, 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…