Lindsay Piekutowski tends her proofing bread dough in her new bakery, Sifted and Sweet. (Photos/Nancy Hanson.)

Maggie Thoemke and Morgan Laite have reopened their Black Cat Bakery at the corner of Main Avenue and Eighth Street in downtown Moorhead.

Moorhead Welcomes Two New Bakeries

Nancy Edmonds Hanson

February has been a banner month for bread … and cupcakes, cookies, muffins and more.
Two bakeries have opened in Moorhead in recent days. One is the much-anticipated re-opening of Black Cat Bakery in new quarters on the corner of Main and Eighth Street. The other: Sweet and Sifted Baking Company, is the now-public face of Lindsay Piekutowski’s thriving five-year-old home-based business.
Black Cat Bakery reopened its doors Feb. 10 after moving from its original location in the northside building once known as Jerry’s Supper Club. Customers of the shop, perhaps best known for its breads and scones, have been waiting for nearly two months to stock up again on everything from kitchen essentials, from 10 kinds of cookies to house-made jams and jellies. Two best friends, owners Maggie Thoemke and Morgan Laite, have been hard at work – “panic baking,” Maggie calls it – satisfying the pent-up demand for their fresh-from-the-oven products.
Sifted and Sweet Baking Company opens Thursday, Feb. 20 … at last. “We’ve been waiting for our license from the state for three months. Finally!” owner Lindsay Piekutowski celebrates. While the delay forced her to set back several projected opening dates last fall, it gave the entrepreneur more time to polish up her shop in the former location of Altony’s Italian Restaurant on the northwest quadrant of the I-94/Eighth Street South interchange.
An avid fan of baking oven-fresh treats since the age of 4, Lindsay traded her former career as a high school English teacher for her passion exactly five years ago. Since then, she has built a local following with her baked doughnuts, cinnamon and caramel rolls, cookies, pies and breads. She posted an invitation to order her baked cinnamon-apple doughnuts on Facebook, and customers began to roll in. Then came cookies, her first love – more orders. Licensed by Minnesota as a cottage food producer, Sifted and Sweet began to soar. “I was doing it for fun,” she confesses. “I baked whatever I wanted to bake. Then I realized how much I like decorating cookies, and it took of from there.”
Among her specialties are some that may be unfamiliar to most local customers: Finnish-style pasties. The hand-sized turnovers are stuffed with ground meat and vegetables, then baked. Lindsay learned of the tradition from her grandmother, who baked them by the dozen for Grandpa to take to work in the coal mines of the Upper Peninsula.
They’ll be on the menu for lunch at Sifted and Sweet, along with Mustikkapiirakka, or Finnish sour-cream blueberry pie. Sifted and Sweet will serving breakfast quiches and oatmeal bake, and lunches featuring soups, sandwiches and pasties. More fashionable espresso-style drinks will be joining coffee and tea, too, as her plans continue to shape up.
Though her whole menu includes proven favorites ordered again and again by her online faithful, she predicts that caramel and cinnamon rolls may move fastest at Sifted and Sweet. Her own family approved when they came to Moorhead over the weekend for her soft opening.
“My sister did tell me,” she says with a touch of pride, “that mine were the best pasties she’s ever tasted.”
Black Cat Bakery will be offering English muffin breakfast sandwiches along with a revolving lunch selection of soups, sandwiches and – soon – espresso beverages. It occupies the corner of Block E that formerly housed Usher’s and Punk Chef Pizza. Its prime downtown corner drew capacity crowds, Maggie says, during their first week. “And both Valentine’s Day and last Saturday were just crazy,” she adds.
Along with regular recipes, the Black Cat bakers stock both gluten-free and vegan breads and treats.
New temptations are always being added to Black Cat’s menu, like the black-and-red marble velvet mini-cakes they featured for last week’s holiday and the English muffins they’ve just begun to offer. “Multiple customers have told us that our scones are the best in the area,” Maggie confides. Then she predicts that top sellers will probably turn out to be the old favorites that customers have fallen in love with since they opened in their former spot in November 2023 – salted caramel cookies, along with chocolate chip and monster varieties.
Sifted and Sweet Baking Company: 7 a.m. – 2 p.m., Tuesday through Saturday at 800 Holiday Drive, Suite 176.
Black Cat Bakery: 7 a.m. – 6 p.m. Monday through Friday; 9 a.m. – 4 p.m. Saturday and Sunday at 801 Main Ave., Suite 102.