Bellefonte Bread Baker Opens First Brick-and-Mortar Sourdough Shop

Bellefonte Bread Baker is moving into 167 S. Potter St., giving David Anderson his first brick-and-mortar home after years of mixing dough in a house kitchen and basement. The small storefront, the former home of The Parlor ice cream shop, sits tucked behind CVS Pharmacy near Talleyrand Park, and Anderson said it will serve as a central pickup point while also opening for Saturday morning shopping. Deliveries to local customers will continue, preserving the convenience that helped the bakery build a following in Bellefonte and State College.

The business started in spring 2020 after Anderson’s wife suggested he sell bread. He began by sharing sourdough batards, boules and baguettes with friends, then expanded to family, coworkers and, eventually, regular customers. What began in his Bellefonte home kitchen later moved into the basement, where Anderson said the operation was state inspected, licensed and insured. He has called it a real bakery all along, even while it was still running out of a home setup.

That home setup also had limits. Anderson works full-time in Penn State dining halls, and earlier reporting showed him waking around 3 a.m. or staying up late after work to mill flour and prepare dough. As the bakery grew, warmer weather made fermentation harder to control and home proofing space became a bottleneck. The new shop will add a mixer more than twice the size of his home unit and three stone-hearth ovens with top-and-bottom heat, steam and ventilation built for artisan bread production. It is the kind of equipment shift that can change both volume and consistency without flattening the character that made the bakery popular in the first place.

Bellefonte Bread Baker’s lineup now includes hand-crafted, slow-fermented sourdough bread, bagels, pizza shells and English muffins, along with monthly bread specials and weekly bagel specials. The website says all of its breads are 100% sourdough risen and slow fermented, including English muffins, pretzels and sandwich rolls, while croissants require commercial yeast and some scones and cookies use baking powder. Anderson’s direct-to-customer approach has also mattered: after social media changes pushed him toward email newsletters, he said sales nearly doubled in the first week and stayed strong for months. The bakery, filed as a Pennsylvania domestic fictitious name on March 4, 2021, has also earned local recognition, including silver for best artisan bread and bronze for best bagel. Bellefonte Bread Baker says it hopes to be up and running in the beginning or mid-May, setting up a larger next chapter without losing the small-batch feel that built its reputation.