Exclusive: Chad Robertson Talks About His New Brooklyn Bakery

Summary

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Things Bakers Know: The King Arthur Baking Podcast

Episode: Exclusive: Chad Robertson Talks About His New Brooklyn Bakery
Date: June 5, 2026
Hosts: Jessica Battilana & David Tamarkin
Guest: Chad Robertson (Tartine Bakery)

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Episode Overview

This bonus episode of "Things Bakers Know" breaks exclusive news about Chad Robertson’s highly anticipated new bakery in Brooklyn. Hosts Jessica Battilana and David Tamarkin share a never-before-heard interview segment with Robertson, who discusses his move from the West Coast to New York, his inspiration behind the new space, and his vision for pushing the boundaries of American baking. Listeners get an intimate look at the innovative spirit driving Alt Bau, a bakery cafe designed to be both a community hub and an incubator for creativity.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Breaking Bakery News (01:18–03:03)

• Chad Robertson is opening a new bakery in Williamsburg, Brooklyn.
  • The new spot isn’t just a bakery—it’s a full day cafe with dedicated spaces for bread, pastry, and education.
  • “This is the most exciting bakery news of the year by far.” – David (01:18)
• The venue is a “stunning freestanding building” with “giant windows, flooded with light, beautiful walnut floors… an upstairs that they'll use for education.” – Jessica (01:54)

The Journey to Brooklyn (03:08–04:29)

• Chad's move was sparked by a collaboration with a New York investor initially interested in sourdough pizza.
  • Quickly shifted from a pizza-focused concept to “something much bigger.”
  • “We’re not doing pizza… It’s kind of an all day cafe, bakery thing on the ground floor, like what you might expect. Although I’m really trying not to repeat anything I’ve done before…” – Chad (03:37)

Evolving Beyond Tartine (04:29–06:21)

• Chad wants to add something new to NYC's already thriving baking scene.
  • Acknowledges the competitive landscape and excellence in pastries and breads.
  • Seeks to bring ideas from his third book, many of which never made it to Tartine production.
  • “I want to add something to the already amazing food culture that’s here. So I’m really trying to do some different things.” – Chad (04:39)
  • “I want to explore the diversity of the grain world.” – Chad (06:13)

Rethinking Bakery Operations (06:33–08:40)

• Chad reflects on his origins as a chef and his resolve to break the norm of overnight baking.
  • At Tartine, they baked “in real time,” offering small-batch, fresh items throughout the day—a stark contrast to traditional bakery models.
  • “I would rather hand someone a hot loaf of bread.” – Chad (07:25)
• The new Brooklyn spot will echo this approach: baking and serving fresh food all day, maintaining a restaurant-like energy.
  • “We kind of approached it like a restaurant, just kind of giving people fresh stuff all day.” – Chad (08:08)

The Community and Teaching Space (08:44–09:59)

• A key innovation: a dedicated upstairs for education, collaborations, and culinary events.
  • “The part that I’m most excited about actually is upstairs, where we built a kitchen... It’s basically a teaching space and a space that I can host friends from the city, friends from here, and friends from around the world.” – Chad (08:44)

The Name and the Building (10:22–12:20)

• The new bakery is named “Alt Bau.”
  • “The name is Alt Bau, which means old building. And when you see the building, you’ll understand…” – Chad (10:22)
  • The space honors history and the local community: “We’re putting like reclaimed old growth walnut floors that came from a bakery in Long Island City from the late 1800s... We’re really honoring the building.” – Chad (11:28)
  • Part of the inspiration comes from Bauhaus philosophy—blending art and craft, making the bakery “a hub where people are there doing interesting things all the time.” – Chad (10:50)

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On moving beyond past achievements:
  “I’m really trying not to repeat anything I’ve done before just because I feel like there are a lot of people doing stuff really well that, that, you know, we maybe popularized a long time ago.” – Chad Robertson (03:43)

• On bread culture evolution:
  “There wasn’t like everyone wasn’t obsessing over the crumb of their loaf and the long fermentation... I want to add something to the already amazing food culture that’s here.” – Chad Robertson (04:29)

• On bakery as a creative space:
  “It’s kind of like the most fun thing for me is just to bring other people together and learn from each other. But that was always like sort of doing it after hours... Now we’ve built like a space that’s dedicated to that and I’m super excited to just invite all my friends to come and do wonderful things together.” – Chad Robertson (08:51)

• On why ‘Alt Bau’:
  “I feel like, you know, I’m kind of an old building myself and I, I have a real, it just feels like the right name.” – Chad Robertson (10:34)

