By 8 a.m. on any given Saturday, the bakeries of Portland, Maine, are already in full swing.
Outside of one in early August, with the smell of fresh bread and buttermilk sweetening the air, customers in line debate whether to order a classic croissant or the French pastry kouign-amann. Across town, another line stretches down the block. A cyclist pedals away with baguettes sticking out of a backpack. After splitting a bagel at one shop, a young couple from the Midwest maps out their next two bakery stops: a coffee shop that everyone seemed to have recommended, then one last pastry before lunch.
The city of roughly 70,000 people is home to an astonishing concentration of bakeries whose work rivals anything found in far larger cities. That didn’t happen by accident. Pioneering bakeries raised the standard decades ago.
In Maine, once considered the “bread basket of New England,” the grain farming economy peaked in the 19th century. During the Civil War, the state’s grains even helped feed the Union Army. But as the West became more populated at the turn of the century, grain farming and production went with it. Many Maine farmers refocused on other crops, such as blueberries, corn, and potatoes.
But in the 1980s, bakers started trying to source local wheat. Matthew Williams was one of the earliest pioneers of Maine’s grain scene. A former grain agronomist, he added a milling operation to his farm in the late 1990s. And over the last two decades, farmers, bakers, and organizations such as the Maine Grain Alliance have helped revive the state’s grain economy. The result was more than just better bread. It gave ambitious chefs an affordable path to entrepreneurship. Customers bought in, learning to appreciate obsessive craftsmanship.
Today, visitors arrive with an appetite for naturally leavened breads, Japanese-inspired viennoiserie, and rustic loaves made from Maine-grown grains. They drive home with back seats full of sourdough loaves and scones.
Longtime Portland baker and chef Krista Kern Desjarlais remembers arriving in Portland in the 1980s, when the city was full of artists, cooks, and scrappy entrepreneurs who simply figured things out for themselves. The rents were low enough that people could afford to experiment, and creativity often mattered more than polish.
Then came Standard Baking Co. (75 Commercial Street, Portland, 207-773-2112). When the French-inspired bakery opened in the Old Port neighborhood in 1995, Desjarlais says it raised the bar for what artisan bread could be.
“It really did set the standard,” Desjarlais says.
Talented bakers started flooding the area in the early 2000s, opening their own spots, such as Scratch Baking Co. (416 Preble Street, South Portland, 207-799-0668) in South Portland, where waiting customers spill out onto the sidewalk for sourdough bagels that come out of a stone hearth oven.
Today, longtime institutions blend with a new generation of bakers arriving from bigger cities, convinced Maine offers something they can’t find elsewhere. And they’re ready to make their mark.
Create your own urban bakery crawl
Ask bakers why their breads taste different and most don’t begin by talking about their technique. In Maine, it’s all about access to locally grown grains, such as the freshly milled wheat, spelt, buckwheat, and rye that carry flavors industrial flour rarely does.
For Kerry Hanney of Night Moves Bread (695 Broadway, Unit 2, South Portland, 207-805-1011), the loaf is only part of the story. In her open bakery overlooking the Fore River (arrive here by 10 a.m., or risk finding empty shelves), Hanney shapes loaves just feet from customers. She wants you to taste the grain itself, which is stone-milled and slowly fermented, and to notice how a baguette made with local wheat or malted barley differs from those you’ve eaten elsewhere. The same bread can also change in taste from one season to the next.
“My style is about highlighting the grains that are available here,” Hanney says. “Celebrating the history trying to get people to slow down and just taste exactly what’s in front of them.”
Aside from the stacks of breads — from a sesame spelt to a Baltic rye to an olive pave — behind the counter, there’s a small, ever-rotating selection of pastries: cheddar chive corn bread, rhubarb buckwheat thumbprints, and a brownie. But not any old brownie.
