100 Years of Baking Love
Candy Puterbaugh
WHEN WE WERE KIDS, my mother often took off in her station wagon for special treats from Helen Bernhard Bakery. While that old Merc is long gone, the bakery remains as fresh as its goodies.
Ours was one of countless families for whom the bakery is part of family stories and treasured memories. A peek at the website reflects this, with notes like. . .
“Customer since the ‘50s. On Easter we would order a streusel topped, custard filled coffee cake — best coffee cake I have ever eaten.”
“Your wonderful bakery made our wedding cake November 1968……and we’ve been married ever since….. do you think your cake had something to do with that?”
Posted during the pandemic: “Thank you for always being so cheerful and helpful during this challenging time. You’ve always been wonderful, but this “takes the cake”! My husband and I are so grateful to ALL of you.”
One family told of their family tradition of getting Bernhard birthday cakes since 1923, and to this day.
The same warmth resides at the bakery itself — felt even before stepping inside the charming brick building in Portland’s Hollywood district. Then, the door opens to a step back in time — with friendly people, baked goods galore and cozy seating areas.
This year, one special cake will be for the bakery itself, celebrating 100 years. In 1924, Helen Bernhard — who lived with her husband next door to what became the present shop — started baking cakes for friends and a little extra income. Pencil smudges in her 1923 recipe book reveal her early trial and error, but it was no error to build her own bakery with son Ben in 1939. It stayed in the family until being sold to the family of Richard and Mary Laufer in 1988. As Richard readied to retire 14 years later, he enticed his son-in-law Mike Snaadt to leave corporate life behind and swap the boardroom for the bakery.
“I think the biggest reason for our success as Oregon’s oldest bakery is tradition,” Mike says, adding that through the ups and downs, the bakery “always reverted back to Helen, like returning home.”
While they don’t have a specialty, Mike says,
“We are old-school baking from scratch — rare for a retail bakery,” adding that every season has something popular.
Those “somethings” include a “king cake” for Mardi Gras. The lucky one who buys “the cake with the baby in it” is said to have a year of good luck.
Valentine’s Day brings cookies and “twosome” desserts, Easter hot cross buns. Cakes are big for Mother’s Day, and June brings a Pride/Father’s Day combo. For Thanksgiving, 600 pies are prepared the day before, and Christmas brings stollen, almond rings and cinnamon rolls.
In addition to major holidays, family occasions bring in familiar faces.
“Our employees know just about every face that comes through our door,” Mike says. “Our goal is a life-cycle business. We do engagement announcements, weddings, gender reveals, graduations, success stories, birthdays for seniors to grandkids, and memorial services. Now we’re seeing third generations, introduced to our bakery by their grandmothers!”
To meet demand, their day begins at 2:30am, preparing dough, donuts, bread and pastries. One-day products like donuts and pastries are pulled at day’s end, frozen, then sold for half-price on Sundays. Anything left by Monday goes to Blanchet House, a nonprofit providing food, clothing and residential programs. In slow times caused by weather, Mike and his family deliver treats to fire stations.
“Portlanders have expectations of non-chain type products,” Mike says. “Our raw materials and labor make us more costly than bakeries in big stores that have products shipped in, but we use butter and other real ingredients and make everything here.”
“The biggest thing we tell our employees is that people have to buy gas and groceries but they make the choice to shop at a bakery. We’re happy our customers choose to come here. After 100 years, the home bakery feeling still remains.”