From Vermont to Sellwood
Clara and Tom Ashford grew up spending summers at their grandmother's farmhouse in Vermont. Her kitchen was the kind of place where bread was never rushed — dough sat overnight on the counter, the oven ran all morning, and the maple jar by the window was always full. Neither of them thought much about it at the time. It was just how things were done.
Years later, when Clara was working as a pastry chef in Boston and Tom was finishing a degree in food science in Burlington, they started talking about what a bakery of their own might look like. Not a café, not a restaurant — just a place that made a small number of things very well and sold them to the neighbourhood.
In 2017 they drove out to Portland together to look at a space on SE Tacoma Street in Sellwood. Before they left Vermont, Tom picked up a smooth river stone from the creek behind their grandmother's property. Clara brought a small jar of local maple syrup. Those two things — the stone and the maple — became the name.
Maple & Stone opened in January 2018. The first week they sold twelve loaves and a tray of croissants. They were sold out by 9am on Saturday.
The kitchen on SE Tacoma Street is not large. There is one deck oven — a 1960s Italian model that Tom spent the better part of a year restoring — and a stone mill that Clara uses to grind a portion of the flour in-house each week. The mill is loud and slow and produces flour that behaves differently from anything you can buy in a bag, which is part of the point.
All of the bread goes through a 36–48 hour fermentation. The sourdough starters — Muriel, Douglas, and Pip — have been running continuously since the bakery opened. Muriel is the oldest and the most reliable. Douglas runs a little warm and produces a slightly more acidic crumb. Pip is the newest, started in 2021, and is used exclusively for the einkorn loaves.
The pastry programme runs alongside the bread baking. Croissant dough is laminated over three days. The celebration cake programme is separate — cakes are made to order only, with a minimum six-week lead time, and Clara handles every one personally.
Co-founder, Head Baker
Clara runs the pastry and cake programme and oversees the bread schedule. She trained as a pastry chef in Boston before moving to Portland, and she is the one who decides when a recipe is ready — which sometimes takes months. She also manages the in-house grain milling and sources the flour from Camas Country Mill in the Willamette Valley.
Co-founder, Head of Bread
Tom handles the bread programme and the sourdough starters. He spent a year restoring the 1960s Italian deck oven that sits at the centre of the kitchen, and he is particular about fermentation times in a way that occasionally frustrates the schedule but consistently improves the bread. He also manages the bakery's relationships with local farms and suppliers.
Baker
Rowan joined the team in 2020 and works the early morning shift, which starts at 3am. He is responsible for shaping and scoring the sourdough loaves and for the croissant bake. He came to baking from a background in carpentry, and there is something in the way he handles dough — patient, precise, unhurried — that reflects that.
Pastry Baker
Delphine joined in 2022 and works primarily on the pastry programme — laminated doughs, seasonal danishes, and the morning bun rotation. She grew up in Lyon and has a particular interest in regional French baking traditions, which occasionally shows up in the seasonal specials.
The bakery runs three sourdough starters, each with its own character. Muriel is the original — she has been fed every day since the bakery opened in 2018 and is the most consistent of the three, producing a mild, well-rounded sourness that works across all of the bread loaves. Douglas runs a little warmer and produces a more assertive, acidic crumb; he is used for the seeded rye and the whole wheat miche. Pip is the youngest, started in 2021 from a fresh flour culture, and is used exclusively for the einkorn sandwich loaf. All three are kept in the same corner of the kitchen, which Tom refers to as the nursery.
Our sourdough takes 36–48 hours from mix to bake. The croissant dough takes three days. We don't rush either of them, because the time is doing something the oven can't.
Day-old bread becomes croutons, breadcrumbs, or staff lunch. Sourdough discard goes into the crackers. We track waste carefully and adjust production to keep it low.
Our flour comes from Camas Country Mill in Oregon's Willamette Valley. Our dairy comes from a single farm 40 miles south of Portland. We buy from people we can visit and talk to.
The ingredient list on every product is short enough to read in one breath. No additives, no improvers, no shortcuts that don't show up on the label. That's the standard we hold ourselves to.