Model Bakery

Griddled English muffins lead the counter

The English muffin is the reason to stop: an airy, cornmeal-dusted round griddle-fried in clarified butter, served plain with butter and jam or built into a breakfast sandwich. The Original puts eggs, Canadian bacon, and cheddar on it. The St. Helena adds chipotle pesto and cheese. A sausage version brings jalapeño jack and roasted red pepper aioli, and a chipotle sandwich moves to sourdough with tomato, avocado, egg, and cheese. The muffins are split and toasted to order, which is why the cornmeal edge stays crisp under the egg. It is the item that carried the bakery well beyond Napa Valley, and the one Food Network singled out on The Best Thing I Ever Ate.

A century of bread across two sites

The Napa shop is inside the Oxbow Public Market, opened in January 2008 as the second location after the original in St. Helena. The name is older than either: the Main Street space in St. Helena was already trading as Model Bakery in the 1920s and 1930s. Karen Mitchell bought the business in 1984 and rebuilt it as a European-style artisan bakery, drawing on breads she had admired in France. Her daughter, Sarah Mitchell Hansen, joined around 2000 and pushed the wholesale side, the product range, and the Oxbow production kitchen with its newer ovens. Organic stone-ground flour still sets the standard for the bread, and the Oxbow site added an afternoon bake that keeps fresh loaves moving into the market and out to restaurants across the region.

What to put in the box

Order a muffin first, then work through the case. Blueberry scones, banana nut muffins, morning buns, and bear claws hold the morning end; almond croissants and cookies studded with raisins, hazelnuts, or white chocolate carry the afternoon. Pumpkin bread and banana bread travel well. If the visit is doing double duty, take a loaf home, since bread remains the backbone of the operation rather than a sideline to the pastry. Drinks stay deliberately simple, with coffee, tea, and lattes built to sit beside a muffin rather than compete with it. Come early in the day and the case is at its fullest; later on the choice narrows the way it should at a bakery that bakes to finish. Pies, bars, frangipane, jams, and grab-and-go deli items fill in the rest, which makes the shop as workable for a quick breakfast as for assembling lunch inside the market.