Brooklyn Sour brings Mediterranean sourdough and pay-as-you-can baking to High Falls

A long-vacant storefront at 1219 NY-213 in High Falls is getting a new bakery identity, and Brooklyn Sour is making that identity unmistakably sourdough-first. The shop is moving into the Main Street space across from the old Egg’s Nest, a location that has sat empty long enough to make any new tenant feel like part of the village’s next chapter.

Brooklyn Sour is the work of Tal Glezerman, a trained chef who spent years in kitchens before turning a pandemic sourdough project into a full business. That path matters. A sourdough bakery is not just a place that sells bread; it is a place where fermentation time shapes the menu, where starter management becomes business planning, and where the product mix has to justify the pace of real breadmaking. Brooklyn Sour’s lineup does exactly that, stretching well beyond a standard country loaf.

The bakery’s best sellers already point to its identity: a spiced rye loaf, halva babka, honey sriracha focaccia, olive-and-herb fougasse and bagels. Those are not generic counter items. They suggest a bakery built around bold flavor, longer production windows and a customer base that wants bread with personality, not just convenience. The spiced rye loaf, in particular, reads like the shop’s calling card, a bread that connects sourdough technique with the Mediterranean and Middle Eastern influences Glezerman brings from her own background.

Glezerman was born in Albany and grew up in Israel, and that food culture shows up in the way Brooklyn Sour treats sourdough as both craft and cultural bridge. The bakery’s website says it is building a new home in High Falls and creating a place for good bread, good coffee and real connection, but the bigger signal is in the economics. The work is labor-intensive, ingredient costs are high, and Brooklyn Sour is trying to balance quality with affordability instead of turning bread into a luxury item.

That is where the pay-as-you-can program changes the story. In a small hamlet where Main Street businesses help define daily life, the bakery is being positioned as more than a destination for bread enthusiasts. A Good Food Jobs posting described Brooklyn Sour as women-owned and queer-owned, with fair, livable wages, no-tips pay and healthcare benefits, reinforcing the idea that the shop is being built as a community anchor as much as a retail counter.

The setting gives the opening extra weight. High Falls Kitchenette ran at 1219 Route 213 for 41 years before closing on March 20, 2022, and the property has since been listed as a newly renovated 5,500-square-foot retail and restaurant space with about 20,000 cars passing each day. In a historic core tied to the Delaware and Hudson Canal and the broader Roebling legacy, Brooklyn Sour is arriving in a place where old infrastructure and new small business energy have always had to share the same street.