Jillmotts/Flickr

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Less than a month after opening, Williamsburg restaurant Mercado on Kent (291 Kent Avenue, 718-782-8810) is getting a new chef, Eater reports. But that's not the only change afoot. They'll also be launching a retail bakery by Friday, which will be open from 9 a.m. to 3 p.m., selling bread plus charcuterie and olive oil. While the market-restaurant hybrid isn't anything new, this marks the growing trend of New York City eateries launching bakery businesses.

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​The rustic loaves at Balthazar are cradled in a birch branch.

As Pablo Neruda says, "The best poet is the man who delivers our daily bread: the local baker." And indeed he was right. Little gives as much pleasure as a freshly baked loaf, and here are the 10 that please us most. Note these are all breads from European traditions. There are plenty of other types of bread to be found in the world, from the toki of Uzbekistan to the bao of Beijing; these will be covered in a future list.

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Zachary Golper and Kate Wheatcroft, Bien Cuit's co-owners

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Yesterday, we spoke with Zachary Golper, the co-owner of Smith Street's new Bien Cuit bakery, about the career path he followed from Portland, Oregon, to Philadelphia to Brooklyn, and the decidedly personal relationship between a baker and his sourdough starter. Today, in Part 2 of our interview, Golper tells us about his influences, his 19-hour workday, and getting his bakery on its feet.

Who's influenced you as a baker?

Of course, at the top of the list would be Raymond Calvel. He's the one that showed all of the artisan bakers of the modern generation how to take this ancient practice and do it correctly with modern equipment. [Calvel was a French bread expert and professor of baking.] Didier Rosada [a master baker based in Washington, D.C.] has been a huge influence. The ones who have been a direct effect on me are William Raymond and Jean-Claude Canestrier. Very competitive and aggressive guys, and really wanted to make an absolutely beautiful, flawlessly good product. It wasn't even a product at that point, just beautiful food. It was nice to be in a bakery where everything you make is a special piece. Those guys showed me all that.

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Lauren Shockey

Fight night!!!

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When coming up with this week's Battle of the Dishes, we thought, let's take this battle beyond the same old taste test and make it a bona fide battle. As in, let's FIGHT. It was Breaking Bread Week here at Fork in the Road, so obviously what better tool for jousting than a baguette, no? Just like a sword, only blunt and filled with carbs! We happened to be near Bleecker Street, home to many bakeries, so we stepped into Amy's Bread for a loaf, then made our way to the nearby Blue Ribbon Bakery's market on Bedford Street and scooped up one of theirs. Both are known as tasty specimens, but which would you be rather carrying if a mugger approached you and you had to defend yourself?

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In the annals of Western civilization, no starch surpasses bread in importance. It's the staff of life, the start of every perfect meal, and a foodstuff that satisfies emotionally as well as gustatorily. The city is teeming with great loaves, but which to choose?

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Photo courtesy of Bien Cuit

Zachary Golper and Kate Wheatcroft display some of the fruits of their labor.

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Last month, Zachary Golper and his wife, Kate Wheatcroft, opened the doors to Bien Cuit, their brand-new bakery on Smith Street. The couple came to New York from Philadelphia, where Golper baked bread and pastries for Le Bec-Fin, one of the city's most renowned restaurants. Philadelphia was one of many stops on Golper's long and winding road to Brooklyn: Born in Portland, Oregon, he began baking bread on a farm at the age of 19, and worked his way through kitchens in Las Vegas, Austin, Taos, Seattle, France, and Portland.

At Bien Cuit, Golper's breads, tarts, and pastries have already won a following both in the neighborhood and here at Fork in the Road -- we're big fans of his tarts and zucchini sandwich. So we called Golper up to learn more about his work, and he told us quite a bit. Tomorrow, in Part 2 of our interview, he'll tell us even more.

How did you start baking?

It's a pretty simple story. A lot of bakers, even though they don't dramatize it too much, the reality is we all have an attraction to that fermentation process. There's something about it that lures us in.

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insightbb.com

​Well, maybe not of all time -- how far back does the world's literature really go? And we blush to note that most of these quotes come from Western sources, at that. But read on anyway, because some of them are pretty damn funny, or at least pithy and philosophical.

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As you probably know, Fork in the Road is fond of doing a pop-up weekly dining blog from time to time. All this week, the subject will be bread in all its manifestations. The coverage will culminate in Our 10 Best Loaves of Bread in NYC, to be posted Friday morning. We'll interview bakers, explore the philosophical implications of bread, and let you know where the best (and best uses of) Staff of Life are to be found around town. Please join us.