ALL RISE

A new Afghan bakery, in New York's golden age of bread.

- BY HANNAH GOLDFIELD

Diljan, in Brooklyn, specializes in naan-e panjayi, a classic Afghan flatbread.

The other day, while shopping for dried figs and pink, plum-soaked sesame seeds at the East Village spice store SOS Chefs, I asked the baker and cookbook author Bryan Ford where in the city he'd go for a baguette or a croissant. “I wouldn't!” Ford, who is thirty-six, barrel-chested, and bearded, with a propensity for four-letter words, said, laughing. “That’s just not what I crave.”

Born in the Bronx and raised in New Orleans, Ford specializes in breads that can be harder to find in New York: sourdough pan de coco (soft, sweet dinner rolls made with coconut milk, a staple in his parents’ native Honduras); conchas and other Mexican pan dulce; pan chapla, an anise-scented Peruvian loaf that is leavened with chicha de jora, a fermented corn beverage. I first met him in 2023, when he served me a phenomenal alfajor—a sandwich cookie made with shortbread and dulce de leche—at the Family Reunion, the chef Kwame Onwuachi’s annual food festival; for a while, he baked bread for Tatiana, Onwuachi’s acclaimed restaurant at Lincoln Center. Last year, Ford published “Pan y Dulce,” a followup to his first cookbook, “New World Sourdough” (2020). Both books are part of his mission to “decolonize the baking world,” as he sometimes puts it, by showcasing the breadth and complexity of Latin American and Caribbean baking.