Say it ain’t dough.
After 124 years, Caputo’s Bake Shop, a fixture of Brooklyn neighborhood Carroll Gardens, has baked its last loaf of Italian bread. And owner James Caputo is overwhelmed at the thought of saying goodbye.
“I haven’t cried since I was a child, and I thought I never would again,” Caputo, 54, told The Post of the wrenching, sudden decision to close the family business that his Sicilian immigrant great-grandfather originally opened at the dawn of the 20th century.
“I can’t stop getting emotional over this. But at the same time, a burden has been lifted from my shoulders.”
A staple of the Brooklyn neighborhood it has called home since horse-and-carriages rolled on its streets, Caputo’s was a carboholic’s dream.
“It’s like a part of your childhood is being ripped away,” Danielle Caminitti, a former Carroll Gardens resident who was a customer since her youth, told The Post.
Known for their crisp loaves of Italian bread, savory, meat-filled lard bread, and an array of Old- and New-World desserts, Caputo said he’d been grappling with closing up the bake shop, considering the demanding schedule that comes with being a baker as he nears retirement age.
In kneed of a break
“After 25 years of running a business that operates 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, it was time,” said Caputo, who at one point would arrive for work at 2 a.m. and missed countless family events.
“It’s gotten [to be] a lot for me. The only people who don’t ask why we are closing are the ones in the bakery business, because they completely understand.”
After conferring with his family and grappling with the decision to give up the business he took over from his father Joe, Caputo ruled out passing it on to anybody else due to its deep family history.
He also figured that if he announced he was closing in advance, he would reverse course.
“It’s the most difficult decision I ever had to make in my entire life,” Caputo, who was born and raised around the bakery and even lived upstairs from it growing up, told The Post.
“It finally got to the point where I said, ‘I have to do this,’ and if I didn’t rip the Band-Aid off all at once, it would never happen. I would be there ’til the day I die. So I held my breath, sat down in front of my computer, and started typing my last goodbye.”
On Monday morning, April 27, he taped his farewell letter on the bakery’s door: “It is with immense sadness that I am writing to tell you the flame in our oven has been lit for the last time,” he proclaimed in part, adding, “Last night was the last night of production.”
In its wake, a baker’s dozen of flabbergasted New Yorkers are paying their hunger-inducing respects.
“My life hasn’t been the same since, with all of the messages I’ve been getting,” Caputo said, referring to an outpouring of emotion from generations of fans whose lives have been entwined with the bake shop like a loaf of twisted bread. New Yorker food critic Helen Rosner even called Caputo’s “the epitome” of Italian bakeries.
‘Please, please change your mind!!’
Many mourners have turned the shop’s doorstep into a makeshift shrine, taping well wishes on its windows — “There is love and gratitude and now … grief,” read one, while another urged, “Please, please change your mind!!” — and leaving flowers at the doorstep.
The local Sacred Hearts & St. Stephen Catholic Parish in the neighborhood went so far as to post on Instagram: “For generations, it was more than a bakery. Sunday mornings after church, holidays, family traditions — you could taste the love and history in everything they made.”
“Ever since I was little, I remember having their loaves of lard bread,” former nabe resident Caminitti explained to The Post.
“Everything was delicious, from their Sicilian olive bread and taralli. Every week we’d have their semolina bread with Sunday sauce as a family, and every morning I’d have their cranberry walnut bread,” continued Caminitti, author of the cookbook “From Courtroom to Cucina: 70 Authentic Recipes that Took Me From Litigation to Salivation.”
“It’s like the famous expression: ‘Crying with a loaf of bread under your arm,’ but I guess I’m crying without the bread under it now,” she lamented.
Joe Isodori, the chef and restaurateur behind Arthur and Son’s and a former Carroll Gardens resident who previously featured the bakery in his recurring culinary web series, told The Post that Caputo’s was special because “it was like time stopped when you walked inside.”
“The same people who baked the bread were the ones behind the counter, which you don’t see anymore. There also weren’t a million loaves on the counter; they only baked enough for them to do business that day.”
Isodori also recalled waiting in line for bread.
“It was a communal experience and a gathering space; you weren’t just there to buy bread. It was like standing with the neighborhood,” he said.
“What made the decision to close even more difficult is that business has been great,” said Caputo.
Recipe for success
When Caputo’s great-grandfather first immigrated to America to settle in Carroll Gardens, the shop was a simpler affair amid an array of similar establishments in the Italian enclave.
“When my dad was a child, he remembers around 15 bakeries in this neighborhood alone,” he reminisced to The Post.
“At first, we didn’t make a huge variety: just plain bread, seeded bread, and maybe a brown bread. But through the years, bakeries started closing as the neighborhood changed.”
Caputo said their secret to success was adapting to their surroundings.
“I think that’s been the key to our longevity,” he mused, noting that eventually they added desserts and pastries like croissants.
At the same time, he did not think he’d someday be running the joint.
“I saw what they went through, the struggle, and I said to myself, ‘That’s not gonna be me.’ I almost thought I was smarter than my dad; meanwhile, my grandfather forbade me to go into the bakery business. They wanted a different life for me.”
With that, Caputo went to college and began working in finance.
But fate had other plans, and by the time he was in his mid-20s, he felt drawn back to his family history.
“I convinced him that I should take over, and with that, I hit the ground running, and we really built it up.”
He also boosted their robust delivery business, sourcing bread to delis and restaurants, including sandwich aces Court Street Grocers.
Now, Caputo says he is looking forward to spending time with his family, including his patient wife, who dealt with his formerly early mornings and long days.
“My wife has always been there for me. When my older sons were young, I never really spent that much time with them. I missed every one of their baseball, soccer and lacrosse games,” he said.
“I wanna spend every minute that I can with my family and really enjoy them. And that’s really why I made my decision,” Caputo continued.
“Plus, I’ll be in a better mood without the weight of the business on my shoulders.”
His first endeavor, in fact, is to surprise his wife with plans to go to Europe; the last time they left the country was for their honeymoon in the ’90s.
“I haven’t told her yet,” Caputo said. “But put it in your article. Maybe it’ll be better if she reads it there.”
