Bakeshop: the weekend miche on Sandy

On a stretch of NE Sandy in Rose City Park, Bakeshop makes a gentle case that whole grain can taste like a treat. The loaf to come for is the miche, a dark whole-grain round, and it sells out on weekends, so ask for it as soon as you get to the front. More than one customer has reached the register, started chatting about scones, and looked up just in time to watch the last miche leave in somebody else's bag.

Kim Boyce opened Bakeshop in 2011 after leaving restaurant kitchens in Los Angeles. She wrote Good to the Grain, which won the James Beard cookbook award that same year, and that book is a big reason a lot of home bakers stopped thinking of rye, teff and amaranth as punishment flours. Boyce apprenticed with Sherry Yard at the original Spago and worked with Nancy Silverton at Campanile, and she first reached for whole-grain flours to give her cakes more flavor, which worked. She was a James Beard Outstanding Baker nominee in 2016 and again in 2019, and she's at the shop most days, still using whole grain for the taste.

The shop is small and bright, with wood floors, a mirrored room, bins of flour and dried fruit, and a standing bar along the window where a dining room would be. The case changes with the season and holds scones, croissants, the occasional hand pie, and a Basque cheesecake with a deeply caramelized top. The miche has a nearly mahogany crust and a close, wheat-sweet crumb, and one bite makes the argument for whole grain better than anybody could. There's no place to linger, but the line moves quickly if you know what you want.

If you only have room for one thing, get the miche when it's there. With room for more, the Woodblock chocolate croissant folds local chocolate into laminated dough, and the laminated maple bar is for anyone who swears they don't need another croissant. The Basque cheesecake, whole or by the slice, has a burnt top and a silky middle and is one of the shop's best-known things. Regulars bring up the scones a lot, the figgy ones especially.

Walk-in hours are usually Wednesday through Sunday, often in a short morning window, and on weekends the shop is too small to browse in, so read the case, order and step aside. If you only know Boyce from the book, it helps to know this is a working retail and wholesale bakery and she's often right there. And if you've been eating white-flour country loaves all year and want to remember what wheat tastes like, start with the miche.

The short version is on the Bakeshop page.