A ‘little village’ in Brooklyn
French Cobble Hill baker sets sights on post-pandemic Montague Street storefront
BY CRAIG HUBERT
Gautier Coiffard didn’t
start baking until two years
ago.
Living in Cobble Hill with
his partner (now fi ancé),
he was missing the French
bread of his native country
and was looking for ways to
keep busy. With a lot of practice,
he advanced into making
croissants, fi nding along
the way that he possessed
skills in the kitchen he had
never previously explored.
“There aren’t really any
bakers in my family, but I
would beg my mom to make
Clafoutis as a child,” Coiffard
said. “We would pick the
cherries from our backyard
together and that’s the earliest
memory I have of baking.”
The pandemic changed
things. Coiffard had been
giving some of his baked
creations to friends and colleagues
and decided, with
trepidation, to open it up to
the public in June 2020. Orders
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COURIER L 12 IFE, AUGUST 13-19, 2021
started to arrive, almost
too many to handle. Soon
enough, baking transitioned
from a hobby to a career,
and L’Appartement 4F was
born.
For much of the last year,
with people either working
from their apartments or
their full-time employment
having suddenly evaporated,
a burgeoning home-cooking
scene emerged in Brooklyn,
with chefs and bakers taking
small orders and making
home deliveries. But
now, as the pandemic begins
to wane, some cooks desire
more space than the stereotypical
city kitchen provides.
The side-hustle is becoming
a full-time business.
Following their success,
L’Appartement 4F has
launched a Kickstarter to
help them fund some of the
more pricey aspects of opening
a French bakery, which
they plan to do on Montague
Street in Brooklyn Heights
this fall. They plan to take
over the storefront at 115
Montague, formerly occupied
by the Emack & Bolio’s
ice cream parlor. So far, they
have raised more than $40,000
of their $50,000 goal.
“We love Brooklyn and the
bakery was born here,” Coiffard
said. “One quick walk
down the street, we knew we
wanted to be a part of this
neighborhood.”
They’re hoping that the
bakery can play a role in the
revitalization of Montague
Street, which, like many
other commercial stretches
of Brooklyn, has lost a lot of
businesses over the past year.
“The street is absolutely
beautiful and we are very
honored to now be part of it,”
Coiffard said. “In the past few
weeks we have been meeting
a lot of people from the neighborhood
and we really like
the ‘little village’ feeling.”
Coiffard wearing a ‘Croissant’
shirt. L’Appartement 4F
The storefront at 115 Montague St. in 2017. Photo by Susan De Vries
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