Meet the Baker: North Oven Sourdough
How an ex-line cook turned a 1962 rambler kitchen in Coon Rapids into one of the Twin Cities' most sought-after sourdough operations.
If you have eaten a slice of really good sourdough somewhere in the north metro lately, there is a decent chance it came out of a home oven in Coon Rapids. North Oven Sourdough runs out of a 1962 rambler kitchen, where a former restaurant line cook trades the dinner rush for a slower, quieter kind of intensity: long ferments, careful shaping, and a crust the color of a good roast.
“Restaurant cooking taught me to respect time,” the baker told us, pulling a loaf from a screaming-hot Dutch oven. “You can rush almost anything in a kitchen except bread. The dough tells you when it is ready, not the other way around.”
That patience shows up in the crumb. The flagship Country Sourdough Loaf ferments for a full day in the cold before it ever sees heat, which is what gives it that open, custardy interior and the deep, blistered crust regulars line up for.
A one-oven operation
Everything here is made a handful of loaves at a time. There is no proofing room, no deck oven, no staff — just a home oven, a bench scraper, and a tightly kept bake schedule. It is a constraint the baker has leaned into rather than fought.
The arithmetic of a one-oven operation makes the baker blunt about standards:
When you can only bake so much, every loaf has to be worth it. I would rather sell out early than sell something I am not proud of.
Shaping is the quiet skill underneath all of it — the surface tension you coax into a round is what gives the baked loaf its height and that open, airy interior. If you have never watched a boule come together by hand, this is the technique, start to finish:
What to order first
- Country Sourdough Loaf — the one to start with, and the reason most people come back.
- Seeded Multigrain Sourdough — nutty and hearty, and it keeps for days.
- Cinnamon-Raisin Sourdough — buy it for toast; thank us later.
North Oven bakes to a schedule, so keep an eye on the drop calendar and get your order in before the cut-off. When a bake sells out, it is gone until the next one.
Written by North Oven Sourdough for The Baker's Table.
