NORTHAMPTON — When are you opening?
Sam Coates-Finke and Ana Valle have heard that question over and over since they bought the former Hungry Ghost Bread space at 62 State St. last December from Jonathan Stevens and Cheryl Maffei, with plans to reopen it under the name Choclo Bakery.
For a while, they didn’t have an answer. They’d finished renovations just two days before their son, Octavio “Oti,” was born. The community’s excitement is a gift, they said, but their new family has been the priority for the last 10 weeks.
Now, though, they’re ready to return.
Choclo Bakery opens Friday at 8 a.m. with a selection of sourdough breads, challahs and laminated pastries. On a typical week, customers can get baked goods and drip coffee from Thursday through Sunday, 8 a.m. to 2 p.m.
While built on the bones of Hungry Ghost Bread, Choclo Bakery is entirely Coates-Finke and Valle’s own creation — though it still carries forward the sense of community, family and love that made its predecessor a beloved institution.
“If we do good work, people will like what we do,” Coates-Finke said.
Named after the Peruvian corn featured in many of Valle’s childhood dishes, Choclo Bakery combines the expertise of its founders.
Originally from Peru, Valle baked for kitchens in Lima, Barcelona and Copenhagen. She has done everything from pizza dough to cakes, but her specialty is buttery, Nordic-style laminated pastries.
“I like what I do, I like the products I bake, and I like to see people eat what I bake,” Valle said. “We want to feed the community.”
Coates-Finke is the business’s connection to the city. For years, he has built wood-fired brick ovens and taught Jewish baking classes at synagogues in western Massachusetts. The Northampton native began baking in high school. His old classmates still talk of his breads, or the doughnuts he cooked in a clay oven when the power was out during the October 2010 storm.
“That’s the power of community and the power of food,” Coates-Finke said. “People remember what you baked for them to eat.”
Coates-Finke and Valle met through a mutual friend at a French vineyard. Coates-Finke came to build a brick oven on the property, and Valle visited the countryside. The two kept in touch, first as friends and then as a couple, periodically visiting each other around the globe. Coates-Finke recalls their first date in his family’s backyard, where they made pizzas in a wood-fired oven.
After baking in some of the world’s most vibrant culinary scenes, Valle said she was ready to open her own bakery. She and Coates-Finke considered Copenhagen and Barcelona, but when Hungry Ghost came up for sale, they chose to stay closer to home to open a bakery that caters to a hungry farm-to-table community.
Renovations started as soon as Valle moved to the United States on April 1. The place needed a new epoxy floor, fresh paint and a lot of cleaning. The front remains the checkout counter, but there are bars along the walls for people to eat and watch the open kitchen. Breads, small baked goods and laminated pastries each have their own section, but the centerpiece is still the original wood-fired oven in the center of the building.
When crafting the menu, the two bakers decide on the product and allow their tastes to develop the recipe. Items will rotate based on the seasons, with a focus on organic, high-quality ingredients from businesses in upstate New York, New England and the surrounding area, such as Boho Chocolate in Florence and Ground Up Grain in Holyoke.
“We want to sell something that we also want to eat,” Valle said.
Keeping with Coates-Finke’s background, Jewish baked goods, like challah and babka, will also be on the menu in time for Shabbat. In fact, all holidays will have extra goodies for people, since much of a holiday’s significance is centered around family and food, Coates-Finke said.
The timing of Choclo Bakery’s completion seemed almost preordained by Oti’s birth. The bakery’s improvements were finished two days prior, and the couple held a final test bake for their family and friends the day before going to the hospital. City permits were granted the day after their son was born.
The biggest pressure Valle feels is not from the community, but from her child. She and Coates-Finke will have to share their time between the two things they created, and they are the only staff. But if it takes a village to raise a child, then Northampton is ready to do what it can to support them.
