Artisan bakery opens in Fort Myers with breads, pastries, specialty coffee: A first look

Time, patience, knowledge and love.

Those are the four key ingredients behind everything Sour & Dough Artisan Bakery does.

“An artisan bakery is so hard to do,” said co-owner Marcel Itzcovich, who opened the quaint and stylish bakery on May 5 in the Mellow Mushroom-anchored University Village Shops in Fort Myers.

“It takes 24 hours, sometimes two days to make croissants. More than 24 hours to do good bread. You need to love what you are doing to make a product right. If not, you can’t make it. We really love it.”

Finding the right location was a labor of love for Itzcovich and his four partners.

“We intended to open in Naples first,” he said. “But it was kind of difficult to find the spot we were looking for, where we would feel something when we found it.”

Itzcovich had vacationed in Naples for 12 years and was familiar with the area around Miromar Outlets.

He remembers seeing the exact spot he chose for Sour & Dough years ago, but “never saw it as a spot for a bakery.”    

After not finding the right space, he adjusted and “looked at everything through different eyes.”

“I realized I didn’t need a place people pass by all the time,” he said. “People will come to us. When I started looking for that, I knew this was the place. I’m really happy it happened that way.”

That place is in the University Village Shops, south of Florida Gulf Coast University and north of Miromar Outlets off Ben Hill Griffin Parkway. Sour & Dough took over the unit previously occupied by Slicers Hoagies in the northeast building which also houses San Matteo Italian Restaurant & Bar, Smoothie King, Poke Fusion and Urban Buzz.

The interior — clean and sleek, industrial and comfortable — was “100 percent redone.”

“We just left the doors,” said Itzcovich, who is of Argentinian and French descent.

Sour & Dough is a new “from scratch” concept he and his partners worked on for three years.

“Initially it was a specialty coffee shop,” Itzcovich said. “We talked about making the project bigger. It was coffee and sourdough. Now it’s sourdough and a specialty bakery. And coffee.”

Everything is made fresh daily at 5 a.m. in the open kitchen area. It’s all artistically displayed and waiting for customers when doors open at 7:30 a.m.

“We have plenty of things from 7:30 to noon,” Itzcovich said. “Sometimes we start running out at 10 or 11. We have to get ahead so we can have things in the afternoon. The menu is what we have in front of you.”

It can include turkey and bruschetta focaccia sandwiches, quiche, European pastries, carrot and banana cakes, muffins, cinnamon rolls, French croissants, peach and blueberry rolls and oh-so-wonderful breads.

Think baguettes, brioche, carrot and nut breads, and rye, plus oat, walnut, oat and plain sourdough.

“The walnut is my favorite,” Itzcovich said of the hearty bread bursting with rich nutty flavor. “We do a better product each day, each time we make it.”

He’s proud of the shop’s coffee too.

“I’ve loved coffee since my mother first gave it to me (at a young age),” Itzcovich said. “That’s what I really love.”

Colombian coffee is made special for Sour & Dough, which offers espresso, macchiato, cortado, cappuccino, latte, cold brew and more.

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You’ll often find Itzcovich perched at the bar near the coffee station.

“The bar is just to share coffee with friends,” he said. “Customers know my name now. They seem like friends. It’s been amazing, the reaction from people.”

Sour & Dough Artisan Bakery, 19800 Village Center Drive, Unit 120, Fort Myers; open 7:30 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. daily; (239) 888-4578; follow on Instagram

Robyn George is a food and dining reporter for The News-Press. Connect at rhgeorge@gannett.com