Dead King Bread, located inside a sawmill on a Roxborough hillside, had a cult following for years before it came to the attention of a wider audience, writes Jenn Ladd for The Philadelphia Inquirer. 

The popular bakery turns out crusty sourdough, pillowy milk bread, sunflower-studded rye loaves, and much more. In addition, it offers weekly delivery to its subscribers and wholesale clients. The public only gets the chance to buy some of its tasty products on Saturdays for a few hours. 

Dead King Bread has been missed by its faithful customers for the past several weeks, after it was shut down by the city’s health department in May for operating without a food license. 

The bakery reopened on July 13, after it passed a health inspection late last month and secured a food license with L&I. The conclusion of the process makes the nine-year-old underground operation fully legitimate. 

“We stayed under the radar as long as we possibly could because we needed to pay our bills,” said Molly Flannery, who owns the bakery with Michael Holland. “If we had gone the boilerplate route, we would have had to be shut down for months and months, and there’s no way we could have afforded that.” 

Read more about Dead King Bread and its latest chapter in The Philadelphia Inquirer. 

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