In 2018, Hanney traveled to Oaxaca, Mexico, and learned about ancestral chocolate-making traditions. When she returned to Maine, she put those lessons to the test. She makes her brownie with corn, single-origin cacao, and fermented cacao nibs in a process that teases out fruity notes so pronounced you might mistake the taste for cherries or dates. The result? A brownie that’s both deeply fudgy and surprisingly light.
In the West End of Portland, at ZUbakery (81 Clark Street, Portland, 207-409-0117), owner Barak Olins compares baking to the wooden boat building he once practiced. Boat builders, he says, aren’t constantly reinventing the sailboat; the form has stood the test of time. Olins believes bread deserves the same respect. In a city where many chefs speak about pushing boundaries, he’s almost radical in his devotion to tradition.
“I’m definitely not an innovator,” says Olins, a 2024 James Beard Award winner.
At his small, quiet shop, classic pastries, including scones with currants, almond croissants, and galettes with caramel-colored peach slices, are lined up on wooden boards and rectangular white plates on a counter, ready to be eaten. A wire basket on the wall holds a bouquet of French baguettes, and a list of “bread times,” when particular loaves will be out of the oven and ready that day, is scribbled on a chalkboard.
“I feel like I’m observing the way that things have been done for a long time, and then kind of emulating them and making them fit my own tastes,” Olins says.
While the city’s bakers rarely describe themselves as trend chasers, that doesn’t mean all the bakeries look the same. Your challenge is choosing which to visit.
A few blocks west of ZU, at Ugly Duckling (246 Danforth Street, Portland, 207-536-1819), a luncheonette with neon pink accents, Ilma Lopez, an acclaimed pastry chef from Venezuela, turns out one of Portland’s best pastéis de nata, flaky Portuguese custard tarts, making them fresh every morning.
Meanwhile, less than a mile away, LB. MINI-MART (235 Vaughan Street, Portland, 207-536-0067) has reinvented the idea of a neighborhood convenience store by pairing pantry staples with prepared foods and gluten-free and vegan pastries that have rightfully earned a cult following among customers — regardless of their dietary restrictions. Go ahead and grab the classic chocolate chip cookie. But, even better is the double chocolate chip, which has a texture that’s almost candy-like, with a chewy center and crunchy edges. Don’t leave without a slice of the orange olive oil loaf, a gluten-free riff on pound cake.
No bakery crawl is complete without a stop for coffee, and Tandem Coffee and Bakery (742 Congress Street, Portland, 207-760-4440) deserves a spot on the list of Portland must-dos. The shop opened in 2014 in a repurposed 1960s gas station. Get caffeinated and buy some beans to bring home. But also find room for baker Briana Holt’s buttermilk biscuits.
“I don’t know if I’ve had a better biscuit,” says Tanner Rubin of Holt’s handiwork. He’s the co-owner and baker at Bread & Friends (505 Fore Street, Portland, 207-536-4399), a bakery and restaurant where you should snag a dinner reservation.
There, grain that’s milled in-house finds its way into pastries for brunch, and the namesake bread service changes with the seasons for dinner. A simple Parker House roll, for example, has evolved into versions flavored with roasted scallions, barley malt and soy, or black pepper — each designed to complement a different butter, cheese, or plated dish.
Everywhere in Portland, the variety is striking. But the philosophy is remarkably consistent. And no one seems to like to take a shortcut.
Venture beyond the city
For a field trip outside the city, consider fueling up first at Forage Market (123 Washington Street, Portland, 207-274-6800). The market is best known for its wood-fired sourdough bagel, but don’t miss out on the cinnamon roll. Ideally, you have a friend or two with you — the buttery, cinnamon-swirled pastry covered with cream cheese icing is large enough to share. From one of the picnic tables outside, you can watch the neighborhood wake up. Across the street at Portland Pottery, scope out mugs and bowls glazed in deep earth tones.
