Who baked the bread you ate at Meridian? The menu probably didn't say. For several years the answer was David Madrid. He ran the bakery that supplied the restaurants at The Village, a large redevelopment in Dallas. Very few diners knew his name.

That changed in a Far North Dallas strip center. D Magazine reported on Nov. 2, 2026 that Vecinos Bakehouse, from "longtime local baker David Madrid," held a soft opening that weekend with breads, pastries and sandwiches. The address is 6090 Campbell Road, Suite 100. That puts it in The Shops at Preston Trail, at the southeast corner of Preston Road and Campbell Road.

Plenty of Dallas diners have probably eaten Madrid's work already. What's new is a counter close to home where it carries his name.

Bread that never had a byline

The Dallas Morning News profiled Madrid in February 2022. At the time he was head baker and executive pastry chef at Doughregarde's, the satellite bakery that made "the bread, pastry and viennoiserie served at the property's seven restaurants." Doughregarde's had its own counter at the Roundhouse Food Hall. Even so, most of its output went out the back door to kitchens where diners met it as part of someone else's meal.

The Morning News described that work in detail:

The pain meunier is a good example of how far that work went. The paper explained that the style honors millers who deliver consistent flour. Madrid made Meridian's version with Sonora wheat, one of North America's oldest surviving grains, grown in Tokio, Texas. He estimated that about 80 of the 100 formulas in his book were in production then, as Doughregarde's started selling wholesale.

The bakery he worked in held more than $250,000 in equipment: a deck oven from Germany, a loader from France and mixers from Italy. The same article noted his forearm tattoo of a dancing concha, a baguette, a fougasse and a croissant. A year later, a CW33 feature in April 2023 still introduced him as The Village's head baker and executive pastry chef.

A counselor's idea of a bakery

Madrid's bio on the Chefs for Farmers site explains why the new shop looks the way it does. Before baking, he was a high school counselor. After culinary school he trained at the San Francisco Baking Institute, ran his own wholesale bakery in Dallas and later taught at SFBI. He then spent four years leading the baking and pastry programs across ten concepts for a major Dallas hospitality project. The bio describes the new shop like this:

"Vecinos Bakehouse is where those two callings meet. We are a neighborhood bakery built on great ingredients, honest technique, and the belief that a good loaf of bread is an excuse to bring people together. David still thinks of himself as a counselor first; bread just happens to be how he helps and connects with people these days."

Vecinos is Spanish for "neighbors," and the bakery calls itself a neighborhood bakery. That matters more after a career spent supplying ten restaurant concepts at one large property. His bread used to reach people through other chefs' menus. At Preston and Campbell, he sells it to them directly.

The mentoring side comes through in the 2022 profile as well. Madrid trained a former fine-dining sous-chef, Yonathan "Yoni" Bustillo, who rose to lead baker. Madrid told the Morning News, "He's the one materializing my vision. I'm really proud of him. His success is my success." He also described his SFBI teachers taking "a vested interest in my success," and called the school's founder, Michel Suas, "the godfather of bread and pastry." That is the background behind the line in his bio about bread being how he helps and connects with people.

Why this corner

The corner fits the idea of a neighborhood bakery. The shopping center's owner, SHOP Development, says on its property page for The Shops at Preston Trail that it is repositioning the center to make it "more relevant to the community with a curated tenant mix and tasteful upgrades." The same page puts traffic through the intersection at 70,000 vehicles a day and notes it's close to Preston Trail Golf Club, Bent Tree Country Club and the Clubs of Prestonwood.

Seventy thousand cars a day explains why a business would want to be here. Madrid's bio describes something smaller: a neighborhood bakery where bread brings people together. The bakery shares its Campbell Road address with other businesses. Spanish Schoolhouse is in Suite 120. A 2020 People Newspapers item on Fajita Pete's lists one of its locations at 6090 Campbell.

The space was planned as a real buildout, not a quick pop-up. A state accessibility filing with the Texas Department of Licensing and Regulation, registered April 10, 2026, describes a 3,000-square-foot restaurant remodel at 6090 Campbell Road and lists David Madrid as the tenant.

Planning a first stop

As of D Magazine's Nov. 2 report, the soft opening covered breads, pastries and sandwiches, with full hours "very, very soon." The bakery's website gives the address but no menu or hours. If you're heading over this week:

1. Check Instagram first. The bakery points customers to @vecinosbakehouse, the place to look for hours and what's on the shelf that day.
2. Use the Campbell Road address. The bakery is listed at 6090 Campbell Road, Suite 100. The center's main address is 17062 Preston Road, so the Campbell number is the one to put in your map app.
3. Start with the bread. The bio describes Vecinos as built around bread, and bread is what Madrid has spent his career on. His Village résumé runs from Sonora wheat loaves to laminated brioche, so a loaf is the clearest way to taste what he's been doing for years.

The bakery's first weeks also fell during one of the city's busiest food weeks. Madrid was listed as a Saturday participant for Chefs for Farmers Dallas, whose main event was scheduled for Nov. 7 at Old City Park. If you're making a December trip to Galleria Dallas anyway, Santaland opens Nov. 13 and the Grand Tree Lighting skating shows run at noon on Nov. 27, Nov. 28 and Dec. 5. A stop at Preston and Campbell on the way gets you a loaf for the weekend.

Following changes like this, a new counter on a familiar corner or a center being repositioned, is part of knowing Far North Dallas well. If you'd like to talk through what's changing near your street and what it could mean for your home, Katherine Roberts is glad to share what she's seeing. Request an Appointment.