Antique Bakery - Hoboken, NJ

We couldn’t leave Hoboken without bread today. For as long as I have lived in New Jersey, I have always heard that the best bread for hoagies, and the best loaves of Italian bread come from Hoboken. Well, we’ll just have to see for ourselves. With that said, Zelda did a little Google search on the iPad to see where some of the good bakeries were, and the one that kept coming up was The Antique Bakery. We rolled up in front of this one on Willow Street, and were lucky enough to find parking even. Standing outside was the an older gentleman who happened to work in the store. He was probably in his 70’s or 80’s, and he didn’t move fast in the least. But at his age, why should he really?


The place was small and narrow. To the left was a deli style counter, and on the wall behind it were shelves full of various breads. Anything from big round panellas to baguettes, to smaller rolls, to torpedo rolls, etc. There were quite a few different kinds. On top of the counter were all kinds of stuffed breads, from pepperoni and cheese, to broccoli, to focaccia, garlic bread, etc. We ended up picking up a loaf of the garlic bread, a pepperoni bread, some sub type rolls for cheese steaks, and a good old loaf of Italian bread.

Needless to say, the Italian bread that we had last night with dinner was delicious. The crust on the outside is flakey and crunchy, while the inside was nice and soft. It was delicious with some olive oil and dried herbs. The pepperoni bread left a little to be desired when eaten fresh out of the wrapper, however, this really comes alive with just a light toast in the toaster oven. This seems to be more of an egg based bread, having that yellow color, and the very dense dough. The cheese and the pepperoni were very nice, and it wasn’t all that greasy.

I was really curious to see what I could find out about this bakery, and it’s history. In doing my research however, I was very surprised to see that they place has only been around for 14 years. I thought for certain there would be a great Cinderella story about the gentleman who was working there, and about his great great great grandfather who had originally started the business. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

I did however find out some interesting information, and that is the simple fact that they do all of their baking via coal oven. No fancy convection ovens here, just down and dirty coal. I will say that whatever their method, it works as the bread was delicious! Some comments I found online and interesting are here: “May be the best bread I've had. I think the only piece of electrical equipment in the store is the cash register.” This quote definitely is referring to the coal. And a final comment I saw: “This place is amazing. Buy your bread here. The old gentleman who serves you is worth the price of admission; he carries himself with an air of dignity that you can't imagine coming from today's grocery stores.”

At the end of the day, all I can say is that it was definitely worth the $11 and change, and it was some darn tasty bread! I’m really looking forward to the rolls tomorrow for some cheese steaks! Cheers!

Antique Bakery
122 Willow Avenue
Hoboken, NJ 07030-3670
Phone: (201)714-9323