Little T: get the Division baguette early

Countless first-timers have walked into Little T Baker on SE Division for "just a baguette" and come back still talking about it. The crust shatters a little, the inside has a good chew, and you'll want butter, and of all the loaves on the eastside, it's the one this guide recommends most.

Little t American Baker, which most people just call Little T, opened in 2008 in the glass-front space at Division and 26th, in Hosford-Abernethy, and it quickly became the eastside's answer to the westside bakeries. Tim Healea founded it after nine years as head baker at Pearl Bakery. He got the nickname on the 2002 Bread Bakers Guild Team USA at the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie in Paris, where the team took silver and needed some way to tell two Tims apart. In 2023 he handed the bakery to longtime head baker Dillon DeBauche, who'd already spent nearly a decade baking there, plus a stretch at Camas Country Mill.

Through the floor-to-ceiling windows you'll see a modern, industrial room with concrete floors, wood shelves, a blackboard menu and a counter lined with bread and pastry, and it still feels like a neighborhood bakery. The baguettes stand in the rack with blistered, flour-dusted crusts, and when you break one open the inside is creamy and airy. There's usually a short line of people trying to decide whether they also need a cookie.

Healea used to describe the bakery in four words, flour, science, hands and heart. The breads use local grains from local mills, and the pastry board rotates with the season and with whatever the bakers feel like making. Restaurants serve the baguette, and Providore Fine Foods carries the bread if you can't get to Division, but nothing beats buying one here the morning it was baked, so if you only have one stop on the eastside, make it this baguette.

If there's pastry left, look at what else Little T is known for. There are seasonal fruit tarts, and chocolate chip cookies that win over even people who say they don't like cookies. Sally Lunn is a soft, buttery brioche, good if the baguette is for dinner and you want something for breakfast too, and there's also the salt slab, a focaccia-style flatbread covered in olive oil and sea salt, plus sandwiches on their bread. Get the baguette first and then look over the case.

On weekends, go early, because the baguettes sell out and the rack can empty while someone in line is still choosing a cookie. If they're gone when you get there, ask when the next batch is due. The shop has historically baked the baguette twice a day in the old French à l'ancienne style, the long, skinny loaf people used to ask for by name, and while a second bake on any given afternoon isn't guaranteed, the staff will know. Get your loaf, grab a tart if there's one left, and go for a walk.

The essentials are on the Little T Baker page.