By Daniel Perez-Crouse
Despite being a little “sad” leaving their initial location on N Williams St. after over six years, the Dos Hermanos Bakery has moved to SE Portland to not only expand with their rapid growth, but lay the groundwork for some future plans–all while maintaining “old-school” values and quality processes for making bread.
Dos Hermanos is a wholesale bakery started by brothers and bread experts Gabriel “Gabe” and Josue Azcorra. They previously managed Delphina’s for nearly a decade, where they baked for large chains like Trader Joe’s and Costco and opened their initial location in N Williams St. They sell to a variety of local restaurants. For example, the highly rated sandwich shop on NE Alberta St., Pasture, touts Dos Hermanos as their main bread supplier. They also appear at most of the local farmer’s markets, so the average consumer can get their hands on sourdough loaves, rolls and baguettes–in addition to a variety of rotating pastries. They also hope to be available in stores like New Seasons soon.
“We are happy because right now we have a bigger space, we can make more bread,” said Gabriel. As their business expanded and demand increased, they needed more room–which influenced their decision to move. “In the other location, it was a big challenge every single day to make a lot of bread within that small space.”
While N Williams St. is undoubtedly full of foot traffic and a mini food Mecca, their new location on SE Stark St. is sandwiched between breweries and adjacent to the Lil American Food Cart pod with newly famed carts like Frybaby and Makulit.
Walking through their new SE location, which appears plenty roomy, seemingly every kind of bread and roll is being freshly baked and lining their trays. And a currently unused space near the back of the bakery is where the owners see the potential for a future coffee shop. They are also tossing around the idea of returning to N Williams St. to open a little coffee shop there as well.
“This coffee shop is going to be a little different from other coffee shops,” said Gabriel. Since it’ll be in the same space as their bakery, customers will have views of the behind-the-scenes bread-making magic. “I’m excited because we are going to have pastries, bread, breakfast, sandwiches and lunch. And for sure coffee.” He says it will start with just drip coffee and hot chocolate–and maybe in the future, they’ll do espresso.
Gabriel made it clear they are extremely passionate about bread and love sharing it with as many people as possible. “All the bread we make is old school. We mix the dough at 3 am, we shape the dough the same day around 3 pm. But we bake the next day around 5 am. The whole process is around 36 hours. That’s why people love it. People say your bread looks different–the flavor is different. Always we have cared about the flavor.” He said that, despite their expansions, they want to maintain their commitment to quality and not fast-track the production or become too modern in their approach.
They are now located at 1005 SE Stark St. and you can place wholesale orders at doshermanosbakery.com. Additionally, you can find them at the PSU farmer’s market every weekend; check out their Instagram account @2_hermanos_bakery for more specific details on which markets they are at throughout the year.
Photo: Josue (left) and Gabriel (right) Azcorra. Photo credit Daniel Perez-Crouse.
