Zak the Baker – Wynwood's kosher sourdough since 2012

On the corner of NW 26th Street, in the mural-covered blocks of Miami's Wynwood Arts District, a brightly-hued bakery stands with queues already forming by mid-morning. Zak the Baker began in 2012, when Zak Stern, a Miami native who had walked away from pharmacy school in 2007 to apprentice with bakers, winemakers and cheesemakers across Sweden, Tuscany, France and Israel, started a cottage bakery in a friend's garage in South Miami. Within weeks, lines were forming at the local farmers' market, everyone waiting for the bread to arrive. By 2014 that cottage project had grown into a brick-and-mortar bakery and café of its own in Wynwood, run under full kosher supervision. The bakery is Selected in the MICHELIN Guide, a listing it has held every year since 2022, prized for naturally leavened sourdough, challah and a scratch kitchen built around Miami's own produce.

01The room and the setting

In 2016 the bakery moved a few doors down and converted a 7,000-square-foot former art gallery into its current home, keeping bread and pastry production wide open so guests can watch the process from the café tables. The space now runs to a 125-seat café, a production kitchen and a retail counter, with some 85 staff across baking, pastry and service. Walk-ins are welcome, though weekend mornings get busy enough that booking ahead is worthwhile.

02The baker

Zak Stern grew up in Miami and was headed for pharmacy school before leaving in 2007 to apprentice on farms in Sweden, Tuscany, France and Israel, learning bread, wine and cheese over the following five years. He came home in 2012 and began baking out of a friend's garage in South Miami, selling at the local farmers' market before the business took his name. The city noticed fast: Miami New Times named him Best Baker in its 2013 Best of Miami awards, and a year later the Wynwood shop won Best Bakery while Stern collected the Baking & Pastry Chef of the Year award at Johnson & Wales' JWU Zest Awards. In 2017 he was a semifinalist for the James Beard Foundation's Outstanding Baker title, a recognition the bakery has since picked up again more than once.

Insider tip

Closed Saturdays for Shabbat; reservations advised for weekend mornings.

03Kosher by marriage, not by birth

The kosher turn was personal rather than doctrinal: Stern married Batsheva Wulfsohn, an Israeli, and her wish to keep a kosher home extended to the bakery itself, bringing full rabbinical supervision and Shabbat closures into the business. A glatt-kosher delicatessen followed in January 2017, opening a block away in the bakery's old storefront once the main operation had outgrown it. Today the kitchen works under Miami-Dade Kosher certification, with a mashgiach on site six days a week and weekly inspection by Rabbi Spitz; the café and bakery close every Saturday and on the major Jewish holidays.

04The cooking and what to order

The ovens turn out naturally leavened sourdough, baguettes and challah every morning, alongside the breads that built Stern's reputation: a dense Jewish rye and an olive and za'atar batard. The same dough room once produced a walnut and cranberry loaf sold through Miami restaurants and farmers' markets before the café existed. Pastry leans on Stern's Miami upbringing as much as his European training, with croissants and cakes alongside a concha filled with mamey cream, a fruit more at home in Havana or Caracas than in Vienna.

05When to go and the neighbourhood

Zak the Baker opens Sunday to Friday from seven in the morning to five in the afternoon and closes completely on Saturdays, in observance of Shabbat and the major Jewish holidays. Reservations are recommended for weekend mornings, though walk-ins are always welcome. Since 2024 the business has grown backwards rather than outwards, buying and working its own farmhouse in South Florida to supply the produce and grain behind its bread and its seasonal savoury kitchen. The bakery still wholesales to Whole Foods Market, but its own café, among Wynwood's murals and galleries, remains the place to taste the week's bread while it is still warm.

For a weekend. For a lifetime.