Last year, baker Solveig Tofte, then 10 years into her job directing all kinds of goodness at Turtle Bread Co., was itching for a new professional challenge. After noticing that the baked-goods stand had disappeared from the Kingfield Farmers Market, which is conveniently located a block from her south Minneapolis home, she approached the market's organizers with a proposal: How about if she baked?
Done. She calls her sideline business Sun Street Breads, a play on her Norwegian name (sol means "sun," veig translates to "street"). Talk about fresh: Every Saturday night, Tofte returns to her weekday workplace ("my boss is so supportive of all my crazy schemes," she said) and labors through the night, producing three or four breads, a few sweet pastries, a savory biscuit and a pair of cookies, posting the selection on her website every Thursday. Baguettes are the last to come out of the oven, and by 7:30 a.m. she's heading to the market, where husband Martin Ouimet and daughter Linnea Ouimet lend a helping hand.
The breads are beautiful, and let's just say no crinkled ginger cookie I've ever purchased made it to the car, that's how irresistible they are. But the real showstoppers are the fruit turnovers. Tofte calls them "Surprise Turnovers," meaning that the filling varies each week, and the fruit's identity is strictly hush-hush ("I can't be printing signs every week," she said with a laugh, but she'll tell you if you ask).
Autumn naturally means apples. I recently lucked into her sublime Macintosh-Honeycrisp combination, with hints of cloves sneaking into each bite, although the fruit is sort of secondary, as the pastry is magnificent. It's a flaky, sour cream-laced dough that borrows from pie crust and croissant production methods, and nothing will lure you away from a dull supermarket-made turnover faster than a single bite of Tofte's version.
One hint: Arrive early, as this is one market stand that routinely sells out. "It's this fall weather," she said. "I think there's this massive carb craving kicking in."
RICK NELSON
Fruit turnovers ($3) from Sun Street Breads (www.sunstreetbreads.com) at the Kingfield Farmers Market (www.kingfieldfarmers market.org), 43rd St. and Nicollet Av. S., Mpls. Open 8:30 a.m. to 1 p.m. Sunday. For a map of metro-area farmers markets, go to www.startribune.com/taste.
