Bakeshop: the weekend miche on Sandy

We treat Bakeshop like a counter you commit to, not a café you wander through, and Portland bread fans who have been wondering whether whole grain can actually taste like a treat should get themselves onto NE Sandy immediately! This is a small Rose City Park shop, and the loaf we came for looks like a single dark object on the table. If you came for the miche, say so at the front of the line, because weekend miche goes, and we have watched people get to the register, start a conversation about scones, and look up to see the last one walk out in someone else’s bag. Do not be those people!

Kim Boyce opened Bakeshop in 2011 after she left Los Angeles kitchen life, wrote Good to the Grain, and won the James Beard cookbook award for it that same year. The book is the reason a lot of home bakers stopped treating rye, teff, and amaranth like punishment flours. Boyce had apprenticed with Sherry Yard at the original Spago and worked with Nancy Silverton at Campanile, then started baking with whole-grain flours so the cakes would actually taste like something, and found the grains had more flavor, not less. She was a James Beard Outstanding Baker nominee in 2016 and again in 2019, and you can still find her at this retail-and-wholesale counter most days. This is a whole-grain bakery, which does not mean “healthy” as a personality. It means the flour is the flavor!

Walk in and we can also see why the shop stays small on purpose. Wood floors, a bright mirrored room, bins of flour and dried fruit that look like a home baker’s dream pantry, and a standing-room bar along the window instead of a dining room. There is not a second space to absorb a crowd. The case glass is seasonal and tight — scones, croissants, the occasional hand pie, a Basque cheesecake with a deeply caramelized top — and the miche sits there like the argument the whole shop is making, dark and dense in the way a real miche is dense, not in the way a sad health loaf is dense. The crust is almost mahogany, the crumb is close and wheat-sweet, and once you cut it you stop explaining whole grain to people. It feels super Sandy: a commercial strip, a tiny counter, no lingering furniture, and a line that moves if you already know the sentence you came to say!

If you only have one stop in Rose City Park, the miche is THAT loaf, so ask for it and take it if they have it! Then, if you still have a free hand and the case is not already picked over, we look at the things this shop is actually known for besides the bread. The Woodblock chocolate croissant is local chocolate in laminated dough, the croissant for people who want the grain and the cocoa in the same bite. The laminated maple bar is the pastry we name when someone says they “don’t need another croissant.” Basque cheesecake, whole or by the slice, is the custard-and-crust conversation the shop is famous for, with that burnt top and a silky middle that feels almost like a restaurant dessert. Scones show up in the public record of this place for a reason, figgy ones especially, and if a scone is sitting there looking like it has a point of view, it is a fair extra!

Know this before you go: walk-in is typically Wednesday through Sunday, often in a short morning window, and the shop is small enough that browsing is a luxury you should not take on a weekend. Sandy is a commercial strip, not a hidden side street, so you will find it. What you will not find is a giant case designed to make you linger for twenty minutes, so read the glass, order, and step aside. A note we give people who only know Boyce from the book: this is a working retail and wholesale bakery, Kim is often there, and the miche is still the thing we came for even if we also leave with a maple bar. If you have been eating white-flour “country loaves” all year and you want to remember what wheat tastes like when nobody sifted the personality out of it, THIS is the stop!

Want the short version? It’s on the Bakeshop page.