Not everyone has a sweet tooth when it comes to their baked goods. But establishments like Mill Valley’s Madrona Bakery sure do make it easy to enjoy the savory side of life.
For those who don’t know, Madrona Bakery is a cozy baked goods shop just next to the bustling downtown square. Although less than a year old, Madrona Bakery already has its regulars popping in and out, requesting favorites to take along on their morning walk or to/from work.
Upon visiting the bakery, it’s easy to see how this little eatery earned such a large, staunchly loyal crowd of customers from the community in only a few short months.
Of course, the baked goods at Madrona Bakery are delicious and the vibes immaculate, but that’s not what makes this place stand out from the other sweet and savory-slinging establishments of the Bay Area. No, what makes Madrona Bakery special is its care and responsiveness to the community’s tastes and taste buds.
Madrona Bakery features a seasonal menu made with ingredients bought fresh from Marin-local farmers’ markets, which are used alongside carefully selected and imported items. Together, this balance of local and sourced ingredients ensures a curated and consistent baseline of high-quality textures, flavors and all-around yummy eating experiences in every season. Just don’t be surprised when the time of plentiful summer tomatoes comes to its natural end and so too do Madrona Bakery’s summer tomato creations.
The two women who own and operate Madrona Bakery are Marin County locals, Nicola Carey and Gemma Edward Aron. Together, these friends and fellow baked goods enthusiasts have made it their mission to serve the most perfectly curated selection of goodies to their local community.
Madrona Bakery’s menu is, as a result, seasonal and crafted in direct response to the likes and desires of those who frequent it. In other words, Edward Aron and Carey actively listen and respond directly to the feedback of customers in order to ensure the items they make and sell are exactly what the people walking in want to eat.
So, what do the people of Marin County and the Mill Valley community enjoy in their baked goods? Well…let’s take a look at the Madrona Bakery menu and see what it reveals about the taste buds of our neighbors.
First up are the mouthwatering assortment of breads, a staple item that many bakeries don’t sell for some strange reason. But at Madrona Bakery, customers can select between the Madrona levain, the seeded levain, the baguette, green olive focaccia, caramelized onion focaccia, pizza focaccia, the multi-grain sando loaf, challah (on Fridays), pain de mie (on the weekends), Cali whole wheat (on Saturdays) and olive levain (on Sundays).
Even better, Madrona Bakery offers the simple yet mind blowing option of dressing up a bread-eating experience with butter, seasonal house-made jam and olive oil.
After 11am, Madrona Bakery offers its customers sandwiches, which is an excellent idea considering the selection. On one hand, the ever-classic ham and butter baguette can appeal to those customers looking to savor simple, quality flavors without any extra tastes to distract or detract.
On the other hand, those who want more complex flavor profiles in their sandwiches may enjoy the spicy Italian baguette sandwich or the cheddar and chutney on seeded levain. And for the wild card sandwich, the farmers’ market veg on focaccia option is always rotating and allows adventurous customers to come in and try something new with each shift in the seasonal menu.
Drink options include all the classic coffee options like drip, espresso, Americano (sparkling or otherwise), cortado, cappuccino, latte, mocha, hot cocoa, matcha and chai lattes, tea, iced tea and lemonade, to name only a few.
Oh, and we can’t forget to mention the wine—that’s right, Madrona Bakery also serves wine alongside beer and tasty tinned fish to pair with it. This means customers can come in, sit back and sip on some wine while enjoying a classic sandwich or simply dipped bread in olive oil.
For those who walk into the bakery and find they just can’t decide between all the classic and more out-there flavor combinations, Madrona Bakery has a solution. Or, more accurately, they have a flow chart on a chalkboard that customers can follow and refer to when struggling to decide what item (or items) to enjoy that day.
Questions like, “What should you order?” and “Sweet or savory?” come first, followed by an ever-expanding flowchart taking customers on individual adventures between “classic” and “seasonal” and “flake city” or even “take me to flavor town.”
Alongside catering to the savory side of customers’ taste buds, Madrona Bakery also has some incredible sweet treats that must be mentioned. Between the almond croissant, the pain au chocolat, the Nutella croissant, the cinnamon spice knot, the cardamom swirl, the almond butter banana bread and the lemon lavender honey pull-apart alone, almost any savory-loving person could find themselves converted.
But it is the weekends-only menu that really kicks off the Madrona Bakery experience, with signature items like the lemon meringue croissant, which offers the best flaky, golden brown exterior one could hope to find, filled with a tart, tangy, perfectly balanced lemon meringue filling that practically flies off the shelf.
Another weekend-specific treat at Madrona Bakery is the s’mores croissant, which the owners of Madrona know is a fan favorite among the high-school-aged crowd. The black sesame croissant, fruit and custard croissant and the sprinkles croissant complete the weekend menu.
Life is all about balance, and everyone has their own way of toeing that line between healthy and happy, disciplined and indulgent and, of course, sweet and savory…and here in Marin, bakeries like Madrona are making those choices easier to balance than ever before. With seasonal, fresh ingredients and a rotating menu of everything from stuffed bagels to unbelievable sandwiches and all the cookies and wine in between, the only thing that could go wrong is walking past and never stopping by to see what sort of tempting treats await.
And hey, if there’s something one would love to see on the menu that isn’t there, just swing by, say hi and share those ideas/cravings with the bakery. Who knows, they just may make delicious dreams an even more delicious reality. After all, the not so secret ingredient at Madrona Bakery is love…and butter, of course.
Madrona Bakery is open from 8am to 3pm Thursday through Monday and is located at 17 Madrona St. in downtown Mill Valley. The bakery does not accept cash payments (for hygiene reasons, in part), so be sure to bring some other cashless way to pay for those pastries. To learn more about Madrona and the many baked goods they make and sell, visit the website at madronabakery.com or call 415.915.9120.
