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If you stand outside Fabbrica Bread Shop’s windows at five o’clock in the morning, you can watch head baker Aniruddha Bhosekar inside examining folded layers of dough and butter with the scrutiny of a jeweller studying gems.

“I am obsessed with croissants,” he says. “Every single morning, whenever there’s a new batch coming through, I’m going, ‘I didn’t quite like that’.

“I just love all the laminated things. And it’s got to be perfect.”

Fabbrica Bread Shop, the newest venue from the Love Tilly Group, was born at the back of Fabbrica’s CBD Pasta Shop, where Bhosekar and fellow baker Alyce Bennett’s baked goods attracted queues during weekend-only pop-ups in 2021.

Now they have a permanent home with a purpose-built bakery inside the new Maloneys Grocer in Rozelle.

Against a background of sun-dappled stained glass-edged windows and a vista of flowering bottlebrush trees, the front counter’s glass cases heave with luscious pastries, breads, savoury goods and cakes.

To the left, hulking wedges of potato and confit garlic focaccia, cut from just-baked metre-long slabs. To the right, bronzed Basque cheesecake slices resting above gleaming pillow-like masala croissants.

On the upper shelf there’s banoffee tarts, topped with rich, creamy undulations, plate-sized salted choc-chip biscuits and doorstopper fairy bread slices made from bruléed croissant pudding lashed with maple syrup and pastel-hued sprinkles.

Snail shell-shaped pain au chocolat, each with dark knobs of protruding chocolate, wait in formation like a mini-army.

No two days are the same in these glass cases.

Today’s sobrasada, honey and pecorino croissant, or Tathra Place pork and fennel sausage roll, may be replaced by ham and smoked cheddar pithiviers or goat vindaloo pie tomorrow.

And things sell out quickly.

Three weeks after opening, it’s not uncommon for most of the pastries, loaves, sausage rolls, foccacia and pizza to be gone by the afternoon, such is the passion for Fabbrica’s goods.

Bhosekar says three days after the shop opened in mid-September, he made 90 loaves of bread in the morning. Three hours later, they were sold.

“That was shocking, ” he says. “The store manager came in and said ‘we got more bread coming?’ And I had to say no, that was it.”

Stock volumes are being adjusted and, although Fabbrica’s flagship sourdough, along with its pasta and sauce packs, are available in Maloneys aisles, there are plans to also feature baguettes, soft rolls and sliced white bread on the shelves.

“We’re still in a phase where we’re setting up,” Bhosekar says. “It’s been kind of awesome that within a short span of time from opening it’s just been so popular. We’re just, like ‘wow’.”

For now, get in early, order the magnificent ham and smoked cheddar pithivier, with its perfectly dense yet light golden pastry, along with a fragrant masala croissant and head to footpath tables running along Cambridge Street.

Coffee, using Little Marionette beans, is good and strong.

Bhosekar, who trained at Mumbai’s oldest hospitality institute before coming to Australia, was close to studying architecture, but the lure of cooking, sparked by watching programs such as Maeve O’Meara’s Food Safari series, took him into the kitchen.

“I remember thinking ‘all these different foods, all these cuisines are in Australia – that’s amazing’,” he says. “I can’t really put my finger on what’s so good about baking. But what’s definitely good about bakeries in Sydney now is how many of them are popping up.

“I know there have been bakeries before but there has been a trend over the last couple of years and they’re on the up.

“If you look on Instagram at the amazing bakeries in Copenhagen and London and so forth, I think Sydney’s on that track.”

Standing in Fabbrica Bread Shop’s kitchen watching engineers fix a malfunctioning proofer, Bhosekar, a diehard fan of St David Dairy butter and Wholegrain Milling flour, says he’s also keen to connect with more small growers and millers in regional NSW and Victoria.

He’d also like to work further with good mate Dougal Muffet, head baker at A.P Bakery, who has a stone mill in Marrickville.

“As a baker, whatever I know is maybe 0.01 per cent of baking,” Bhosekar says. “There is so much more out there to discover.”