Head Baker Solveig Tofte knows it's not just her high-quality bread and pastries that draw customers to Minneapolis' quaint, homegrown bakery and deli. What's not on the menu — the local, artisan and hand-made elements — are just as integral to Turtle Bread's appeal.

But as is the case with other artisan bread and pastry bakers, Tofte is too busy ensuring the results live up consumers' lofty expectations to spend much time reflecting on the sentimental.

“It's work. I don't think people really understand how much work it is,” she says. Would-be bakers often apply to Turtle Bread with ideals rooted in the rustic self-sufficiency of hand-made food. They aren't long for a job at Turtle Bread.

“There's nothing romantic about 12-hour days on your feet, and there's nothing romantic about making the same product over and over again. An important aspect of baking is that you're always producing,” Tofte says. “But at the same time, I don't want to disavow people of that notion, because we are doing something really cool, and that's why people come here. That's why we're growing.”

Genesis of Turtle Bread

Owner Harvey McLain first opened Turtle Bread in the Minneapolis neighborhood of Linden Hills in November 1994. The original 328-sq.-ft. space was a far cry from the current 11,000-sq.-ft. facility on Chicago Ave. in South Minneapolis that now houses production, the retail shop, deli, restaurant and pizzeria. The Linden Hills location began as a storefront in a five-unit retail space that once was a single-family home.

New to the industry, McLain produced only four or five bread varieties and offered espresso and juice when he opened. The equipment he started with included three pizza ovens, two convection ovens and a mixer. But the operation was forced to grow almost overnight, in retail baking terms.

A positive review in the Minneapolis Star Tribune drew an unexpected holiday rush to the diminutive bread bakery, and McLain quickly was selling bread faster than he could produce it. He realized that to make any money on the venture, he would have to expand. Within a month of opening, he regularly had a line of people out the door in the Minnesota winter.

“The first thing I noticed in that tiny space is that people wanted a place to sit. I didn't have it, other than a little park bench. I noticed that some people would even come in, then leave without ordering if there was no place to sit, so an expanded retail space was a priority,” McLain says.

By July, McLain had leased the building's five storefronts. The additional space allowed room for café tables and a deli counter. He also included a display case to sell cakes and pies, and Turtle Bread has slowly added products and space ever since.

In 2002, Turtle Bread opened a cold retail location in downtown Minneapolis. The retail outpost is located on Minneapolis' skyway, an enclosed, elevated pedestrian walkway that connects downtown office buildings while sheltering pedestrians from the harsh Minnesota weather. With heavy foot traffic, the location is a good proxy for a downtown main street location in warmer climes. Long a suburban destination, the downtown location gave Turtle Bread a foothold in the heart of the Minneapolis marketplace. But production for the cold spot also exacerbated already less-than-ideal baking conditions in Linden Hills.

“The need for increased production didn't dump a ton of pressure on us per se, but it probably was the straw that broke the camel's back,” says Tofte, who joined the bakery in 1999. Though full of charm and character, the Linden Hills' location was designed to be a home, not a bakery. When McLain took over the entire building, the bakery café existed on five separate levels.