Amalfi Bakehouse, an Italian-inspired bakery shaped by lemon trees, espresso culture and one Montreal teacher’s pre-midlife leap, is coming to Sarasota.

Tracy Calabrice, 42, a sixth-grade teacher based in Montreal, Canada, who has spent the last 18 years in education, has signed a lease for a 1,170-square-foot storefront at 2139 Siesta Drive, about a mile from the Siesta Key North Bridge and minutes from downtown Sarasota. She hopes to open the bakery in August, pending permit approvals and the buildout of the space.

“I’m not leaving the field because I don’t love what I do,” Calabrice says. “But I think at this point in my life, it’s the right career move.”

The move isn’t small. Calabrice is finishing the school year in Montreal, preparing to relocate to Florida and launching her first brick-and-mortar business in a city she’s still getting to know. But the idea behind Amalfi Bakehouse had been percolating for years, first through her obsession with coffee, then through her affection for Italy’s Amalfi Coast and, finally, through a desire to create the kind of dessert-and-espresso stop she felt could add something distinct to Sarasota: treats with a taste of the Italian coast, made with care and meant to be savored.

“I’m excited and a little scared. It’s a new adventure,” she says. “But I’m excited to tackle the challenges and embrace all the victories as they come.”

The bakery’s origin story begins in Englewood, where Calabrice’s mother moved several years ago. During a visit last summer, Calabrice found herself thinking about what she loved most in a café: desserts made in house, strong coffee, a place where people could settle in for a while, and the transportive pleasure of flavors tied to memory and travel.

“Sarasota is such a beautiful place, a place that attracts locals, but also snowbirds and tourists,” she says. “It would be nice to have a place where people can go hang out that has great coffee and quality desserts.”

The Amalfi part came naturally. Calabrice, who is of Italian descent, traveled to Italy with her family and was taken by the coast’s saturated blues, yellows, citrus trees and slower rhythm. The impression lingered long enough that she designed her classroom around the theme before she ever decided to open a bakery.

“My classroom is a flexible seating classroom. There are no desks. There’s a couch, tables, comfortable chairs,” she says. “And it’s all [based] around the Amalfi patterns, the yellows, lemons hanging in different places, the blues. I made it as Mediterranean as I could.”

Before that, she adds, her classroom had a Starbucks theme.  “If people don’t like coffee, I don’t quite understand them,” she says.

At Amalfi Bakehouse, those interests will converge in a compact, 18-seat café with a Mediterranean-style interior, mosaic tiles, bright colors and lemon accents. The kitchen will take up 600-700 square feet, with the rest devoted to the storefront and seating. The point, Calabrice says, is not to build a cavernous pastry factory but a space that feels deliberate.

“The whole [idea] of the Amalfi Coast is the slowed-down pace,” she says. “We want people to come in and catch up, whatever the occasion may be, or whether they’re coming in to take out for an event.”

The menu started with cookies and kept expanding. Calabrice plans to offer eight cookie flavors each month, rotating through the 40-some recipes she has developed so far. Some translate Italian desserts into cookie form: tiramisu, ricotta and cannoli. Others include cookies and cream, churro, a turtle cookie with cheesecake filling, and a banana cream pie cookie she describes as “like biting into a cloud.”

The cannoli will be filled to order so the shells stay crisp. Calabrice plans a pistachio version dipped in pistachio paste and crushed pistachios. “A lot of times, I find cannoli are too hard or too thick, or they’re not an easy bite,” she says. “The cream is a mascarpone ricotta cream. It’s delicious, it’s light, it’s airy.”

Other planned menu items include freshly fried zeppole, made in smaller dough-ball form and finished with combinations such as pistachio paste, cinnamon sugar, honey or chopped nuts; pizzelle sold as a grab-and-go item; affogato (hot coffee poured over creamy gelato); hot and iced lattes; a frozen coffee drink inspired by crema di caffè (a dessert made from coffee, cream, and sugar); and a Sorrento-style frozen lemonade.

The affogato may be the clearest expression of the bakery’s ambitions. Calabrice plans to make the vanilla gelato in house at first, then potentially add hazelnut and pistachio flavors once the bakery has settled into its systems. The dessert will pair that gelato with espresso and the kind of crunchy pistachio topping she remembers from Italy and from a similar treat she tried later in Florida.

“In Italy, they’re just so delicious,” she says. “The flavor of the coffee is so powerful, and the gelato is so creamy.”

For her, the coffee bar matters nearly as much as the sweets. Calabrice says Amalfi Bakehouse will partner with Lavazza for its espresso program and create its own signature latte lineup, with house-made syrups and cold foams, rather than relying only on standard café flavorings.

“We’re trying to bring in all the little hints and accents of the Amalfi Coast, but with our own twist,” she says.

She is equally adamant about what the bakery will not be. Calabrice says she does not want Amalfi Bakehouse to chase speed at the expense of the product. “I’m not a factory,” she says. “Italy is the complete opposite of that. I’m not going to compromise.”

That approach carries into the recipes. Some are rooted in family traditions, including zeppole adapted from her mother-in-law’s recipe. Others come from research, trial and error ,and repeated adjustments to texture, moisture and sweetness. Her orange cookie took four attempts before she was satisfied.

“A lot of it is science in baking,” she says. “It’s chemistry.”

Montreal has been a useful testing ground. Since October, she has been selling pastries on the side while teaching full time and running a competitive cheer program, using customer feedback to refine recipes before bringing them to Sarasota.

Calabrice says she wants to use local ingredients when possible once she is on the ground in Sarasota and able to explore suppliers in person. She is especially interested in Florida produce and farmers markets, noting that even a simple Key lime pie cookie takes on a different meaning in a place where Key limes are part of the culinary landscape.

Her path to the Siesta Drive storefront was not seamless. Calabrice says finding a retail space from another country became one of the hardest parts of getting started. She worked with several real estate contacts before connecting with Lauren Dixon and Cameron Wilson of Ian Black Real Estate, who represented Amalfi Bakehouse in the lease transaction.

“It was a roller coaster,” she says. “But everybody led me to where I am. I’m very grateful.”

That sense of welcome, she says, helped solidify Sarasota as the right place to make the leap. “Everyone [I've met] has led to the next person,” she says. “It’s made a beautiful chain.”

Amalfi Bakehouse is expected to operate six days a week, with Calabrice currently planning hours of 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday, and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. on Sunday, although she says those hours may shift as the business takes shape.

For now, she's still in Montreal, finishing the school year, baking in a home kitchen that can handle only 12 cookies at a time and preparing to trade seven months of gray weather for a storefront painted in the colors of southern Italy and dappled with Sarasota sunshine.

Follow @amalfi_bakehouse on Instagram for updates.