Breads Bakery

Babka leads the case

The babka is what most people come for, and it sets the tone for everything else in the case: rugelach, challah, bourekas and black-and-white cookies, made in the register of Israeli and Jewish diaspora baking rather than a general café format. Gadi Peleg founded the bakery as a spinoff of a Tel Aviv operation, and it has grown to six locations across the city, all built on the same short list of things. The chocolate babka is the item singled out most often, dense and heavily laced rather than bread with a ribbon of filling, while the rest of the counter places Breads inside New York’s wider Jewish food landscape rather than a French pastry one.

A grab-and-go bakery that has hosted a chef

Think of Breads first as a counter for takeaway baking, then as a platform that has folded in outside work. Its Union Square location became the home of Stretch Pizza, a residency from Wylie Dufresne, the chef known for wd~50 and Du’s Donuts. That project began during the COVID-19 period, when the bakery stayed open as a neighborhood stop and Dufresne’s regular bread and babka runs turned into a partnership with Peleg. The bakery has also turned up in community settings such as the Great Nosh festival on Governor’s Island. Its outside recognition is quieter than its lines suggest: the chain placed at number 64 in Opinionated About Dining’s Cheap Eats ranking for North America in 2024, after number 27 the year before.

Order the chocolate babka, then pick a second pastry

Start with the chocolate babka, because it is the defining signature and the item most closely tied to the bakery’s reputation. From there, choose by which thread you want to follow. Rugelach points toward the diaspora side of the case, challah toward the bread tradition, and bourekas toward the Israeli influence that runs through the bakery’s origin. Black-and-white cookies are the other recognizable item in the Breads orbit, and they turn up whenever the bakery appears at a community event. If the Union Square counter still has pizza running, the Classic New York pie is built on house-made sauce, aged mozzarella and Parmesan, while Dufresne’s Everything pie brings cream cheese, everything bagel spice and chives. Neither is the reason to walk in. The babka is, and a second pastry beside it is the whole order.