Tal Glezerman is tired. She hasn’t slept properly in a year: a baby at home and a brand new bakery will do that to a person.
“Even waking up at one am, two am, I have no problem doing it,” she says. “Even if I’m so tired, just because I’m so excited to just put dough in the oven and see how it comes out. It’s just very satisfying and fun, and I love the process.”
That devotion is the engine behind Brooklyn Sour, the sourdough bakery Glezerman launched out of her Brooklyn apartment during the pandemic and has now brought to High Falls. The bakery opened its first brick-and-mortar storefront at 1219 Route 213 (the former Kitchenette space, kitty-corner to Ollie’s) the first weekend in May.
Opening weekend drew far more customers than she ever expected.”We definitely did not anticipate how many people would show up,” Glezerman says. “Our kitchen team is still kind of small. We had fun, but it was very overwhelming and tiring—but now we’re preparing better.”
Word had clearly gotten out. Glezerman had been selling bread at the High Falls Co-op for nearly two years before the storefront opened, and many of the people who showed up on opening weekend already knew her work. “A lot of them have been my customers for a couple years now, whether they buy my stuff at the co-op or order directly from me,” she says. “So they know about the product from before.”
The Brooklyn Sour origin story follows a familiar pandemic arc. Glezerman, who moved to the US from Tel Aviv in 2017 and had previously worked as a chef, found herself at a crossroads around 2019. “I left the kitchen world because I was kind of done with it,” she says. “It was not the lifestyle I was looking for anymore.” Then, like so many others in early 2020, she started a sourdough starter. Unlike most, she never stopped.
“I really fell in love with it,” she says, “and all of a sudden my neighbors asked to buy my bread and one thing led to another.” She began selling at a local farmstand and doing drop-offs across the borough, baking through the night and delivering by day. The whole operation ran out of her apartment.
She and her wife had long talked about moving to the Hudson Valley. “I always, for funzies, looked upstate on the apps,” Glezerman says. One day a listing stopped her cold: a property in Marbletown. “I immediately told my wife, sit down. We have to see this thing.” A couple days later they were up to look at it. The next day they put in an offer. They moved up in May 2024 and never looked back.
In Marbletown, she kept baking under a home processing permit, much as she had in Brooklyn. Wholesale orders, pop-ups, direct sales, bread stocked at the High Falls Co-op down the road. A brick-and-mortar was always the next step; she just didn’t know where it would land. “It grew, I want to say, naturally,” she says. “The plan originally was to open the store in Brooklyn and we ended up moving up here to Marbletown. I’m really happy that it happened here.”
Finding the right space took time. Commercial rentals in the area were limited, and the infrastructure requirements for a working bakery narrowed the options further. The space in downtown High Falls checked every box. “It was a blank slate,” she says. “The landlord did a renovation to the property.” Renovations on her end began in December.
The interior was designed in collaboration with Amalia Graziani of Callisto Farms, an interior designer whose style immediately appealed to Glezerman. Together they aimed for something she describes as “a Paris boulangerie meets the Hudson Valley,” warm and welcoming, beautiful but not cold, minimalist without feeling spare.
The menu is built around sourdough across the board: breads, pastries, baked goods, all made on site. Bestsellers so far include a simple white loaf, spiced rye, olive and herb fougasse, honey sriracha focaccia, bagels, croissants, and the apple Danish. “I can’t tell you what [was most popular], because we sold out in an hour and a half, both days,” Glezerman says. Prepared foods and sandwiches are on the horizon as the team expands, but for now the focus is on doing what’s already working. “We just want to take it one step at a time so we do things right and the quality that we want things to be.”
Alongside the baked goods, the shop carries a curated selection of retail items from local producers: eggs from a nearby farm, mushrooms and dried goods from Sugar Shack Mushrooms, locally made granola, and other provisions sourced as close to home as possible. “We really focus on local,” Glezerman says. The coffee program is still a work in progress but the broader retail vision is squarely rooted in the Hudson Valley.
What she wants Brooklyn Sour to become, over time, is something the neighborhood can rely on. “I want it to be a place where people can come in and stay and hang out and maybe a community hub,” she says. She envisions regulars greeted by name, orders known without asking, the kind of place that becomes an anchor in daily life.
During our conversation, more than a few people wandered up to the storefront hoping to get a look inside. Glezerman is working to meet the demand. “I’m trying every week to add a baker,” she says. Down the line she’s open to expanded hours, events, and possibly even a liquor license. Being open five days a week is the goal.
“The community here is extremely welcoming and extremely supportive, which made everything so much easier,” she says. “I really cannot think of anywhere else I’d want to open this business.”
Brooklyn Sour is located at 1219 Route 213 in High Falls. Open Friday through Sunday: Fridays with a smaller selection, full menu Saturdays and Sundays. Follow @bklyn_sour for updates.