From there, it’s a 10 minute drive west to Norimoto Bakery (469 Stevens Avenue, Portland), if you choose, where Atsuko Fujimoto, another James Beard Award-winning chef, blends Japanese flavors such as miso and red bean with classic French techniques. The small storefront without seating is the kind of place to pick up treats for the road. Try the kouign-amann (pronounced queen ah-MAHN), a round, buttery, flaky pastry popular in Brittany, France, that’s reminiscent of a sugary croissant, or fluffy shokupan, a Japanese milk bread.
Then, roll down the windows and head north.
Along a roughly 20-minute drive, Portland’s brick buildings give way to stone walls, farm fields, and winding roads. Fruit and dairy products are within reach, and the grain farms aren’t far. It’s easy to understand why so many bakers want to settle here.
Tucked into quaint North Yarmouth, The Purple House (378 Walnut Hill Road, North Yarmouth) offers perhaps your trip’s most memorable meal. Desjarlais, one of Maine’s most acclaimed chefs, has reinvented the former bakery as an intimate, ticketed lunch experience. The tasting menu, which starts up again in late fall on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday, draws on the French, Italian, and Spanish influences that defined her beloved, now-shuttered restaurant Bresca. Her menu is the product of nearly four decades of moving effortlessly between pastry-making, baking, and the savory side of the kitchen.
For years, Desjarlais filled the roles of baker, pastry chef, or simply chef, depending on where she happened to be working. While she was coming up in the 1980s and 1990s in traditional kitchens with rigid hierarchies, “the chef” was the person who could do everything: butcher, bake, make ice cream, build sauces, and run a kitchen. After a lifetime of perfecting those skills, she’s finally comfortable claiming the title.
“I’m finding that ‘chef’ in me again,” said Desjarlais, who will be 60 in November. “[I’m] just feeling comfortable in my own skin, at my age, with who I am now.”
With just one assistant, Desjarlais prepares every course over an open fire a few feet from a communal table that seats eight, ending the meal with all kinds of the desserts that first made her famous: soufflé cakes, wood-roasted fruit, and house-made ice creams in seasonal flavors. Every guest leaves with one last baked treat tucked into a bag for the ride home.
It’s a fitting place to end a bakery pilgrimage because Desjarlais has witnessed — or worked in — nearly every chapter of Portland’s bakery story. She remembers when restaurants baked bread because there were few commercial bakeries. Today she’s watching another wave arrive, bringing fresh ideas while embracing the same values that have defined the region. The scene she helped build is still evolving.
As one example, Georgia Macon, who left San Francisco and Martha’s Vineyard for Cumberland, a quiet farming town just 20 minutes north of Portland, will open Mère Bakery (204 Gray Road, Cumberland) in September. The slower pace of life here, and an unusually collaborative food community, appealed to her.
A baker from a competitor “literally lent me some of their sourdough starter yesterday because I thought I finally neglected mine to death,” Macon says. “It’s very much ‘my light is your light’ type of neighborness amongst bakers here.”
Mère will operate as an all-day neighborhood café and market, serving some grab-and-go dinners and oversized sandwiches, including a ploughman’s — where a thick slab of crystalline Alpine cheese, ham, pickles, and mostarda are in between two pieces of sourdough rye. She’ll also nod to her hometown of St. Louis with a gooey butter cake, a yeasted yellow cake topped with a rich butter custard that bakes into a crackly sugar crust.
She wants Mère to fill what she sees as a gap in Greater Portland’s bakery scene by operating as an all-day gathering place with enough seating for customers to linger and hours that serve construction workers, teachers, and other early risers.
“There needs to be more places that are open for the blue-collar boys who need their coffee on their way in,” Macon says.
Even with national acclaim, Portland’s bakery scene refuses to stand still. Bakers lend one another starters, obsess over grain, and push each other to get better. The city’s best bakery may not have even opened yet. And that’s exactly how it should be.
Alexa Gagosz can be reached at alexa.gagosz@globe.com. Follow her @alexagagosz and on Instagram @AlexaGagosz.