Our Story

“We never got faster. We just got better at waiting.”

Dozens of small handmade clay turtles in bright colors arranged on a wooden table around one larger green turtle.

Good bread is slow.

Turtle Bread opened on West 44th Street in 1994. It’s owner, Harvey McLain, a recent widower with two small children had a job that kept him traveling. He wanted a career that let him stay closer to home. Looking around for options, he noticed that Minneapolis had plenty of good bakeries that specialized in desserts and almost no great bread.

Great bread cannot be hurried. Some doughs here take days to finish, fed twice along the way and shaped and baked, only on the last day. Slow in a business that rewards speed, and that is where the name comes from.

Thirty years later, there are three stores. Linden Hills is still the original, with Tosca cooking in the old baking annex on the east side. Chicago Avenue is the largest, where the ovens are in view from the tables and Pizza Biga fires up next door in the evening. Longfellow came last, a few blocks from the Mississippi River.

There have been awards along the way. A Best of the Twin Cities for the bakery, a Diners' Choice, write-ups in City Pages and Minnesota Monthly. They hang on a wall in the bakery.

The bread is made the way it was in 1994; flour, water, salt, and time. Lots of time.

The Turtle Bread Company storefront at dusk, with warm light in the windows and tables on the sidewalk.

The long table at Turtle Bread, with tall windows onto the street and customers seated along the bar.