
Categories
- Fitness & Beauty
- Food & Drink
- Editors' Picks
- Readers' Picks
- Best Restaurant Décor
- Best Breakfast
- Best Healthy Restaurant
- Best Vietnamese Restaurant
- Best Sushi
- Best Chinese Restaurant
- Best Wine Shop
- Best Mediterranean/Middle Eastern Restaurant
- Best Martini
- Best New Restaurant
- Best Deli
- Best Wedding Cakes
- Best Restaurant for Romance
- Best Mexican Restaurant
- Best French Restaurant
- Best Beer Selection
- Best Farmer’s Market
- Best Indian Restaurant
- Best Italian Restaurant
- Best Cheese Shop
- Best Bakery
- Best Thai Restaurant
- Best Restaurant Bar
- Best Brunch
- Health
- Home
- Editors' Picks
- Best Furniture Refinishing
- Best Neighborhood for Rubbing elbows with the Rich and Famous
- Best Neighborhood for History Buffs
- Best Lamp Repair
- Best Neighborhood for Impressing People
- Best Clock and Watch Repair
- Best Neighborhood for Lovers of the Outdoors
- Best Neighborhood for Leaving Your Car at Home
- Best Oriental Rug Repair
- Best Neighborhood for Community Pride and Special Events
- Readers' Picks
- Editors' Picks
- Other
- Kids
- Editors' Picks
- Best High School Clubs | What We’d Like to Live Near
- Best High School Clubs | Most Intriguing
- Best High School Clubs | Coolest Exercise
- Best High School Clubs | Blast-from-the-Past
- Best High School Course
- School with the Most Experienced Faculty
- Best Private School for the Arts
- Best High School Clubs | Most Patriotic
- Best Public School Feature
- School with the Best SAT Scores
- Best High School Clubs | Adventures in Fundraising
- Readers' Picks
- Editors' Picks
- Shopping
- Year
Best Bakery
Readers' Pick
Spring Mill Bread Co.
Catch the sweet, yeasty aromas wafting from Spring Mill Bread Co., and you can just smell a winner. Indeed, this is the third year in a row the bakery has won Best of Bethesda.
Opened in Bethesda in 1993 by Katherine Rurka and her late husband, Steve, Spring Mill sprouted a second location in Gaithersburg in 1996 and a third in southeast Washington near Eastern Market in 2011.
Its soft, healthful, comforting breads, which range in price from $5.35 to $7, and its home-style cookies, quick breads, muffins and more are also sold at MOM’s Organic Markets, the Chevy Chase Supermarket, Broad Branch Market, area food co-ops and other stores.
Katherine Rurka, 48, says the Bethesda shop attracts a “real big mix,” from moms with kids to office workers.
“I like that they use natural ingredients—it’s wholesome food and it’s delicious,” says Dean Packard, who works at Merrill Lynch in Bethesda and has been patronizing the shop for 15 years. Packard loves Spring Mill’s cinnamon raisin and peasant white loaves, its oatmeal chocolate chip cookies and a “really good” chicken pesto sandwich for lunch.
A former financial analyst and pharmaceutical saleswoman, Rurka tests out new recipes at home.
“I was a chemistry undergrad, and here I am making muffins,” she says. On the horizon: more pies.
4961 Elm St., Bethesda, 301-654-7970; 12187 Darnestown (Route 28) and Quince Orchard roads, Gaithersburg, 301-977-7733; www.springmillbread.com