MANAYUNK

Originally Published in Manayunk.com Magazine

By Ainsley Maloney

Photography By Alexa Nahas (alexanahas.com)

On the next weekend morning you find yourself strolling down Main Street past the blocks between Grape and Levering Streets, it’s a safe bet you’ll run into a buzzing crowd of families, 20 somethings, and seasoned locals alike. Before your brain registers the culprit, your senses will give it away. It’s impossible not to inhale the mouthwatering aromas of fresh-baked bread being unlocked by patrons as they pull apart their warm pockets of artisan goodness right there in front of the shop. All you’ll have left to do is plead with the culinary gods that there’s time left to nab a spectacularly decadent sticky bun, before they’re sold out.

Welcome to Breakin’ Bread Bakery, where every rustic creation has been handcrafted and baked within the past 8 to 12 hours by the head baker himself, Jim McAleese. The conservative menu features a consistent lineup of gourmet fare—your baguettes, ciabatta rolls, brioche buns, and croissants—sprinkled with exotic assortments, such as orange brioche strap and cider cherry rye. The sticky bun is a crowd favorite, second only to the best-selling baguette.

Manayunk regulars may unknowingly be admirers of the baker’s delicacies already: Jim was the craftsman behind Agiato before it closed in 2013. Yep—that bread. The wholesome loaves with hints of nutty flavors that customers couldn’t forget, or frankly shut up about, in the two whole years after he left, often poking their heads into neighboring stores to ask: Where’s the bread? When’s it coming back?

“We decided to come back to Manayunk to fill a community need for our bread,” Jim said. “Because that’s a pretty satisfied client base that can say, it’s 2 years later, and we’re still interested in what you’re doing.” Jim teamed with store manager Greg Wudarski to take over the 800-square-foot bakery, covering the awning with a heavy-duty banner that reads: “New owner. Same great baker.”

Breakin’ Bread’s philosophy is to produce handcrafted, consistent, community-based bread. Already, the shop is positioning itself to become a cornerstone of the community. It’s a place patrons are drawn to because it’s where their friends or neighbors buy their bread, attracted simply to the quality and consistency of the selection. “We always talk about the old-school corner bakery in South Philadelphia and the mentality that goes with it, kind of going by the wayside, being replaced by franchises. We want to bring that back,” Jim said.

To do that, Jim and Greg dedicate all of their focus and energy into ensuring the quality of every pastry, bun, and bread roll they create. While Greg works the shop window Thursday to Sunday from 8 a.m. to 4 p.m., Jim bakes overnight from 9 p.m. to 9 a.m. to stock the bread by morning.With little room in the 800-square-foot-space for heavy-duty machinery, Jim is a true craftsman: his meticulous 12-hour procedure begins from scratch, with mixing the basic ingredients—flour, water, salt, yeast—to letting them ferment for three hours before shaping each item by hand.

Of the baguettes, he said, “I shape each one until the dough goes from the size of your fist to the length of a full baguette,” which is approximately 26 inches. “I can shape two per minute. If I do 100, that’s one hour. It’s a process.” The next step, baking the bread, takes a full eight hours whether he’s making 15 or 200 items. Lacking the space for a large oven to auto-load the dough, Jim does that by hand, too. He explains, “I have 2-foot-by-5-foot wooden bagel boards the bread sits on. And you know that magic trick where you snap the tablecloth out from underneath the plates, and the plates don’t move? I slide the board off, and the bread stays put. Shaping is easy. That’s the hard part.” Jim, 46, has honed these skills over a 20-plus year culinary career with stints at Philly’s Le Bus, Le Bec, Parc and New York’s Balthazar.

This fresh-baked process looks nothing like the mass-produced chains where employees defrost frozen dough on a timer and mark a checklist. “Unfortunately, they don’t learn how to actually bake,” Jim said. “With handcrafted, there’s a lot more thought, a lot more care, and a lot more integrity put into the product. One gentleman told me, ‘A lot of baguettes at these other places look good, but they don’t taste so good. Yours have flavor. I taste something here I don’t taste anywhere else.’”

The bread’s exquisite taste is the reason sales have increased more than 50 percent since the bakery’s opening in September 2014. It’s the reason it took Di Bruno Bros. reps one taste to decide to stock Breakin’ Bread in four of its popular Center City locations.

Their success has materialized, astonishingly, with zero marketing campaign to speak of. The bakery’s Facebook and Twitter pages fill mostly with retweets from satisfied customers, like @marinequeen: @Breakinbreadbak best bread I have ever tasted. #brioche buns are heavenly. Sticky buns are unbelievable. #EdibleBakedArtistry. Or a quick post announcing they’re sold out of everything, which on a nice weekend, can happen as early as noon or 1 p.m. Their Yelp listing boasts 4.5 stars. The quality of their product, Greg said, sells itself. “We just wanna make great bread. That’s it. We want to build our business through customer interactions and by making sure the quality and the consistency of our product is there, every day.”

Of the catchy moniker, Breakin’ Bread, Greg said it came from an amalgam of ideas. “First, there’s the act of breaking bread, of sharing. It’s our philosophy,” he said. “When people come up to the window, we have samples of other products, and it’s like, try this, try that. It’s funny: customers often come and buy a bunch of bread for their neighbors. We really want sharing to be our mantra.” Second, Jim reminds people of AMC Breaking Bad’s Walter White, a high-school chemistry teacher who uses his skills to cook and sell crystal meth, as he similarly attributes the “science and alchemy of baking” as having ignited his passion for creating culinary concoctions that are less nefarious but perhaps equally as addicting. “Jim’s a perfectionist like Walt,” Greg said. “He works against himself. And the more effort he pours into getting better, the results come through in the consistency of the bread.”

The difference, the guys said, is Walt’s ego eventually becomes his downfall, while their business model practically negates pretension. “Our whole goal is less,” Jim said. “I’d prefer to do 12 things really well than 25 things not so well.” That precision is paying off as customers appear to be discerning, given their largely word-of-mouth adoration, the exceptional flavors that can emerge when a baker puts such a high level of attention and passion into every one of his creations. “It’s not a transaction. It’s a transmission,” he said. “I’m giving something that I really care about to you. And if you like it, that’s awesome, because no one cares about it more than I do.”

Ainsley Di Duca is a local freelance writer and is part of our new initiative to get local voices into the Manayunk Magazine. Interested in writing about your community? Email Shannon Geddes at sgeddes@manayunk.org.