For a guy born in Brooklyn, I usually have my home turf sussed out. But this visit, things were different. I was now an expat baker, having spent a year making artisan New York bagels in Sydney. I was now peering at the five boroughs through the floury haze of bread goggles, drawn to tales of a thriving artisan baking scene.

Many an Aussie friend has bemoaned the gummy white bread of American supermarkets, but one look at Peter Endriss’ Bolzano miche is enough to turn the non-believers. The huge round is a feast of moist rye crumb, given complexity with fennel, coriander and cumin, and beautified with an intricate stonemill insignia.

The former head baker at Per Se and Bouchon, Peter is the breadmaker behind Runner and Stone, a sleek bakery-restaurant in Brooklyn’s gentrifying industrial zone, Gowanus. From his first-floor bakery above the restaurant, he shows me his buckwheat baguettes, wholewheat croissants and brownies made with organic flour enriched with wheat bran and germ.

Until recently, few New York bakeries made praiseworthy artisan loaves. Now, a grassroots upsurge in boutique bakeries is putting the city on par with Europe and Australia’s best.

An Aussie expat friend, Mark, brings me to his favourite local, Bakeri, crammed with sourdough rye and pastries. There, I’m drawn to a pastry I’ve never seen before: skolebrod. Picture a brioche bun in a blizzard of shredded coconut and filled with vanilla-speckled custard. It’s a Norwegian treat for children meaning “school bread”, I’m told. But forget the blonde babes of the north – this is too good to share with kids.

Scandinavian baked goods seem to be a thing here, a homestyle counterpart to NYC’s thriving new Nordic cuisine scene. Another example: farmers’ market sensation Nordic Breads and their Finnish ruis – winter-dark rye flatbreads shaped liked oversized chocolate cookies.

I pop into Williamsburg’s gourmet grocer Dépanneur for a (proper) coffee and discover beautiful, rustic loaves with deep dark crusts. They’re from a bakery called Bien Cuit, which leads me to Boerum Hill. There, baker Zachary Golper sources local grains and blends his own wheat and rye flours. The slow fermentation lasts from 16 to 68 hours – “It’s like watching a meditating monk,” Zachary says of the process. “It’s just sitting there, but there’s so much going on inside.”

For the Skolebrod (Norwegian custard buns) recipe click here.

For more on New York be sure to check out our travel guide to the Big Apple, here.