Restaurant Rants & Raves: Our critics dish on the year in dining

by Grant Butler, The Oregonian’s food/arts writer
Thursday December 25, 2008

Bakery of the year: Little T American Baker. When I crave artisan bread, I want to make those calories matter, and none are wasted here — including the robust focaccia slabs, chewy baguettes and whole-grain carrot rolls. As good as the breads are, the surprising finds are the sweets, including delicate, elegant granola cookies and buttery chocolate croissants. No wonder everything’s so spot on: flour-master Tim Healea is a former standout baker at The Pearl Bakery.

Little T American Baker:

Church of Heavenly Bread

by Teri Gelber, special to The Oregonian

Tuesday August 19, 2008

The basics at Little T

Hunger may send us in search of our daily bread, but a great bakery fulfills so much more than our stomachs. If the formula is right — warm crusty loaves, unforgettable sweets, good coffee and a “sit down, stay awhile” ambience — a bakery becomes the hub of a community (not to mention your life).

Portland has one of the country’s better baking scenes, with an artisan hub in every quadrant, from Pearl Bakery and Ken’s Artisan in the Northwest to Fleur de Lis in the Northeast to Baker and Spice in the Southwest.

Now inner Southeast has a contender: Little T American Baker, which opened in June and rocketed into Portland’s hot bakery zone with inspired baked goods and sandwiches

Little T is already contending for the city’s best breads, and the croissants and pain au chocolat are on par with the best of French boulangeries. Accomplished baker/owner Tim Healea — former Pearl Bakery head baker — has clearly come to play.

Ah, the joys of choice!

Anchoring the spiffy new Clinton Condominium building, Little T brings a jolt of sophistication to a rugged stretch of Southeast Division. As you leave the tarmacked terrain outside, the crisp modern space seems jarring in contrast. Light pouring in the windows and tall lofty ceilings are exalting, like walking into a sanctuary. Only here, the worshipping is over Healea’s heavenly breads.

Like edible trophies, Little T’s loaves — six or seven daily — are lined up in a window behind the counter. Too bad these handcrafted superstars aren’t center stage.

Crank your neck and check out the Long Skinny, Healea’s pride and joy. Made in the style of the French baguette a l’ancienne, this crusty baton has a yeasty smack that would please even the snobbiest of Parisians. Baked twice a day (few bakers do this anymore), the baguette is fresh throughout the afternoon.

Healea’s pretzel bread takes the shape of a hot dog bun, with a tender, toothsome bite and crunchy salt on top. The Sally Lunn is a pale yellow beauty with a rich buttery crumb, Healea’s nod to the American south and one of the best sandwich loaves in the city.

Also celestial: the focaccia-style “slabs,” their burnished crusts yielding to an exquisite porous crumb that pulls and stretches with olive oil goodness. The olive is the gutsiest slab, festooned with briny Greek jewels.

Breads, ordered to go, are tastefully swaddled in butcher paper and tied with string. But they also form the foundation for made-to-order sandwiches, the best of them a superior BLT, made on grilled Sally Lunn with aioli, smoky straps of bacon and garden tomatoes. The ham and cheddar on pretzel bread is an Alpine high, smeared with tangy Dijon mustard butter. Simple salads, however, seem like an afterthought, despite the farm lettuce.

Healea

Some morning sweets — zucchini bread and the currant doughnut come to mind — are too timid and need some umph. But, Little T’s changing selection has consistently improved since June. The cookies, for one, look and taste better every time I go back. Especially the sparkling molasses.

Other options were stirring from the start. The moist, yellow Birthday Cupcake, with hints of almond and a luscious dark chocolate glaze, looks straight from June Cleaver’s oven. And the Pecan Toast could become a Little T signature: a buttery Sally Lunn slice blanketed in pecan cream and powdered sugar.

But the just-launched croissants — crisp spirals concealing buttery stratas — leave no doubt that 36-year-old Healea is playing for keeps. Available around 9 a.m., they are rivaled in Portland only by Ken’s Artisan Bakery. And the pain au chocolat is otherworldly, filled with a deep rich ganache that bathes every bite.

No wonder these tastes are exquisite: As a member of the U.S. baking team, Healea’s Viennoiserie (pastries made from laminated doughs) won a silver medal in the 2002 Coupe de Monde de la Boulangerie, a sort of bakers’ Olympics.

Like any good hub, Little T is the kind of place you’d happily visit a couple times a day. In the early hours, come for Cowgirl Toast, a grilled combo of bacon, egg and cheese, made even better with the house preserves, had for the asking. Later in the day, make a run for breads, sandwiches and satisfying snacks.

For his first solo outing, Healea is off to an ambitious and impressive start. Not everything is perfect, but with time, we’ll be vying for a window seat or making new friends at the big shared table. Little T has all the stuff a great bakery needs — especially a star baker.

Summing up:

Little T American Baker, 2600 S.E. Division St., 503-238-3458

Recommended: Breads ($1.75-$5.50): Long Skinny (baguette); Sally Lunn; “slabs”; pretzel bread

Sandwiches ($6-$6.25): BLT; ham and cheese; egg salad

Sweets and pastries ($1.25-$2.25): Croissants; pain au chocolat; Pecan Toasts; molasses or peanut butter cookie; cupcake.

Henry Miller Missed Out

Amazing Bread in America? Little T’s Got It

The Portland Mercury, August 28, 2008

by Patrick Alan Coleman

Little T American Baker

2600 SE Division
238-3458

Over the last three weeks, I kept finding myself in the spacious, modern confines of Little T American Baker. Whether coveting neatly displayed muffins, cookies, and croissants, or enjoying a muffuletta sandwich, one question kept returning: Why “American Baker?” You see, during the time I spent amid the stainless steel counters and butcher-block tables, chewing my way through the menu, I couldn’t figure out what made the bakery distinctly American.