• Memorable banter:
  “We are. We’re a breaking news podcast now.” – David (12:45)
  “Yeah, this is. We’re basically CNN.” – Jessica (12:47)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:49–01:18: Announcing Chad Robertson’s participation and the exclusive nature of the episode
• 01:54–02:48: Jessica’s detailed description of the new Williamsburg bakery space
• 03:08–04:29: Chad discusses the transition from west coast, the original pizza concept, and bakery ambition
• 04:29–06:21: Bread culture, the evolution of Tartine, and Chad’s drive to innovate in New York
• 06:33–08:08: Chad’s philosophy on freshness, all-day baking, and rethinking bakery operations
• 08:44–09:59: The upstairs teaching and collaboration space
• 10:22–12:20: Origin and significance of the name “Alt Bau” and its cultural inspirations

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Overall Tone and Takeaway

The conversation is candid, passionate, and thoughtful, perfectly mirroring Chad Robertson’s inquisitive, experimental nature as a baker. Humor and warmth come through in the hosts’ banter and Chad’s humble, community-focused vision. Alt Bau is announced not simply as a new bakery, but as a new model for what a bakery can be: creative, inclusive, and a true gathering place for lovers of good bread and good company.

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For more:

• Follow Chad Robertson’s latest updates at @artinebaker.
• Stay up to date on future episodes by subscribing!

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Transcript

[A]

This episode is brought to you by King Arthur Bread Flour. So many of our bread recipes and pizza recipes call for bread flour, and here's why. With a higher protein content than all purpose flour, bread flour gives you strong, stretchy, elastic doughs that proof and bake gorgeously. Buying bread flour on our website or grocery store shelves, just look for the blue flour bag. From King Arthur Baking Company. This is things bakers know. I'm David Tamarkian, King Arthur Editorial director.

[B]

And I'm Jessica Batalana, staff editor at King Arthur Baking. And today, we're doing something we have never done before. We're popping into your feed with a very special bonus episode.

[C]

Ding dong, wake up.

[B]

Here we are. When our friend Chad Robertson, star baker of Tartine Bakery, joined our sourdough episode in May, he also gave us some insider information about a new project that he is opening in New York City. And when that episode aired, we weren't at liberty to share all the details of that project. But we are now. So we are sharing that segment of the interview with you here today.

[A]

Yeah. This is the most exciting bakery news of the year by far. I mean, I think so. It's exciting for me because, you know, it's just down the street in Brooklyn for me.

[B]

Yeah. I mean, it's also exciting because, like, have we ever broken news? Have you ever in your career broken news?

[A]

I've broken news many times, but it has been a while. Yes. I started in Hard News, cbs. Yeah. But this is exciting and I just, it's important enough that we wanted to share it. And I love, I also just love just sneaking up on our listeners to say, hi.

[B]

I was in New York in April when we were launching the Book of Pizza, and I had an opportunity, Chad is an old friend of mine, and I had an opportunity to go see the new space in Brooklyn. And it's just a stunning freestanding building in Brooklyn in Williamsburg, which I feel like is sort of a unicorn. Giant windows, flooded with light, beautiful walnut floors, and just like a very beautiful space with an upstairs that they'll use for education. It has a pastry room. It has a bread room. If you have been to any of the tartines, the Tartine manufactory, you know, just like that. They also have beautiful design in addition to beautiful breads and pastries. So the space is very stunning. And it's always fun to see a construction site and just see, you know, a bakery emerge out of that. So I'm super excited. I'm also very envious of you. Not for the first time and not for the last time.

[A]

Well, I was about to say it's great that you got an inside look because I suspect there will be lines and you'll never get in again.

[B]

Yeah. And I know how you feel about

[A]

lines, so I'm never going. I'm just, I'm going to live vicariously through this interview.

[C]

So enjoy this interview because.

[A]

Yes, let's hear it.

[C]

So I think that I probably speak for a lot of your fans in asking, like, what's happening now? Like, you've relocated from the west coast to the east Coast. What's going on? What are you up to?

[D]

Yeah, you know, yeah, it's been quite the journey, you know, kind of looking for new projects to do on my own. And I was connected with someone who's an investor and this guy was in New York and he's like, you know, I need someone to help me. I need someone to help set up like a sourdough pizza thing. And I was like, you know, that could be fun. I mean, no big deal. But, you know, we found, we were looking around in Manhattan, in Brooklyn, and we found this building in Brooklyn that was just a very special building, but it was much bigger than, you know, what the original idea of a small pizza place was. And we're not doing pizza. We'll do some version of something, but it's not a pizza place. There's so much good pizza in New York. It's just like, it's really an incredible time to be here. And it is, you know, kind of an all day cafe, bakery thing on the ground floor, like what you might expect. Although I'm really trying not to repeat anything I've done before just because I feel like there are a lot of people doing stuff really well that, that, you know, we maybe popularized a long time ago. And.

