Polestar Hearth began as a cottage industry making bread the slow, old-fashioned way: baked in a brick oven, using only flour, water, sea salt and culture. This beautiful video by Guelph’s own Blair Cameron was shot in the old backyard bakery on a chilly day in March 2015. After nine years of backyard baking, we moved to a street-front shop, and now employ a team of a dozen craftspeople who care about food and community and really good bread.


Jesse the Bakerator

Jesse the Bakerator

My background in craft

Working with my hands in craft and art has been my nature since childhood. Starting as a young boy in my father’s boat and cabinet shop, I went on to a career in musical instrument construction and repair.

That work brought me to Guelph in early 2002, when I was offered a position at Folkway Music, a budding music shop that was soon to become one of the premier vintage guitar emporiums in the world. It was my privilege and responsibility to work subtle repairs on some of the finest acoustic guitars of the 20th century.

After six years with Folkway, I made a huge shift, dreaming of filling a hole in the “good bread desert” of Guelph, thereby doing work that would serve my community directly and at a price point my own young family could afford. I built a little brick oven and began the journey of unravelling sourdough’s secrets.

A year and a half later I built a garage bakery and a much bigger brick oven and began Polestar Hearth in earnest. The community supported my efforts very kindly and for 9 years we operated a BreadShare, baking bread outdoors and delivering to homes throughout Guelph in whether fair and foul.

In 2016 we had the opportunity to take over a derelict laundromat a few blocks from home, and within the year the Polestar Hearth Bakery you’ve come to know and love was born, funded completely by small loans from community members.

Through the support of community and customers, within a few years those loans were paid off. We now employ more than a dozen people, in a range from highly skilled artisans to folks just learning, and provide Good Bread and pastries to hundreds of customers daily. I am grateful for the family and the community that has believed in my work day by day on this journey. What a long, strange trip it’s been!