Washougal baker launches Bakehouse Sourdough

Sourdough is generally considered to be one of the most ancient forms of bread, the standard method of breadmaking for most of human history. To Washougal resident Kendra Hofseth, though, sourdough is not just a flavor but an ancient art — simple to learn but difficult to master.

“Sourdough is just different,” Hofseth said. “I love that it’s really a living food. It goes through a fermentation process using living yeast.”

Hofseth said creating sourdough bread can be deceptively simple.

“It’s an easy process to put flour, water, a starter and salt together,” she said, “but it generally takes a lot of practice unless you’re a sourdough genius.”

Hofseth is embracing that process as the owner of Bakehouse Sourdough, the home-based microbakery she founded in the spring of 2024.

“I am blessed with an amazing community,” Hofseth said. “Everyone has been so kind and very supportive. I try to repay that in kind with really good bread.”

Hofseth specializes in slow-fermented artisan sourdough breads, baguettes and other baked goods — all made with organic, locally sourced flours and grains.

On the Bakehouse Sourdough website, customers rave about Hofseth’s bakery.

“This bread is always delicious,” a customer noted in a recent review of Hofseth’s sourdough bread. “I’m a huge fan. (It’s) fluffy with the perfect crust and a balanced delightful flavor.”

Sourdough is made by allowing dough to ferment using naturally occurring lactic acid bacteria and yeast before baking. Hofseth typically makes and ferments dough on Wednesday or Thursday, then bakes it on Friday.

“Most of my loaves take a minimum of 24 hours of fermentation time and a maximum of 72 hours,” Hofseth said, adding that the number of loaves she creates each week varies.

“Last week, for example, I made 48 loaves,” she said. “During the market season, I was doing 70 to 80-plus loaves per week.”

Once the bread is baked, Hofseth places it on her porch, where customers will pick up their pre-ordered baked goods.

To score a loaf of Bakehouse Sourdough, customers must be willing to jump through a few hoops. They must sign up for texts so they can place their order and then receive texts confirming their order and providing the pick-up location, date and time.

“My goal is to provide customers with fresh bread right (out of the oven),” Hofseth said. “It’s worked out really well, so much better than I possibly imagined. People order, and the system sends out text reminders, location, details, instructions, things like that. Then they come to the porch, and the orders are organized, so I haven’t had any problems with it. It’s been amazing. I’ve been able to meet so many new friends. It’s really fun.”

Hofseth said she taught herself to bake sourdough bread with the assistance of an online, sourdough bread-baking community.

“The main way I learned was just getting my hands on the dough,” she said. “It took many, many hours of practice, and many loaves to get going. I started off with one recipe, worked it, mastered it and moved onto another and another. I found that YouTube is an amazing resource, and that there are several microbakers on social media whose main content is helping other microbakers. That really was beneficial to me in the beginning of my business. I really didn’t know there was a whole microbaking world until I started marketing on social media.”

Hofseth fell in love with sourdough bread in 2013, when her small-farm delivery job took her to a Tartine Bakery location in San Francisco.

“I would go to (Tartine) every single week,” Hofseth, a California native who moved to Camas in 2019 and to Washougal in 2022, said. “One of my deliveries was across the street from the bakery, and I would stop in there every week and get a loaf for me and my husband, and I fell in love with it. A few years later, I started making it.”

Hofseth said that her idea to start a business developed organically.

“I started baking sourdough a few years ago for my family, and I really loved it, and I wanted to share it with neighbors and friends, so I started sharing loaves on a weekly basis,” she said. “At a certain point, a friend told me that she knew someone who was selling their bread. It hadn’t occurred to me before to sell my bread, and I thought, ‘Well, I’m baking and giving away so many (loaves), I may as well start selling them.’ It snowballed into a whole endeavor. I always had the heart of an entrepreneur, so I couldn’t help but make it a business.”

Hofseth, who acquired a cottage food permit from the Washington State Department of Agriculture and a food workers’ card from the Washington State Department of Health, said that running an at-home microbakery suits her life better than her previous career running a landscape design and installation firm.

“I loved it, and it was starting to grow, but once I started homeschooling kids, I couldn’t continue work outside of the home,” she said. “This microbakery allows me to stay at home, homeschool my kids and contribute to the community in a meaningful way. It checks all the boxes.”

Hofseth sold her loaves and built her customer base at the Camas Farmer’s Market last summer.

“I learned a lot right from the start,” she said of selling at the local farmers’ market. “It really allowed business to grow in a way that I wouldn’t have been able to in the same time frame. It’s great having that market available to meet other farmers and business (owners), collaborate and support the local food system.”

Hofseth recently kicked off a series of bread-baking classes. She held the first class in November 2024, at the Burnt Bridge Cellars winery in Vancouver, and said she hopes to do more classes in the future.

To learn more about Bakehouse Sourdough, visit the business’ social media sites on Facebook and Instagram. To place an order, visit hotplate.com/bakehouse.