Babcia Bread, the Portland bakery that has been making fans chase it across the city through pop-ups and social media alerts, is finally settling down. Co-founders Tommy Celt and Jade Novarino are opening a permanent location at 10909 SE Main St in downtown Milwaukie, inside the historic Perry’s Pharmacy Building, which is currently being transformed into a hub of small, independent businesses.
For anyone who has been following Babcia on Instagram and praying for a window of availability, this is the news. Portland Monthly called its pastries some of the best in the city, and the description is hard to argue with: chunky peach-rosemary galettes, éclairs, a chocolate-chunk cookie, and a pastrami-and-Swiss croissant that one reviewer described as a stroke of genius. The name — Babcia, Polish for “grandma” — is Celt’s tribute to a long line of family bakers.
Celt is the dough man. He nerds out on locally milled flours, obsesses over fermentation, and brings a technical precision to his pastry that puts Babcia in a different conversation from most Portland bakeries. Novarino brings the farming side: she is a co-founder of Campo Collective, a no-till farm in Hillsboro operating with a “beyond organic” ethos, meaning the ingredients going into Babcia’s pastries are as good as it gets.
The Milwaukie location will place Babcia alongside fellow newcomers Sadie’s on Main and Salon Fernweh. inside a building that once housed the beloved Main Street Collectors Mall and a soda counter where President John F. Kennedy famously sat during a 1960 visit.
