For more than 12 years now, my husband and I have been making the four-hour trip up Interstate 5 between our home in Southern Oregon to Portland, where several friends and family members live. Pre-COVID, we’d make that journey every few months, and we’d usually make it in one hop, with no stops except for a soft drink or perhaps a quick drive-through fast food meal. About four years ago, though, our neighbors, who also travel pretty regularly to the Portland area, asked if we’d ever stopped at the Creswell Bakery. They went on to rave about the sandwiches and great baked goods to be had there. On their recommendation, we decided to stop in on our next trip north.

Creswell is a small town a few miles south of Eugene, Oregon. It’s mostly a farming community with a well-respected farmers market on Tuesdays, but several wineries have sprung up around it over the years, and you can explore several charming covered bridges in the county around it.

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It’s also home to the Emerald Valley Golf Club, home of the University of Oregon’s golf team and host of several U.S. Amateur and Open qualifier tournaments. We’d never given it more than a second glance as we sped on past on the interstate, though. We pulled off on a Sunday afternoon on a trip home from Portland a few years ago but discovered the bakery, less than a mile off the freeway, had just closed at 3 p.m. Making a mental note to get there earlier another day, we anticipated our next trip.

When we stopped in again, we realized our neighbors were right about how great the food was. Everything, and I mean everything, from the dressings and the croutons on the salads to the house-smoked bacon

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is made from scratch. The ground beef in the savory hand pies and the house-roasted roast beef come from grass-fed cattle raised on the owner’s farm three miles away. Culinary Institute of America-trained chef/owner Heidi Tunnell opened the bakery in 2008, and it has become both a community staple and a favorite of passers-through, supplying breakfast and lunch sandwiches, soups, salads and a pastry-case full of rolls,

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danishes, cookies and other gooey goodies. There are always several varieties of bread for purchase, too, with the sourdough

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being a standout.

The bakery is in a welcoming weathered building with a garden with trees and flowering shrubs out front along with several picnic tables for patrons. Off to the side sits the enormous smoker where the bacon is prepared (and sometimes turkey, too). Inside you can browse through racks holding local wines and shelves with foodstuffs from local producers, from sea salt to honey to stone-ground flours. A freezer case hold Creswell Bakery goods to take home, including whole fruit pies, frozen cookie dough and savory hand pies. We always check out the chalkboard on the wall for the day’s specials and breads available. In addition to the regular menu items, there’s always a soup of the day (on our most recent visit it was a potato and beef stew — hearty and flavorful) and a salad of the day, to which meat can be added. A sandwich of the day is usually listed, too, but they’re pretty accommodating about building a custom sandwich at your request.

We have yet to get away from the bakery without at least one loaf of bread and a few of the large, chewy cookies (the Oregon hazelnut and butterscotch is a particular favorite of mine). The bakery offers online ordering and grab-and-go selections, but we like to take the time to check out the specials, stretch our legs a bit and sit at one of the tables and enjoy our meal. If we’re lucky, the smoker is doing its thing, and we can enjoy the smell of bacon as we eat.

The bakery is open seven days a week, 7 a.m. to 3 p.m. Monday–Saturday and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m. Sundays. If you’re cruising down I-5, I’d urge you to stop in. I guarantee you won’t be disappointed.

— Patty Vanikiotis, associate editor/copy editor