Rustic Bread bakery opens in Port Jefferson

Rustic Bread isn’t the most apt name for Greg Wilson’s Port Jefferson bakery. It certainly does sell rustic sourdough loaves, focaccia and baguettes of the highest quality, but its calling card is a selection of laminated pastries unsurpassed on Long Island.

Laminated pastries — croissants, pains au chocolat, Danishes, mille-feuilles — contain hundreds of discrete layers of butter and yeasted dough so they bake up into incomparably light, flaky confections. Achieving those layers is a laborious process that entails encasing a slab of butter between two slabs of dough and then repeatedly rolling, folding, rerolling and refolding the package, all the while keeping it chilled so that the butter doesn’t melt. After about three days, the dough is ready to be cut, formed and baked.

At Rustic Bread, Wilson makes traditional croissants but also croissants whose exteriors are magically (and brightly) two-toned — or croissants that also share some salty-hearty DNA with pretzels; Danishes filled with cheese or apple, but also with cherry tomatoes, Calabrian peppers and Parmesan cheese. He also makes a mean kouign-amann (QUEEN-ah-MAHN), a Breton specialty that is, essentially, a superrich caramelized croissant baked in a muffin tin. Pastries range from $4 to $6.

The shop, which opened last April, is the culmination of almost 20 years of serious baking. Originally, Wilson’s focus was on sourdough bread — he made his first starter 18 years ago. An accomplished home baker, he started selling his "rustic bread" to local shops and at the Port Jefferson Farmers Market around 2017.

A few years later, he leased a spot in the village along the stepped sidewalk that leads from the municipal parking lot east of East Broadway to East Main Street. That passageway is officially known as "Baker’s Alley" and the spot Wilson took over was, in fact, the old bakery built in 1897. It took the next seven years for him to rebuild the interior, update the electrical system and buy new equipment and fixtures.

In the meantime, his head got turned by lamination. In 2019, he attended an international baking exposition in Las Vegas and had his "mind blown" by the pastries he saw there. First laminating by hand and then, later, using a mechanical "sheeter," he fell deeper down the rabbit hole.

"Bread is more forgiving," he explained, "you can make up for mistakes along the way. But with lamination, everything is a big deal — every little fold matters. If the ruler moves, it can ruin everything."

Wilson’s baking week starts on Tuesday but the shop is only open Friday through Sunday. He hopes to add more hours in the spring.

Rustic Bread, 128 E. Main St., Port Jefferson, Instagram: @rusticbread_portjeff, Open Friday 2 to 6 p.m., Saturday and Sunday 10 a.m. to 2 p.m.