Skip to content

Wed–Sun, 7am–2pm

512 Singer Hill Rd
Falls City Bakery

Our story

Four people,
two ovens, one Doris

We're a family bakery on Singer Hill Rd, a block up from the falls. We've been at it since 2016 — slowly, on purpose, and never quite fast enough to keep the shelves full past lunchtime.

Illustration of a glass jar of bubbling sourdough starter labeled Doris, est. 2016, with a rubber band marking its rise

The starter

Everything here comes out of one jar

Doris is flour, water and about nine years of stubbornness. She gets fed twice a day, comes home with Nora at Christmas, and has raised every single loaf we've sold. Tuesdays we close partly so she can be looked after properly, and partly so we can sleep.

If you keep a starter of your own, bring a jar in and we'll give you a spoonful of hers.

How we got here

A short history, mostly of dough

  1. 2016

    A jar on the windowsill

    Nora mixed flour and water in a mason jar and put it above the radiator. Two weeks later it smelled like green apples and would not stop rising. She named it Doris, after her grandmother, who was also small, sour and impossible to kill.

  2. 2018

    The garage years

    A deck oven on a concrete floor and forty loaves a week, sold off a folding table on Saturday mornings. People started lining up before we had a sign. We took that as a hint.

  3. 2021

    Singer Hill Road

    We took over a narrow brick storefront with terrible parking and wonderful light, painted it ourselves, and opened with three things on the menu. Sam left his job at the restaurant to run the pastry side.

  4. Today

    Four people, two ovens

    We bake what we can bake properly, which is never quite enough. When it is gone, it is gone — and we go home and start the next day’s dough.

Illustration of the bakery storefront: brick walls, a striped burgundy awning, loaves in the window and a chalkboard on the sidewalk

The shop

Narrow, brick, and full of light

Twelve feet wide and forty feet deep, with the oven at the back so you can watch the morning bake come out while you wait. There are four stools at the window and a bench outside for when the sun is doing its thing.

The parking is genuinely bad and we're sorry about it. There's a free lot around the corner on Main, and the walk up the hill is worth it.

How we work

Three things we won't budge on

  • Slowly, on purpose

    Every loaf ferments for at least eighteen hours. You cannot hurry it and we have stopped trying — that time is where the flavor and the digestibility both come from.

  • Close to home

    Flour from a mill in the Willamette Valley, butter from a creamery in Tillamook County, fruit from farms we can drive to before breakfast.

  • Small on purpose

    We could bake more by changing how we bake. We would rather sell out at one o’clock and be proud of everything that went out the door.

Say hello

Who you'll meet

Come see the place

We're open Wednesday to Sunday from seven, and the coffee is free if you're picking up an order.

Hours & directionsSee the menu