Alec Johnson & Ben Stehle
At Salted Butter Bakery, oatmeal crème pies are four times the size of the Little Debbie ones and cinnamon rolls are “like 50% butter and 50% sugar, and a little bit of flour.”
Mom’s recipe is the secret behind the brownies, and crumb cake is made New York Style—extra crumby.
Owner Alec Johnson’s baking is a labor of love. He crafts everything for his bakery by himself, sometimes even kneading and mixing ingredients by hand when they won’t fit in his mixer. For two years, his business has served returning customers, festival patrons and friends and is now excited to do the same from his very first storefront.
Salted Butter Bakery opened for business in Midtown in March, slinging cookies, cakes and other treats at their shop on N. 3rd St., just across from the Broad Street Market. The space previously housed Nyeusi Art Gallery.
“I like to keep it very simple,” he said of his baking style. “All my baked goods are simple flavors. They’re nostalgic. It seems like they remind everyone of their childhood. They’re all super buttery.”
Cookie flavors include snickerdoodle, chocolate chip, M&M, sugar, vanilla chai, lemon with white chocolate and seasonal offerings. Johnson also bakes and decorates cakes, which will be for sale in a cooler in the shop, and he makes fresh bread for sale.
The quality makes the treats shine, chimed in Ben Stehle, Johnson’s husband and the bakery’s co-owner and taste tester.
“You feel good when you eat one of our cookies or baked goods because it’s him,” Stehle said. “It’s not a machine making them, it’s him.”
Johnson learned the basics of baking from his mother, who always had something in the oven at home when he was growing up. With that foundation, he taught himself even more techniques and recipes, gaining experience in the food service industry at places like Ressler’s Bagel & Deli in Mechanicsburg and the local Dairy Queen. At home, he would bake for fun.
People always told Johnson that he should start his own business, but he never believed them, he said, even though it was a dream of his too. In 2023, nearing his 30th birthday, he made it happen.
“I was like, ‘OK, I should probably just do it,’” he said. “I thought to myself, ‘if I don’t do it before I’m 30, I probably won’t do it,’ which is not true. I just gave myself that weird timeline. I feel like I had to do that otherwise I wouldn’t have done it.”
The bakery operated for two years solely out of the couple’s Shipoke home, as they fulfilled online orders and hauled cookies to festivals and events. Their first time vending was at Harrisburg’s 2024 Ice & Fire Festival and, coincidentally, during the same festival one year later, they invited people inside their Midtown store for the first time.
Salted Butter Bakery features cases of baked goods for sale, as well as a cozy seating area with tables, chairs and a couch.
“This feels and looks just like our house,” Johnson said. “We have it decorated almost the exact same way. It feels like I made my friends chocolate chip cookies and they’re sitting on my couch in my living room.”
Johnson is grateful for the support that his community has already given Salted Butter Bakery, showing up time and time again to festivals and pop-ups and placing orders for their work, school and family gatherings. Stehle loves seeing kids’ eyes light up at the sight of a colorful M&M cookie and appreciates when customers return to their vendor table just to tell them how much they liked their oatmeal crème pie.
“They’ll come back just to say how good it is. We convinced this one lady who didn’t even like sweets or buttercream icing to try it,” Stehle said of their oatmeal crème pie. “She tried it, and she loved it.”
Giving and receiving support from other local businesses is also important to the bakery’s owners, who are friends and fans of Harrisburg businesses like Raising the Bar, Radish & Rye and Anna Rose Bakery. They view their place as entrepreneurs as a chance to add to the already rich food scene in Harrisburg, uplift other small businesses and encourage more shops to open.
In that spirit, Salted Butter Bakery carries Little Amps Coffee Roasters’ Nitro Cold Brew cans and cold pressed juices from Midtown Juice Lab, and possibly additional products from Harrisburg businesses in the future. They also have hot coffee and Boxed Water for purchase.
Since the bakery originally held its soft opening in March, it has only been open two days a week on Saturday and Sunday. However, this month they expect to expand hours to Thursday through Monday.
“It feels really nice to have a space where people can sit and relax and be so close to the hustle and bustle on 3rd Street, the market, and everything else that’s going on,” Johnson said. “They can pop in here […] and decompress while they eat a chocolate chip cookie and then get back out there.”
Salted Butter Bakery is located at 1224 N. 3rd St., Harrisburg. For more information, visit them on Facebook or on Instagram @salted.butter.bakery.
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