[B]

Yeah.

[D]

And you know, it wasn't there really. There wasn't like everyone wasn't obsessing over the crumb of their loaf and the long fermentation and, and the honey times, you know. Yeah, the croissants, I mean, like, croissants are just like insane. Like everyone's just, you know, battling, trying to make the most perfect, you know, and it's beautiful. But I, you know, it's kind of like I want to add something to the already amazing food culture that's here. So I'm really trying to do some different things. And, and a lot of it honestly is, is in the, the vein of what book three was, which. Which we worked on together.

[C]

Yeah.

[D]

And a lot of that stuff that was in that book, I mean, that was just sort of a free for all in my brain of like, whatever. And some of it, you know, sort of threw a lot of the wall, some of it stuck. But none of it, except for the oat porridge really has ever gone into production at Tartine. So, you know, there's a ton of kernels of ideas there. And then, you know, going back to the roots, that really influenced me when I first started, which is I've written a couple of pieces, one for Food Arts, sadly no longer with us. You know, you see all these chefs just doing really interesting things around the world. And bread was just kind of bread, you know, like you get it free in a restaurant. It's like, right, wow. Like, that's kind of a bummer, you know, like no one even wants to pay for it. But I was like, I was really inspired by what I saw going on around the world with chefs sort of pushing out of the boundaries of just, you know, Italian or French or whatever, traditional food that we all love and, you know, just having a little more fun with it. But that wasn't really happening in bread. And I feel like, you know, I was always saying, like, let's, let's have a little more fun and like, experiment a little more and just try to explore the diversity of the grain world, you know.

[C]

And so the tldr is that instead of consulting on a small sourdough pizza place, you're now opening an ambitious new all day bakery cafe in Williamsburg.

[D]

It's. It's an all day thing. It's the thing that I'm most excited about. I mean, we're making a bunch of good food all day long. And you know, as we do, I mean, that was another thing. I'll say that because I trained as a chef before a baker. Like when we opened tartine, I mean, traditionally, bakeries would bake all night, right? And then put a fill the shelves up and the bakers went home and the shopkeepers came in and they sold the stuff for a few hours and then start over again. We didn't. We like, I don't like working all night. I just, I just refused to do that also because I had a restaurant that was a dinner only restaurant, and I was there a lot. So it's like, you know, if I'm making croissants and bread, you know, at 6am and then going into Bar Tartine at 7 or 8 at night and working on stuff with them, and then there's no time to sleep so we're

[B]

not as young as we used to

[C]

be, Chad, but, you know.

[D]

Yeah, yeah, yeah, exactly. So. But the other thing is, like, I would rather hand someone a hot loaf of bread. I mean, when people would say, like, how did Tartine get so big? Or whatever? And it. It didn't for a really long time, by the way, but eventually it did. And a lot of it was just me traveling around, like learning from other people and being kind of an ambassador for whatever. Whatever it was I thought I was doing. It was a lot of fun and I learned a ton going around. But a lot of people knew about tartine because I was doing a lot of that. And even though it's just this tiny place on the corner, but for me, I was always like, let's just bake in real time, you know, small batch baking, like all that stuff that's very common now. That wasn't really the way most American bakeries operated. And then even like when I have chefs come and, you know, like when bread baking became more popular and lots of cooks and chefs wanted to make the transition to baking, they would come in and they would be like, man, this is like a restaurant. But like dinner service is 10 hours long. It's just non stop. Like, this is way, like you're not getting orders, you're just constantly making stuff and people are in line, you know, so. But we kind of approached, when we opened Tartine, we kind of approached it like a restaurant without just kind of giving people fresh stuff all day.

[C]

Is that what you're thinking about for the new spot too? That same sort of.

[D]

Yeah, it'll be that. And then, I mean, the part that I'm most excited about actually is upstairs is where we built like a kitchen. The mill is upstairs. It's basically a teaching space and a space that I can host friends from the city, friends from here, and friends from around the world, which, you know, we've always done that with tartine and bar tartine. And that's just because it's kind of like the most fun thing for me is just to bring other people together and learn from each other. But that was always like sort of doing it after hours or, you know, on a slow day or whatever. Now we've built like a space that's dedicated to that and I'm super excited to just invite all my friends to come and do wonderful things together. So. So it's, for me, it's, you know, it is an all day cafe bakery. But you know, even, even that part, like I said, I'm Everything's going to be new. Everything's going to be sort of. I'm trying to push it, you know, push everything in a direction. Like I said, I want to keep it in the sweet spot where people want to, you know, come a few days a week and get their staples. But, but something I want to add, I want to add to the already really inspiring community here.

