Sample Street Bakery.

Sourdough is what we are known for. Every loaf is mixed in the afternoon, shaped by hand and left to rise overnight, then baked from 5am so the first loaves are on the shelf when the door opens at 7. Alongside the bread: croissants, morning buns and seasonal fruit pastries baked in small batches through the morning, so the tray you see was usually baked that hour. Custom birthday cakes are made to order with three days' notice. Tell us the size, the flavour and what it should say, and it is boxed and ready at the time you pick. If a cake order is cancelled we sometimes have same-day pickups; ask at the counter. We also bake wholesale bread for four local cafes, so if you have had our sourdough with your breakfast somewhere else in town, this is where it came from. We do not make wedding cakes, we do not have a gluten-free line, and we do not deliver. Open Tuesday to Sunday, 7am to 2pm.

Sample Street Bakery started at the Maplewood Heights farmers' market, where Dana sold loaves baked in a home oven for two years. In 2016 the old hardware store on Sample Street came up empty, and Dana took it on with one second-hand deck oven and a single counter. The second oven arrived in 2019, which is when the wholesale bread for local cafes began. Today there are four of us on the early shift, the same starter that came from the market days, and the same rule: nothing on the shelf that was not baked here this morning.

Dana Example grew up two streets from the bakery, and the first job Dana ever had was washing pans in a hotel kitchen. The baking came later, at home, for a market stall, and then for the whole street. Dana still mixes the sourdough starter every evening before closing up, and is usually the one at the oven when the first loaves come out. If you want to know what is good today, ask; the answer is whatever came out last.