Malby Artisan Bread and Pastries opened last May in New Haven’s Westville neighborhood. Doors open Friday through Sunday, so chef and owner Malby Rojas spends weekdays mixing, proofing and baking the goods.
“I wake up in the morning like 2:45, take a shower, and I come at like 3:30 a.m. and start,” Rojas said. “Turn on the oven, get everything ready, start baking the sourdough.”
By mid-morning, Rojas was carefully rolling pork-filled pieces of dough into a log the size of a hot dog bun, components of a Venezuelan specialty.
“I'm doing right now the cachito,” she explained. “It’s stuffed bread from my country, Venezuela. It’s just a soft bread, like sweet-and-savory bread, filled with ham and bacon.”
The Venezuelan pastries get a light brush of vanilla syrup before they bake. She said it's specials like these that keep a lot of Latinos coming back.
“They spread the word here, and they say, ‘Oh, somebody told me that you have cachito. I have like 10 years that I don't eat cachito!’” she said.
Rojas first fell in love with baked goods growing up in Miranda, about a half hour outside of Venezuela’s capital city, Caracas. She remembered her dad carrying home fresh bread for her and her seven siblings.
“He came home always from work — always brings us warm, warm bread,” she said. “And I make it for that. I make this bread because of my dad.”
The origin of Malby’s bread can be traced back to her dad, but also her background in science and math.
“I have my career in Venezuela: biology. Different career in accounting,” Rojas explained. “But I always like the science, you know? And I think baking is science.”
From Venezuela to the United States
Rojas first came to the U.S. in 2017, where she took a job at a Venezuelan and Colombian bakery in Miami. A year later, she was baking at an Argentinian restaurant in Chicago.
There, she met her wife, Karla Tejada Arias — another recent immigrant, but from the Dominican Republic.
“In Venezuela, you get a lot of bullying, like harassed, for being queer. Like, for me, having a spouse (in Venezuela would be) impossible,” she said. “Here, it’s like everything is possible.”
From Chicago, the couple moved for Tejada Arias’ work as a medical doctor to Boston and eventually New Haven. And now, in her first solo shop, Rojas takes inspiration from her wife’s country of origin too.
“I decided to open this with an infusion and a couple things from my country, or from even the Dominican Republic, Karla's country,” she said. “I want to give you a little bit of culture.”
Rojas is open to menu suggestions as well. On the bakery’s Instagram, people weigh in with suggestions like “a chorizo, egg and cheese danish.”
“I have done egg and cheese and a potato with bacon and caramelized onion danish,” Rojas said. “We make a passion fruit and mango tart.”
All were made in the small space that Rojas calls the “micro bakery” on Whalley Avenue. Though the tight quarters sometimes limit the amount of things she can feature on the menu at once, Rojas said the pros outweigh the cons.
“I really love being here, so I'm going to keep this place, I think, forever,” Rojas said. “The good thing here is, when people come to buy something, they say, ‘Oh my gosh, it smells good, smells like fresh bread.’”
Out front is the simple logo — Rojas’ first name, Malby, and a single stalk of wheat.
It was Rojas’ wife who convinced her to name the shop after herself as a way of taking both pride and ownership of the unique fusion she was creating.
“I always say Karla is my rock here. She is always like, ‘Come on, you can do it. You can do it. You can do it. Let's do it,’” Rojas said. “I always recommend to people that want to open a business too, you have a good support.”
Good support is important, Rojas said, because life often comes at you all at once. Rojas’ eldest sister, her only other sibling in the U.S., moved with her children from California to Connecticut. And Rojas and Tejada Arias’ first child was just months old when the bakery was birthed as well.
Rojas said business owners often have doubts.
“Be scared,” Rojas said. “It’s normal being scared.”
Rojas said to just do it scared. What’s important is that you follow your dreams anyway.
This story is part of the series Poderosas: Portraits of Purpose, highlighting Latina leaders in our Connecticut communities.