[C]

So, so exciting. I can't wait.

[D]

I can't wait.

[C]

And I think a lot of people will be excited to, you know, to hear this news and to come and see you in this next chapter in this new place. I think it's fun to see creators who just keep pushing forward and, and you're definitely one of them. And can you tell us the name of the new spot?

[D]

The name is Alt Bau, which means old building. And when you see the building, you'll understand sort of why we were really smitten with the building. And then, you know, but also it's like I feel like, you know, I'm kind of an old building myself and I, I have a real, it just feels like the right name. We got friends in Texas, did the branding and it all just kind of came together very sort of naturally. Like part of the inspiration in the beginning was the Bauhaus. I've always just loved, it was a very short lived movement. But I always loved how they sort of just smashed together art and craft and kind of made, you know, made no, no distinction between the two. And this is just your life. And you know, I live a couple blocks away. It is going to be my life and I want to, I want to have like Tartin always had a ton of musicians and artists, you know, like making coffee in the morning. You know, it's like I want to, I want to have that kind of a hub where it's just, you know, people are there doing interesting things all the time. And so yeah, there was, there was some inspiration there. It's also a word that's easy for people to pronounce. Like, you know, like it's a, it's a little bit, you know, foreign, but like tartine, but easy enough. Yeah, so I was trying to strike that back balance but my partner was the one that actually, he spends a lot of time in Berlin and he loved that word. And I didn't know what it meant when I heard, I was like, I like that, I like that word. And then it all kind of made sense once we started and we're restoring the building. It's an old building, it's gorgeous. But you know, we're putting like reclaimed old growth walnut floors that came from a bakery in Long Island City from the late 1800s. So it's like we're really honoring the building and you know, it's just a very central location in Brooklyn. So it's going to be fun.

[C]

It's going to be fun. I can't wait to come see you there. Thanks for being so generous with your time and your knowledge for our listeners and for me personally and come break bread with you in Brooklyn real soon.

[D]

Looking forward to it. Thank you, Jess.

[C]

Thanks. Bye. Bye.

[B]

Man, I love breaking news. I hope we can do it more often.

[A]

We are. We're a breaking news podcast now.

[B]

Yeah, this is. We're basically cnn.

[A]

Yep, exactly the CNN at baking.

[B]

And you know, I know it is surprising that we hopped on with this bonus episode, but you know, when you've got news to share, you got to share it. So appreciate as always our listeners for listening.

[A]

Yep, yep. Remember to like and subscribe on Apple Podcasts, YouTube, Spotify, Amazon Music, or wherever you listen to podcasts. Because you never know when we're going to be popping in with a special breaking news episode.

[B]

You never know. And you could leave us a review while you're there. Or you could share this episode, this breaking news episode, or any of the other episodes with a friend.

[A]

And in the meantime, still vice holders forever. Follow the Recipe.

[B]

Follow the Recipe.

[A]

Things Bakers Know is hosted and executive

[C]

produced by me, David Tumarkin and me, Jessica Battalano.

[A]

Rossi Anastapoulo is our senior producer, Chad Chanay is our producer and Marcus Bagala is our engineer. Original music by Megan and Marcus Begala.

[B]

And also, big thanks to Chad Robertson, who's just the goat, for joining us on this week's episode. You can learn more about him and his new projects via his Instagram artinebaker.

[A]

Things Bakers Know is a King Arthur Baking Company podcast.

[B]

This episode is brought to you by Brod and Taylor. Brod and Taylor is an independent family owned company that builds tools for all bread bakers at every level to transform complex baking challenges into simple pleasures.

[A]

I love Brod and Taylor. I mean, they are so passionate about bread and baking. When I talk to those folks, it really feels like I'm talking to someone at King Arthur too. There's that synergy there because we only have one thing on our minds. It's baking, baking, baking. I love their tools.

[C]

They really, truly are an asset for every home baker.

[B]

And you and I both have quite a few of them in our own kitchens. You know, my favorite I think is the countertop proofer. I don't know you're into the baking steel, but they have a lot of great tools.

[A]

I love a baking steel.

[B]

Whether you're a first time baker or you're like in deep like us, there's something for [e-mail] that's B R O d a n d T a y l o r dot com.