People have been telling Alex Howe to start her own bakery for years.
She started young, learning with her mom in the kitchen and continuing to bake throughout college. As an undergrad, she hosted bake sales to help with fundraisers and they’d always sell out, she said.
Salty Fox Bakery was born after the former science teacher listened to what friends and family were saying.
“One night at a family birthday, they were all chanting, ‘bakery, bakery,’ and I was like, ‘all right, it’s time,’” Howe recalled.
Located inside what Howe described as a “cozy, woodsy Nordic-style bread shed” on Fox Island, Salty Fox Bakery opens for orders this Saturday and Sunday. The micro-bakery is located at 488 Third Ave. and can be a little hard to find. Look for a black shed with a turquoise door, she said.
Lifelong baker Alex Howe and her husband Zach Howe built an A-frame shed on Fox Island, Wash. to house a cottage bakery. Salty Fox Bakery Courtesy
The self-serve bakery isn’t a brick-and-mortar store but rather a “micro-bakery” where customers can pre-order items online and pick them up at the shed, or walk up and take a look at what’s on display, she said. Lucky Seven Goods is another micro-bakery with a similar concept at 14405 35th Ave. NW, north of Gig Harbor.
Alex and her husband, Zach Howe, built the A-frame shed from the ground up using plans they found online. She said she was inspired by similar micro-bakeries in eastern Washington and learned that she could get her own cottage food permit to sell goods baked in her own home kitchen. She previously taught for 10 years at Harbor Heights Elementary School.
The menu at Salty Fox Bakery will change from month to month, but Howe plans to offer items such as a sourdough sandwich loaf, cinnamon rolls, New York-style chocolate cookies and tea cakes in two flavors: lemon vanilla and lemon lychee lavender. The cottage bakery will specialize in “wholesome sourdough baked goods,” according to the website. Customers will be able to check the business’s social media and website for weekly menu updates, Howe said.
Salty Fox Bakery, a micro-bakery in a quaint shed on Fox Island, Wash. opens Saturday, April 4, 2026. The cottage bakery will specialize in sourdough baked goods and sell cookies, pies, bagels and more. Salty Fox Bakery Courtesy
Howe designs most of her own recipes. She looks forward to offering sourdough cookies, which are “very fluffy and have a nice complex flavor,” sourdough New York-style bagels and mini pies using her grandmother’s blackberry pie recipe, she said.
The bakery’s name comes from her signature move — finishing treats with a sprinkle of flaky sea salt, she said.
Having grown up on Fox Island, Howe said she’s excited to meet more of her neighbors through the bakery stand. The island is “such a wonderful small rural community,” she wrote in a message. “Once you’re ‘on island,’ you really don’t want to leave.”
Salty Fox Bakery owner Alex Howe said her signature move is a sprinkle of flaky sea salt, hence the name of her new micro-bakery, she said. Salty Fox Bakery Courtesy
Besides baked goods, Howe is also thinking of offering other items at the shed, including fresh produce, flowers and pieces of art, similar to a farm stand. Visitors will also be able to leave seeds or pick up seeds from a free seed box at the site, a way to share her love for gardening with the community, she said.
Customers can pre-order via the micro-bakery’s website or the Bakesy site or app to pick up goods at the shed on Saturdays and Sundays.
The News Tribune
Julia Park is the Gig Harbor reporter at The News Tribune and writes stories about Gig Harbor, Key Peninsula, Fox Island and other areas across the Tacoma Narrows. She started as a news intern in summer 2024 after graduating from the University of Washington, where she wrote for her student paper, The Daily, freelanced for the South Seattle Emerald and interned at Cascade PBS News (formerly Crosscut).