Picking up from the Atlantic article on “The Best Free Restaurant Bread in America”.
What are your favorite types of bread, across all the many places you enjoy bread?
My restaurant favorite is tied between (both now extinct here in nyc) the jumbo gougeres at Bar Boulud and the pain d’Epi / mini baguettes at Bouchon Bakery.
Overall favorites might be the soft, yeasty, white sandwich bread made by some old bakeries in Mumbai and delivered home by a “bread guy” (aka Paowalla) on a bicycle, followed by the Pao / Ladi Pav / dinner rolls and Brun / crusty round baguette-like mini boules also made by the same bakeries.
At home, I like to bake mostly no-knead bread for toast (though I’ve successfully replicated Pao on occasion for Pao Bhaji).
Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot, cooking and eating in northwest England)
2
Mrs H is the baker of the couple. And, of course, I enjoy anything she makes without complaint. She regularly makes a white loaf, recipe from chef Gennaro Contaldo, that is the best.
As for a commercial bread, I’m a big fan of Sheldon’s Oven Bottom Muffins. Prefect for any sandwich - especially a breakfast sausage one.
poppyseed rye, with poppy seeds in the dough as well as on the crust. A few Polish and Ukrainian bakeries make this in Toronto.
sesame focaccia, especially the one at Eataly Toronto and Le Beau in Toronto
German vollkorn brötchen/ semmel. These are wholegrain buns topped with pumpkin seeds, sunflower seeds, and other seeds. Something like this, but with pumpkin, flax, sunflower, sesame, on one bun.
Homemade all the way. Our staple family bread is a mixed grain sourdough that I’ve been baking for many years now. We also enjoy baguette, focaccia, pitas, 100% rye bread, buns of of all sorts and a whole grain sourdough baked in a focaccia pan, but with a tighter crumb than airy focaccia. The milk bread that gets made every now and then is also very nice. I haven’t made bagels that are up to snuff yet. The best bagels I’ve ever had came from a now closed bakery in Tofino.
I do not have good, local sourdough. Actually, in general, the bread in my area is really not good. Unfortunately, unless you are very lucky or live in Toronto, where the population can support a variety of bakeries, you’re out of luck.
Necessity is the mother of invention, or in my case, home baked bread. If I had good resources within a decent distance, I would never have bothered to learn baking, and it’s a bit annoying that if you want anything decent you have to make it yourself, but, at least I have developed a useful skill set.
I live three blocks from Acme Bakery, one of the first hippie-artisinal bakeries (established in 1979). They have dozens of breads. I especially like their sweet (meaning not sourdough) ones: little ciabatta-like rolls, pain d’epis, and baguettes. But they also make an incredible walnut and just as incredible olive boule. A local sandwich shop (Oceanview) makes sandwiches with the boules, sliced. Acme itself doesn’t have a slicer.
As a native of the Bay Area, I love our extra-sour sourdoughs, and Acme’s sour batard and sour baguette deliver. I also love the Acme pain au levain and walnut levain, as well as the whole wheat cranberry walnut. Luckily I needn’t go across town, as they are widely available at retail, delivered fresh daily (though nowhere other than the two bakeries carries Acme’s full range), and of course the levain is served in umpteen local restaurants.
When I lived in New York, where sourdough doesn’t have a strong flavor, comparatively, when I came back to the East Bay on visits, I’d always grab Acme sourdough on my pilgrimage to Berkeley Bowl.
We almost exclusively subsist on the incredible sourdough from this outfit during our summer in Berlin
— which is pretty ridic given the utter abundance of fantastic German bread (greatest variety in the world, after all), but it’s my Platonic ideal of what bread should be: a deep dark crust with a floffy, yet not dry crumb — perfect on its own, dipped in oil if that’s yer groove, with GOOD butter & sea salt, with any cheese or meats…
One of our favorite Turkish restaurants in Berlin continues to supply diners with freshly baked flatbread throughout their meal.
In Paris, it’s baguette all the way. I’ve never had better baguette outside of Paris & assume it’s the water — just like I’ve never had better Brötchen than in the Rhineland.
Here in Small College Town, US we are lucky to have a handful of good bakers, providing us with excellent ciabatta, miche, and boules.
Beyond that, any homemade sourdough will floot my boot, since I don’t bake myself
I’ve sung the praises of Aldi’s bistro bread (with a pref for seeded) enough times not to repeat it here, and I am also a fan of TJ’s sliced sourdough, which is perfect for grilled cheese.
I’ve known people born and bred here who don’t like sourdough at all. Luckily, since the '80s and ever increasing, the greater Bay Area has an embarrassment of riches when it comes to high-quality bread options.
Harters
(John Hartley - a culinary patriot, cooking and eating in northwest England)
13
It’s from his book, Passione (which was the name of his lovely London restaurant - long since gone). Makes two round loaves (which freeze well)
800g strong plain flour or Italian “0”
200g semolina
20g salt
25g fresh yeast (note the “fresh”)
700ml lukewarm water
Mix the dry ingredients. Dissolve yeast in water and add to the dry. Knead for about 5 mins then leave to rise for approx 30 minutes. Knock back and divide into two loaves and put them on a baking sheet. Sprinkle tops with a little more semolina, coarse polenta or breadcrumbs. Leave to rise again. Heat oven to 240c and bake on the bottom shelf for around 25 minutes.
It’s a good keeper so you should get several days freshness.
If you mean leavened bread, a good challah. But as for the bread I eat the most often, that would be matzoh–plain old Passover matzoh with unsalted butter. This is my breakfast every morning (well, at least 95% of the mornings).
Now we can argue about whether matzoh is bread, though clearly references to it as “unleavened bread” assume it is.
I will readily agree that almost any homemade bread is better than any store bought. I would much rather have a sandwich on my own milk bread or sourdough. I make fabulous potato bread/rolls.
I will still buy slides sandwich bread, because as good as homemade is, it goes stale or, worse, moldy, if I don’t eat it all quickly enough. At least store bought will last more than 10 days.
I have never tried croissants, and thankfully live walking distance to Moonbelly bakery, with the best croissants I’ve ever had.
You can now buy Red Lobster cheddar bay biscuit mix at the supermarket. They taste pretty much the same as the restaurant.
I admit that I have a weakness for the brown Cheesecake Factory bread, which they also now sell in grocery stores. It’s soft ‘n squishy and just LOADED with sugar and is only ‘brown’ due to food coloring, but I will stuff it into my gob, regardless, esp warm w/ butter.
Funny, I never even thought about this, because when I say bread I mean yeasted bread, even though the unleavened flatbreads I grew up with are also included under the term bread in English.
If we’re including flatbreads, my favorite is a fresh, homemade chapati with a touch of ghee. It’s hard to describe the pleasure of eating these cooked and served one at a time, hot off the flame from being puffed and onto your thali. Perhaps why the flour tortilla at Corima has garnered such a fan following.
All Indian kids I know have hovered by the stove aspiring to a hot ghee-coated chapati to eat plain while the rest of the meal was being put on the table. And eaten another one (or few) at the end plain after they were “full” .
After chapatis, a stuffed paratha – preferably stuffed by someone else (and also preferably stuffed with kheema / spiced ground goat).
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(and also preferably stuffed with kheema / spiced ground goat).
