Coffee station
The front door sends guests through the alley and past the bread room, prep space, pastry counter, and coffee station before they order. The team does not want a line snaking down the sidewalk, though it still expects one. The alleyway pulls guests off the street as they arrive, then gives them a look toward the bread room, prep space, pastry counter, and coffee station before they order.
Altbau bakery has seating for 150 guests upstairs, plus a working kitchen setup built for more than morning rolls. The space includes a pizza oven, six-burner stove, Rational combi oven, and open chef’s kitchen (Grubstreet).
Condor Coffee, based in Wisconsin, supplies the beans. Altbau will not offer Wi-Fi, and the upstairs room is arranged for sitting, reading, talking, listening, and watching the bakery function. Aidan Reinhold designed the modular stainless-steel furniture upstairs, where Altbau will also keep a small staff-curated library of books and magazines. Vintage hi-fi speakers sit on either side of the room.
What to order first: grain, then pastry
The baguette, sourdough, and rye use West Coast grain varietals along with einkorn, spelt, and rouge de Bordeaux wheat. Those grain names point to flavor, crumb, and the reason this bakery is building toward its own milling room.
Altbau will buy ingredients from Brooklyn Granary and Cairnspring Mills, a longtime Tartine supplier. The bakery also plans to mill its own grains with a stone mill in a glass-encased room on the second floor. Einkorn is central to that plan. “We use a lot of einkorn in our pastries and bread,” Robertson says. “It’s very nutrient-dense, but it’s also very expensive, so milling our own is really the only way we can use a lot of it.”
The chocolate-chip cookie uses einkorn, which adds a nutty flavor. The olive oil-enriched sandwich bread uses the same grain work in a lighter loaf. Wei Si Phua’s work is in the pastry case. Phua, an alum of Radio Bakery, leads pastries at Altbau, with cinnamon rolls, apple turnovers, buckwheat financiers, a twice-baked chocolate-banana pecan croissant dusted with powdered sugar, a cheesecake-stuffed croissant, and an “everything” croissant with chive cream cheese among the opening items.
A second-floor mill puts the flour in view
Flour usually arrives as a quiet input, stacked and opened before dawn. The stone mill is planned for a glass-encased room on the second floor, where it can become part of the visible work.
The second-floor placement links the bread program to the room’s scale. A 7,500-square-foot bakery can hold production, retail, seating, and milling under one address. It makes the chain of work easier to see, from grain selection to flour to dough to the pastry counter downstairs.
Robertson says einkorn is expensive, and Altbau uses enough of it in bread and pastry that milling in-house becomes a way to keep using it heavily. That is the kind of cost and process detail a regular can taste over time, especially if the cookie, sandwich bread, sourdough, and rye stay close to the grain plan.
Programming turns the room toward night
Altbau opens as a bakery, then points itself toward the hours when Williamsburg foot traffic changes. Israel says, “This neighborhood really activates around 8 p.m., and we want to take advantage of that commuter traffic.” The eventual goal is to keep Altbau open until 9 or 10 p.m. on weekdays and 2 a.m. on weekends.
The room is built for a schedule that includes classes, tastings, pop-ups, and people who want a place to sit after dinner. The bakery has a liquor license, and wine and spirits tastings are part of the programming conversation. Floral-arranging classes, private album-listening sessions, kids’ workshops, and pasta, pizza, and bread-making classes are also being discussed.
The first announced pop-up is already spoken for. Copenhagen’s Atelier September comes to Altbau on November 7 and 8, and the event is sold out. Opening month already has a scarcity marker before the bakery has settled into its full rhythm. Altbau is using its kitchen and upstairs room as a programming platform (Grubstreet).
“We want to be a place you can come to if you don’t want to go to a bar after work,” he says, “or if you want somewhere to hang out after dinner at a restaurant in the neighborhood.”
How to plan the first visit to Altbau in Williamsburg
Altbau is at 184 North Eighth Street, between Driggs and Bedford Avenues, starting Thursday, October 29. The entrance pulls guests into the alley. If the opening queue forms, that alley is where the bakery wants it (Grubstreet).
Altbau will not offer Wi-Fi, and the upstairs room has been arranged around seating, books, magazines, hi-fi speakers, and the open life of the bakery.
The stone mill is still an eventual piece of the operation, the late-night hours are an eventual goal, and the sold-out Atelier September pop-up arrives on November 7 and 8. Altbau bakery opens with enough machinery, grain, seating, and programming to make Williamsburg’s bakery day stretch well past breakfast.