artic bakehouse, Prague: Icelandic Sourdough at the Foot of Petřín
My brain has stubbornly called that bakery "arctic bakehouse" from day one. For a long time I assumed the mistake was mine, but it's the other way around: the Arctic really does carry that second c. It's the bakery that dropped one of them on purpose and nowhere explains why - so my head just keeps doggedly correcting a spelling the bakery broke on purpose.
Artic bakehouse is a craft bakery run by two Icelanders who brought Nordic sourdough, croissants and caramel rolls to Czechia and have been supplying Prague with them since 2018.
From Cake of the Year to Sourdough
In 2017 David Arnórsson won Iceland's Cake of the Year award. Plenty of people would have built a pastry shop on a win like that; he turned on his heel and went into bread instead. A year after the win he opened the first shop on Prague's Újezd with his childhood friend Gudbjartur Gudbjartsson. Gudbjartsson was brought to Prague by his Czech wife, and Arnórsson by Gudbjartsson - and they split the roles to match their temperaments: David bakes, Gudbjartur runs the business and the numbers. On the bakery's website David introduces himself with the line: "My name is David... and remember - I am bread!"
Baking carries a weight in Iceland that apprentices back home in Czechia can only dream of: according to Arnórsson the training there takes six years, and he compares it to studying medicine. In practice that means a sourdough starter that matures for sixteen to eighteen hours and flour from stone mills. Prague was going through a sourdough wave of its own by the time they arrived - Antonínovo pekařství got it going, Praktika in Karlín mills its own flour, and craft bread is baked all over the city these days. But in all that crowd only one bakery has an Icelandic pedigree.
What Comes Out of the Oven on Újezd
The loaves get names of their own here, and the names stick to the company spelling: the sourdough Artic Monk, the mixed-flour Old Charles with anise and caraway, a rye bread that ferments for three whole days. Alongside them, butter croissants, iced cinnamon rolls and the Icelandic specialty ástarpungar, fried doughnuts whose name politely translates as "balls of love". It isn't cheap - a loaf of bread runs over 100 CZK (4 EUR) - and the queues never get any shorter. They don't skimp on ingredients, though, and you can see that in the display case.
Three Shops and Not a Single Chair
The bakery has three shops in Prague - besides Újezd there are ones on Myslíkova Street and Štefánikova Street - and all of them sell over the counter only. There's nowhere to sit inside, but you get to watch the bakers' hands at work, because next to nothing separates the workshop from the shop floor. On Újezd the answer is obvious: take your coffee and pastry with you and sit down a few steps away on a bench at the foot of Petřín.
Up Petřín With a Caramel Roll
This time I walked to the bakery from Anděl on my way up to Petřín - Újezd is right on the route and the window is impossible to miss. I walked out with a chocolate croissant for 80 CZK (3.20 EUR) and a caramel roll for 70 CZK (2.80 EUR) and stayed at the counter a while longer watching the bakers get enormous baguettes ready; the one lining them up was smiling at the baguettes and the customers alike. The croissant broke into crisp layers, and instead of the usual smear of chocolate it held a piece of chocolate that other places would spread across three pastries. The roll was the size of my palm, the caramel was piled on in a shameless layer, and the nuts were still crunching on that bench at the foot of Petřín. I made it up to the lookout tower afterward without stopping once.
artic bakehouse
