photo by: File

1900 Barker Bakery and Cafe, at 1900 Barker Ave., shown in this file photo from July 2015.

It is one thing to have room to bake bread. It is another to have room to break it. A popular eastern Lawrence bakery has announced plans to open a new location on Massachusetts Street to give it more room to both bake and break.

The folks at 1900 Barker Bakery and Cafe have announced plans to move into the vacant space at 816 Massachusetts St., which used to house Alchemy Coffee. The Massachusetts Street space will be in addition to the business’ current location, which is a former neighborhood laundromat building at the corner of 19th and Barker. That location has about 10 seats total, while the Massachusetts spot will have about five times that.

“We make all these beautiful breads, and we don’t have the space to serve them very well,” Jake Sloan, general manager for Barker, told me.

The new location will provide a lot more seating, but it also has a large kitchen, Sloan said. That means the new location likely will have a larger menu, but details on that front haven’t yet been finalized, Sloan said.

“More breakfast and more lunch items, and we’ll see where we go from there,” Sloan said. “We would love to see some version of happy hour and dinner service at some point.”

photo by: Chad Lawhorn/Journal-World

Alchemy Coffee at 816 Massachusetts St. is pictured on June 9, 2022.

Don’t worry, though; “bread and pastry stuff” will continue to be a staple, just as it is at the Barker location. If you are unfamiliar, the little Lawrence bakery already has a national reputation. Food & Wine magazine in 2020 named 1900 Barker one of the 100 best bakeries in America, the only Kansas bakery to make the list. In 2022, it again listed the bakery as it named the best bread spot in every state, highlighting its sourdough specials like jalapeño cheddar and sage walnut varieties.

Sloan said the bakery’s breads have gained a lot of acclaim, and he said the company bakes a lot of bread for other restaurants and commercial accounts. But he said pastries have been what draws most customers into the 19th and Barker location. He said regular features like raspberry danishes, morning buns and ham and cheese croissants frequently sell out at the current location.

Those items are likely to transfer over to the new location, but look for the breads to get more attention too. Sloan said a lack of space has made it more difficult to emphasize the bread portion of the business. It takes a certain amount of space to not only bake bread but then turn it into a sandwich or pair it with a soup offering or such dishes.

photo by: Richard Gwin

Loaves of wheat bread at 1900 Barker Bakery & Cafe

Also, look for more coffee to be on the menu. The space at 816 Massachusetts St. was created to be a coffee shop — and one of the larger ones in downtown — when it operated as Alchemy. Sloan said plans call for Barker to expand what it offers in the coffee department, though he did not provide details.

One thing that likely won’t make its way to the Massachusetts Street location is doughnuts. The same individuals who own 1900 Barker Bakery and Cafe also have an ownership interest in Taylor’s Donuts, which is the shop at 1827 Louisiana St., across from Lawrence High School.

Sloan said that location’s kitchen serves as the main pastry kitchen for the company, but it likely will not supply actual doughnuts to the new Massachusetts Street location because the owners want to keep the doughnut business focused on the 19th and Louisiana location.

Some of you may remember that Taylor’s Donuts took years to open as it remodeled, coincidentally, another old laundromat building. Sloan said it won’t take that long for the company to open the Massachusetts Street spot. He said an opening date hasn’t been determined, but said it likely would be in a couple of months or so.

Sweet tarts and savory galettes at 1900 Barker are pictured. The bakery switches up the selection of flavors on the menu based on what fresh fruit is available from local producers.