I called Little T’s owner and master baker, Tim Healea, in hopes that he might set me straight.

“For the last couple of cycles at the World Cup of Baking in Paris,” Healea says, “Americans took top rank. When I opened the bakery I wanted ‘American’ to be specifically stated: You can be an American and still be a great baker.”

Healea, whose nickname was Little T when he took the Silver Medal for laminated doughs (viennoiserie) in the 2002 World Cup of Baking, doesn’t want to be tied to a specific baking tradition. “Mostly, I’m aiming for rustic home-style stuff,” he says. “I really wanted [the bakery] to be American in terms of it being a melting pot as well.”

The danger with this wide worldview is the possibility that without focus, a baker’s skill might be diluted among styles. This isn’t the case at Little T. Healea is as adept at creating a delicious baguette with airy crumb and nice golden crust as he is at creating a loaf of slightly sweet, cake-like Sally Lunn bread.

Sally Lunn seems to be the flagship type of bread at Little T. The recipe is “straight from James Beard” according to Healea, and he uses Sally Lunn liberally throughout his menu. The thick, light slices work well combined with mild egg salad, but create a shallow, sugary flavor profile when combined with a surprisingly saccharine slab of meatloaf. Happily, the meatloaf sandwich is a rare miss in an otherwise fine menu.

While Little T is making a showing in the burgeoning Clinton/Division lunch scene, the breakfast offerings are a welcome addition to the neighborhood.

A formed, baked donut, studded with currants, has a balanced sweetness with powdered sugar and cinnamon spiciness. The texture has the integrity of dense cake. The oat and date scones are soft and substantial—the oats providing body to the flavor, hues of butter and sugar melting across the tongue, while the dates brighten the whole affair.

The breakfast sandwiches are also pleasant. The ham and cheese on pretzel works very well, primarily because of the split, stubby, soft pretzel roll with its large grains of salt studded across shining, deep brown crust. Another excellent offering is cowgirl toast, a riff on the classic egg-in-a-basket, wherein an egg is fried in a hole punched through a bread slice. Here the sweetness of the Sally Lunn plays well against salty egg and bacon.

There are so many options at Little T, it’s impossible to give them all their due in this space. But I’d encourage anyone to try the seven-grain carrot roll, focaccia-style olive slab, or any of the other offerings filling Little T’s dynamic menu. Like that muffuletta sandwich—its coarse and tangy tapenade mellowed by the warm give of sliced skinny baguette.

Henry Miller once wrote, “You can travel 50,000 miles in America without once tasting a piece of good bread.” Lucky for Portland, Little T is close to home.

Loaf, American-Style

Little T is baked in the U.S.A.

Willamette Week

FLOUR POWER: Little T’s pretzel bread and chocolate tart. IMAGE: ChrisRyanPhoto.com

BY JOANNA MILLER | 503-243-2122

[July 2nd, 2008]

“Get Your Buns In Here!” This command was printed on the T-shirt that my friend was required to wear to her job at a popular bakery in a mountain resort town. The double entendre runs through my mind whenever I see some nice-lookin’ buns—like those belonging to Little T American Baker.

Opened in early June by Tim Healea, Little T is in the new Clinton Condominiums on Southeast Division Street, in a sleek, light-filled space that still manages to remain warm and inviting.

What makes Little T American? The label refers to Healea’s desire to bake varieties of bread beyond Western European staples like baguettes and Italian foccacias. Indian naan, for example. The bakery also updates items not typically thought of as “artisan.” A cakey, briochelike “Sally Lunn” bread, an old U.S. recipe, bookends bacon and produce for a high-end B.L.T., and Little T’s doughnut ($2.25) is studded with currants and baked, not fried.

Healea, longtime head baker at Pearl Bakery (and recently at Kenny & Zuke’s), has earned a well-deserved reputation for his artisan breads, taking home a silver medal at the 2002 World Cup of Baking. So it’s no surprise that the breads at Little T shine: a basic baguette ($2.50) takes on an almost eggy springiness (even though it contains no egg), spelt bread ($4.25/half loaf) is earthy and full-flavored, and foccacia-like “slabs” in both herbed and sea-salt varieties ($3/$4 with olives) are rustic and satisfying. A crusty seven-grain carrot bread ($3.50, also available in rolls, $1.75) and “pretzel bread” ($1.75) offer a departure from more common bakery offerings.

On the sweeter side of the menu, a “less is more” approach dominates. Don’t come looking for cupcakes topped with mountains of pastel frosting. Instead, try the pecan toast ($2.25), in which an entire surface of a slice of the Sally Lunn is loaded with a nutty spread. The thin, butter crust of the chocolate tart ($3.50) houses a filling that, while indeed luscious and creamy, leans more toward pudding than mind-blowingly rich ganache. The butterscotch blondie ($2, coyly named the “Debbie Harry”) is nice, but the perfectly moist and dense traditional chocolate brownie ($2) is the one that disappeared most quickly from our plate.

As an ardent adorer of a traditional oatmeal-raisin cookie, I was less amused by the “Big T Granola Cookie” ($1.50), which blasphemously employs white chocolate chips—totally not cool.

Still hungry? Sandwiches ($6-$6.50), including the B.L.T. as well as roasted veggie and a Muffaletta, are all hearty. Side salads are $2, and housemade soups will soon be available.

The verdict? You should get your buns (and loaves and cookies) in here—and then in your belly.

EAT: Little T American Baker, 2600 SE Division St., 238-3458. Breakfast and lunch 7 am-5 pm Monday-Saturday, 8 am-2 pm Sunday. $ Inexpensive.