Oak Cliff Bread leases South Dallas storefront for its superb sourdoughs

A cottage bakery in Dallas' Oak Cliff neighborhood is opening a brick-and-mortar storefront: Oak Cliff Bread, which specializes in artisan sourdough and pastries, is opening a location in the buzzy Tyler Station at 1300 S. Polk St.

According to founder Tyler Rooney, who owns the bakery with his wife, Chayanne, they'll open in the fall.

UPDATE 10-22-2023: Oak Cliff Bread has debuted in its new location, where it's open Thursday-Friday-Saturday from 8 am to 3 pm.

-----------------------------------------------------------------------------

The couple, who were both professional chefs and met while working at restaurants in Austin, founded the concept out of their home in 2020. Chayanne had been working for Joy Macarons and Tyler was baking bread at Macellaio in the Bishop Arts District, which closed during the pandemic. They decided it was time to launch their own thing.

They've won over locals with their sourdough breads, croissants, cruffins, Danish, cookies, and other treats, which they've been selling at the Dallas Farmers Market every Saturday morning; and also out of their home, with two bakes per week on Wednesdays and Saturdays, via delivery or porch pickup.

Their breads are epic, including sourdough made with few ingredients such as flour, water, and salt, and naturally leavened. Plus options such as baguettes, and multi-grain loaves appealingly coated in seeds.

One other thing that makes them unique is their steadfast championing of local wheat, using grains grown by Barton Springs Mill.

"Highlighting locally grown grains is a big focus for us," he says. "We get it delivered in wheat-berry form and mill [grind] it ourselves. It really makes a difference on the flavor, and we love supporting the use of heirloom grains."

They were originally baking in small batches in cast iron pans, but the business kept growing. They procured a Belgian-made Rofco oven designed for baking bread to help increase their output.

"But pretty soon, it was taking over the laundry room and the kitchen, and we began to see the wisdom of getting an actual space," Tyler says.

Tyler Station is the collaborative village in Southern Dallas founded by visionary developer Monte Anderson, which is home to dozens of indie businesses.

"Crumb and Kettle's lease was ending and the timing was perfect," Tyler says. "The space is 1,000 square feet, which is ideal for us. We'll be open three days a week, Thursday-Friday-Saturday, we'll start small with two bakes a week, similar to what we do now."

In the interim, they'll take some time off from their Dallas Farmers Market stint so they can prepare the space.

"We're going to build a beautiful retail spot with bread on the shelves, coffee, open at 8 am and hopefully to sell out every day," he says.

Bigger space means bigger oven.

"We have a bread oven coming this week that'll be three times the size of what we have now - we can bake everything in two hours instead of eight hours, I can't wait," he says.

-------------------------------

CORRECTION: This story originally incorrectly stated that the bakery would go into the Wax Space space. Apologies for the error which has been corrected.