About Us

Since 2000 Morell’s Bread has been baking traditional sourdough breads for people who love handcrafted, whole-grain breads with hearty flavor and texture. Now based in The Berkeley Kitchens in West Berkeley, we’ve come a long way from our beginnings at Headlands Center for the Arts in Marin County. It’s just the two us, and we love what we do. When those loaves come out of the oven looking and tasting wonderful, it’s well worth the hard work.

Built on thousands of years of baking in a traditional way, the slow fermentation sourdough process we use makes the nutrients in the grain readily bio-available, and the bread flavor complex and delicious. For over 15 years our sourdough culture has leavened our breads, producing a fully flavored and textured crumb that is easy to digest. Our loaves are 85% to 100% hydrated and use as many local ingredients as possible. Our care, methods, and ingredients produce bread like no other. Come visit us and take a loaf home to nourish your friends and family! We know you will enjoy how it tastes, and equally, you will love how it makes you feel.

Eduardo began baking in 1998 in Marin County at Headlands Center for the Arts where he was interning with Chef Jessica Prentice. The bread being produced in the Alan Scott wood fired oven at the back of the kitchen drew him in from the beginning. After assisting for a few bakes he quickly fell in love with the process of creating traditional sourdough bread. In 1999 he left the Arts Center for a year, but began to hone his skills as a bread baker through a home practice, and eventually developed the bread he wanted. Returning to the Arts Center, he found the oven unused and saw the opportunity to jump in and try his hand at larger style bread production. The bakes were tiny back then, but Morell’s Bread was born in those early mornings; loading wood into the oven, firing it up, hand mixing bigger and bigger batches of dough, and experimenting with hydration, length of fermentation, oven temperature, and grain varieties.

Eduardo met Tamsen in 2001 and by the next year she was working side by side with him in the bakery as they started selling at the Berkeley Farmers’ Market. From there, they grew the business slowly and deliberately. Even though some of the mornings were early and the days were long, they still wanted baking to be a pleasure. After making Berkeley their family home in 2008, they knew it was time to move the bakery to the East Bay. They searched for a few years and finally found a site they loved. Now they work a mere five blocks from their home, often walk to the bakery, and they feel more connected to the community that loves their bread.