Danish Rye Bread makes a joyous entry to the neighborhood

Something has been slowly creeping up on Red Hook for decades—scandification. To be fair, the neighborhood’s roots are intertwined with Scandinavia. When South Brooklyn was first being colonized, its waterfront beckoned to Nordic travelers. You can still find little fragments of this history around the neighborhood, like the Norwegian Seamen’s Church (111 Pioneer St.), established in 1878. In the past two decades, the Scandis have begun to return. In 2008, IKEA opened, followed in the mid-2010s by LaNoBa, a Danish mid-century modern furniture store (temporarily at 185 Van Dyke St.), and in 2024 by Swedish candy shop BonBon (66 Degraw St.). Now, Frø joins the pack.

Located next to Steve’s Key Lime Pie on Van Dyke Street, Frø (which means “seed” in Danish) is an up-and-coming wholesale bakery, single-mindedly serving one product: Danish rye bread. While you can find just about anything in New York City, it’s exceedingly hard to find a good loaf of traditional Danish rye bread.

This opening in the market wasn’t lost on Maya and Eva Ebbesen, Frø’s founders. The two twenty-something-year-old Danish-American sisters grew up in Connecticut, but often spent summers in Denmark, where their Danish father now resides. As kids, they weren’t so impressed with trips abroad in the summer while their classmates got more traditional camp experiences stateside, but over the years, the sisters came to appreciate their Danish culture and roots (Eva moved to Copenhagen after college, moving back only once Maya lured her with the opportunity to start the company together).

The sisters both previously worked in business—Maya worked for a Danish import company and Eva completed a master’s in commerce. Long interested in starting her own business and seeing the need for a commercially available loaf of Danish rye, Maya, with the help of a professional baker, began testing recipes while still working full-time. About 39 iterations later, they found one that stuck. Frø’s bread is made of whole rye flour, rye berries, pumpkin seeds, flax seeds, sunflower seeds, and salt. In Denmark, this type of hearty bread is often topped with smoked salmon, herring and egg, though on Instagram, the sisters post plenty of other topping ideas ranging from cottage cheese with blackberries and honey to hummus and cucumber slices.

After landing on the recipe, the sisters began sourcing ingredients, finding a rye flour from a miller in Massachusetts and pumpkin seeds from Stony Brook. The sunflower and flax seeds are imported. They’ve also teamed up with a baker, Jared Shein, who gained his baking skills at Mighty Bread Company, a James Beard Award-nominated bakery in Philly. He now works part time with the sisters, spending two evenings a week making the bread.

Using rectangular loaf pans imported from the homeland, Shein feeds the levain (the offshoot of the starter), then lets it rest for 16 to 18 hours to fully mature and ripen. It’s then mixed with the remaining ingredients. The dough is weighed out and divided, then topped with seeds and stamped down. The bread rises for the next few hours, after which it’s baked. Unlike most types of bread, these rye loaves are then left to cure overnight. At the moment, the team is baking 140 loaves each week.

While Shein keeps the loaves coming, the Ebbesen sisters have been busy learning more about the Red Hook community. A Dumbo resident, Maya stumbled upon Frø’s current location on Van Dyke Street after touring a handful of places. “The landlords are really great. Steve [of Steve’s Authentic Key Lime Pie] is incredible. Everyone in the building has just such a good vibe … I felt like the stars really aligned for us,” Maya said.

Given Frø’s singular item, the sisters originally sought the space for a commercial kitchen. However, they’re also considering ways that they might better use the space. Walking around the neighborhood, you might notice signs requesting you scan a code and complete a survey that Eva is managing. Would the Red Hook neighborhood appreciate another event space? What if they also served coffee? Would Danish breakfasts on the weekend be of interest? The sisters are eager to figure out how they can work with the neighborhood, but they stressed that no matter what products or services they add, it’s imperative that their execution remains meticulous.

Local pick-up
Hoping to try a piece of the dark, dense loaf? The loaves cost $16 each (each one lasts about a week and they freeze well), and you can find them at a few locations in Brooklyn, including Falu House in Greenpoint, Dépanneur in Williamsburg, and Green Grape Provisions in Fort Greene. You can also order loaves online for delivery or pick up at their location in Red Hook.

Father’s pride
When I asked whether their father was proud of their business, the sisters admitted that he is their biggest fan. Taking out her phone, Eva showed me a video she’d taken at a club in Copenhagen that she’d visited with her father last summer. The lights are dimmed and music is pulsing in the background, but her father, a tall, gray-haired man, can be seen pulling out his phone to show some young men pictures of his daughters’ bread. An ocean away from Red Hook, he predicted Frø’s future in English with a Danish accent: “It’s going to go ballistic!”