Love bread? This Montclair bake shop may make the best sourdough loaf in North Jersey
Jed Arkell, a 50-year-old Australian transplant to Montclair, spent most of his life making art — video, music, written, performance, sound. Like many artists, to support his career, Arkell worked in bars and restaurants.
Today, his art supports him and his young family. And you needn't be a collector to appreciate it or wealthy to buy his work. You just have to love really good, wonderfully made, perfectly airy ... bread.
"Bread is the art," said Arkell, a soft-spoken father of one, who, three years ago, with his wife, Jennifer Friede, launched Jed's Bread, a small, artisan bakery that expanded from offering delicious breads only to include delectable pastries as well. Jed's Bread has no storefront; Arkell's creations are sold only at the farmers markets in Montclair and Jersey City. Which, if you ask me, is a shame.
His baked goods are unfailingly scrumptious; just try to keep your eyes from closing when you bite into his extraordinarily flakey, melt-in-your-mouth buttery, oh-so-subtly sweet croissant. I couldn't. And yet, it's his breads, especially Arkell's sourdough loaf — tangy, chewy, crispy, airy, heavenly — that had me woozy. It may be the best I've ever had.
I'm hardly Arkell's only fan. Come Saturday and you'll see a line of people snaked around his stand at the Montclair Farmers Market. On Thursday the line can be found at the Jersey City Farmers Market.
"Their stuff is terrific," said Gray Russell, a member of the board of the Montclair Farmers Market and an avid customer. "My wife and I have a problem with their product. They're so good, we can't resist them."
Russell added that Jed's Bread has changed the "look" of the town's 30-year-old farmers market. "It has a long line all day long," he said – something that was new at the bustling market.
"There’s nothing that they make that we don’t love," said Kate Yarhouse, a Montclair resident who is a regular at the market. "My husband and I wish they had a storefront so we can go to it seven days a week."
Starting a bakery 'on a whim'
Arkell and his wife decided to launch a bread bakery "on a whim," he said, just as COVID hit. He had gone to culinary school in Sydney, his hometown, but never really used his skills officially until he immigrated to the United States less than a decade ago. He came to visit Friede, whom he met in Australia, some 21 years ago.
"I always had a crush on her," Arkell said.
Friede grew up in Paramus; her father, Avi Friede, owns The Kosher Nosh, a longtime, beloved kosher deli in Glen Rock.
They married in 2016, and soon after Arkell put on his chef's hat, and started working at Clementine, a bakery in Brooklyn, and eventually at the Great Northern Food Hall, world-renowned Danish cook Claus Meyer's food hall in Grand Central Station, and Wells & by Durst, Michelin-starred chef Charlie Palmer's food hall in the former Conde Nast building in Manhattan.
"I just found the baking community," he said. "I found my place. And I got obsessed with bread. I just fell in love with the whole process. There was something magical about it."
Magic that he wanted to create with the help of Friede when COVID had them in lockdown.
"We thought that a farmers market would be a good way to start a business," Friede said
She dropped some samples of Arkell's breads with the powers that be of the Montclair Farmers Market — and two weeks later, they began selling breads there.
"Within 90 minutes, we were sold out," Arkell said.
For his pastries and breads, Arkell uses local whole-grain organic flour, high-quality French butter, French chocolate Valrhona, Maldon artisanal sea salt and fruits and vegetables from nearby farms.
His light and fluffy Mitake mushroom focaccia sport farm-fresh hen-of-the-woods mushrooms and caramelized onions; another focaccia wears sweet local cherry tomatoes and from-the-farm slightly pungent basil. His almond croissants are filled with so much creamy almond custard, it may be difficult to justify them as a breakfast treat but, heck, they're too good not to eat anytime of the day. Ditto his lush Danish with vanilla custard cream.
He does his baking now at a storefront in Bloomfield that he's renting that is, alas, too small to be a full-service bakery. "It's our commissary kitchen," he said.
He used to use the convection oven in his father-in-law's restaurant, finagling with it to make it work like a bread oven, with the help of pizza stones, lava rocks and turning the oven on and off to control the temperature. "It was quite a dance," he said.
Today he has a proper triple deck oven. What he needs now is more staff.
"It's hard to find help right now," he said.
When he does have more help, he finally may be able to have his own brick-and-mortar bakery. Until then, you'll just have to stop by the farmers markets to pick up some delicious edible artwork.
This article originally appeared on NorthJersey.com: Why Jed's Breads in Montclair baked goods are so good
