Levain Bakery

Pam Weekes and Connie McDonald are best friends and accomplished bakers who started out baking bread for some of New York City’s favorite restaurants. After stints in the fashion and finance industries in the late 1980s, the two eventually gave up their day jobs to open a small bread shop on West 74th Street. They called it Levain Bakery, borrowing the French word for “leavened bread.” It was 1995, and the small Levain team lovingly baked every loaf, baguette, roll, and cookie by hand every day. Now 30 years later, everything is still made and baked by hand daily, and Pam and Connie have brought the joy of Levain to more neighborhoods and cookie enthusiasts around the country. Their cozy shop has become a neighborhood favorite and a destination for epicurious travelers from around the world.Claudine Ko is a journalist and writer who lives on the Upper West Side of New York City.

“Among local cookie mavens, they’re considered as much a New York culinary icon as a Katz’s hot dog or a Di Fara slice. Tourists bucket-list them. New Yorkers line up for them.”—New York magazine“There’s a reason we’ve called its chocolate chip-walnut cookie one of the best chocolate chip cookies in America.”—Food & Wine"Weighing in at slightly less than half a pound, Levain's could-be-meals cookies are big, but you'll still wish you had just one more bite after you've finished."—Travel & Leisure

• Chapter 1: Creating the StarterChapter 2: Making the DoughChapter 3: Shaping the LoavesChapter 4: Baking the BreadChapter 5: Sharing the Love