How Carla Finley Turned Her Apartment Into a Bakery During the Pandemic
The Deligram is an ode to the artisanal food makers of New York. In our last issue, we introduced Tokyo-born sake brewer Shinobu Kato, who opened Kato Sake Works in Bushwick just before the pandemic and is already ready to expand into a larger space. This week, we’re featuring another subject in need of more room: Carla Finley of Apt. 2 Bread, the Texas native who grew up in the restaurant industry, and just celebrated two years of running a bakery out of her Clinton Hill apartment.
The Product: Freshly baked sourdough breads and sweet rolls (cinnamon, for now).
The Deli Pick: The sourdough boule.
How To Buy: Bread is available for pickup and delivery on a bi-monthly basis at select stockists, on apt2bread.com.
Price: Sweet rolls and buns are $6-8.50, and loaves of bread cost $10-$20, or a weekly subscription starts at $10/week.
My parents have owned B&B Smokehouse, a barbecue restaurant on the southside of San Antonio for, I want to say, just shy of 40 years. The food is just insane. I mean, Texas barbecue. When I was a kid, my dad was always at the restaurant. He’s pretty burnt out now, so my mom is now running the restaurant. It's really very hard, [restaurants] can kill you. But I grew up with it, and learned a lot.
I started baking in high school, and moved to New York in 2013. I was on the business side of the food industry, but I missed being in the kitchen. I worked at She Wolf Bakery and then Il Buco Alimentari, but was laid off from my baking job early in the pandemic. It was obviously a time of panic. l didn't know what was happening, but I knew I wanted to keep using my hands in some way, because that's what I did every day already. So, I just started making bread at home, which was something I hadn't really done before; I was only used to mass production and bakery production at work. I had friends be like, “you should start selling bread,” and I officially sold my first loaf on April 1, 2020.
It is so funny to look at old photos of my bread at the beginning and where it is now — it’s just really cool to see that [evolution]. It's so interesting to feel how a new batch of flour can affect your dough. If the date is different, that means it was a different match from the distributor and you can feel the difference even though it's the same. I choose to use farmer-ground flour, which I source through GrowNYC wholesale — I was familiar with it from when I worked at She Wolf Bakery. Flour is something that I would love to learn more about. The past two years, I feel like it's been such a lesson and obstacle and challenge for me to find a balance where I can live a life. [Food] is pretty much all I know, I grew up around it, and now I'm following suit.
It’s been really hard to keep up with production and the demand of what has been asked of me. It requires a full 24 hours of prep and baking and that's very hard on my body and as a result, hard on me mentally, as well. Then on top of that, there’s the business side and getting the finances done. That's the hardest part I would say, other than my space being small — it's a one-person workspace. I think I would want to go into a partnership with someone and be like a co- owner, because I just know how much work it entails, but I don't know. Maybe I will later.
This summer, I really want to focus on pop ups, collaborations and a little bit more wholesale with select spots that I really believe in. I just started doing wholesale at OSTUDIO At Night in Bedstuy/Bushwick [Editor’s note: it’s owned by Fefo Aciar, who is the husband of The Deligram co-founder Anna Polonsky] and I love what they're doing. I’m also [baking] for Eavesdrop, which is a new bar in Greenpoint. One of the owners is a neighbor of mine. I’m wanting to pick up more of those things and scale back in certain ways — refocus my efforts. I started doing a few flat breads for Mina Stone at MoMA PS1 for her restaurant Mina's. It reinvigorated my creativity. It brought me back to basics and what I want to do [with future collaborations].
Greatest hit: The focaccia ($20 per loaf). People love it, and I love to make it because it's fun. The dough is really forgiving and it's easy. It turns out great every time because it's like olive oil and salt. Who doesn't love that?
Beyond bread: I don't do a lot of sweets, but [in addition to bread] I also make cinnamon rolls ($6 each).I put pecans in them because I am southern and grew up picking them out of my grandma's yard. But I'm phasing those out for the summertime and I really wanted lighter flavors. [Pistachio tahini buns will replace the cinnamon rolls this summer, for $8.50 per bun.]
Tips on enjoying your baked goods: The slice and freeze method is the best to do with any loaf of real bread. On the same day or the next day, slice it up and put it in a freezer-safe bag. Then you can pull out a slice and put it directly in the toaster and it's perfect. On that note, there are ways to revive hard, old bread. You can run the whole loaf under tap water and put it in the oven at 350 degrees for 10 minutes. If you don't want to revive the whole loaf, make croutons, bread crumbs or French toast. It really kills me to throw away a loaf of bread. I almost never do it.
Favorite places to eat and drink in New York City: I like to be around my neighborhood a lot. Rhodora wine bar, which is in Fort Greene, is a favorite of mine that I go to with friends a lot. I'm always at the cafe on my corner, which is called Choice Market, for coffee. Oftentimes I feel so cooped up I have to step out and it's become a ritual to sit with the sun directly on me with a cup of coffee. I go to Mekong a lot, which is Vietnamese in Fort Greene/Clinton Hill. I like to go there alone and zone out on my day off and eat noodles. I go to Xi’an Famous Foods if I'm over in Greenpoint or Downtown Brooklyn. Noodle soup is just so comforting.
