Five new Melbourne bakeries rise to the occasion

Brace, bread fanciers. Five new bakeries are coming in hot

On January 14, former North Melbourne barber All the Kings Men at 558 Queensberry Street will become Bread Club, the lifetime ambition of second-gen French baker Tim Beylie and fellow expat Brice Antier.

Both bread lifers, the pair met at Vue de Monde when Beylie was heading up the bread program. Their CVs also star Woodfrog, Tivoli Road and Baker D Chirico. Bread Club will specialise in traditional sourdough, using sustainable flours, as well as croissants, pies and sandwiches that encase rotating fillings inspired by their own French heritage and that of their Croatian and Iranian partners.

This might result in Persian potato salad baguettes, a Croatian pickled pork and pickled cabbage sandwich inspired by sarma, cabbage rolls or pies filled with fesenjoon, a walnut pomegranate stew.

Named for the duo's love of music (Beylie moonlights as DJ Baguette), they're planning Sunday sessions with DJs and greasy snacks for North Melbourne's dustiest.

St Kilda's sugar fiends can rejoice that Sydney's Black Star Pastry has landed in the vicinity for a summer residency. Following the bakery's 2017 pop-up in Carlton, this time you'll find them beneath the Rain Room at the Jackalope Pavillion until Easter, serving their celebrity-status strawberry watermelon cake, as well as their dragon and lemon zen cakes, danishes, "ginger ninja" cookie and St Ali Coffee. A permanent store will be part of the Flinders Lane Jackalope Hotel, slated for 2022.

Crossing to Chapel Street in South Yarra, Brenton Lang, founder of Fitzroy-based Rustica Sourdough, is launching a 60-seat flagship by December 1. The larger premises at 501 Chapel will offer Rustica's full range of baked goods, breakfast and lunch options daily, as well as a new evening menu of sourdough pizzas, pastas with Bodriggy beers and wines from Thursday to Sunday.

It's even a boon for Daylesford, where the Wolf Tasker family behind the Lake House have launched the ultimate farmstay, Dairy Flat Farm and Lodge, featuring luxury accommodation and an onsite bakehouse led by former Tivoli Road founder Michael James. The bakehouse now services the Lake House and Lodge guests, but some of their croissants, Viennese loaves and custard doughnuts can be found at Wombat Hill House Cafe.

Not to be forgotten, Collingwood will soon be eating egg-and-cheese sourdough muffins, cardamom buns and cheeseburger pies at Falco bakery as baker Christine Tran and the Bar Liberty team set it loose in the old Rockwell and Sons site, early December.