Best San Francisco style sourdough bread in NYC?
I have yet to find a great SF style sourdough here in NYC. Has anyone else had luck with this?
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15 Comments:
no, i haven't. We don't have the right kind of water or something. Just abandon all hope of this along with good burritos.
NYminknit at 10:03AM on 04/18/07
Thank goodness some things remain regional. Everything all the time everywhere is no fun.
Barbara Hanson at 1:35PM on 04/18/07
Balthazar Bakery makes a levain but I haven't tried it so I don't know how it compares to San Francisco sourdough.
megnut at 2:32PM on 04/18/07
Yeah, compared to SF, the burritos in NYC basically suck.
NSW at 10:18PM on 04/18/07
SO NY...that only Balthazar would have a levain. Now, I love me some Balthazar, esp. the chocolate bread, but that is a fancy power-eating place, not an everyday place. (Well, not for me, at least.)
In SF, good sourdough is available all over in supermarkets in three flavors (sour, sweet, extrasour) and we don't need to italicize the name, and it doesn't cost a million dollars.
NYminknit at 10:13AM on 04/19/07
I don't know if only Balthazar has levain, I just know they do. I italicized it because it's a French word and it seemed right. I'm not sure they insist on it.
And I for one am happy there's not sourdough everywhere here in NYC. I don't like it and it was distressing to find it in every single bite of damn bread in the whole town. My husband and I used to refer to it as "the tyranny of sourdough."
megnut at 11:20AM on 04/19/07
I love the pain au levain from "Our Daily Bread" at the Union Square Market. I also buy the Sourdough Boule from Whole Foods which is decent. Problem is, I have nothing to compare it to, since I have never tried one in SF. Try those and let me know how they compare!
izzy's mama at 11:39AM on 04/19/07
No, Meg, you're right, foreign words that are not in everyday vocabulary should be italicized. I am sure your copy editor would agree, as would the Chicago Manual of Style.
I was just mocking it in my mean way because I think that New York (and to be fair, San Francisco too, but in a different way) foodies are so obsessed with being Foodies with a capital F. Why must we call levain levain and not sourdough, if they are equivalent? (I'm not calling you out on this--it's a Balthazar thing, I'm sure, and you are just reporting the facts.) Bread can't just be bread, it has to be a pain au levain. I don't see Parisians selling San Francisco sourdough.
Just some grouching on my part.
NYminknit at 4:28PM on 04/19/07
NYminknit and Megnut: Here's my unofficial take on italics ...
Foreign words are ital unless they're in the dictionary*, in which case it can be assumed that they've fallen into common usage.
Foreign words in reference to food, however, should be set in roman—the whole site would be oblique-fonted if we were to ital all the foreign food words!
Merriam-Webster's 11th Edition is the official house dictionary at Serious Eats HQ
Adam Kuban at 4:39PM on 04/19/07
There is nothing special or different about San Francisco Sourdough. It's just the San Francisco equivalent of Boston Baked Beans or New England Clam Chowder, a romantic notion grounded in local legendry.The best bread in San Francisco can be found at Tartine Bakery and Acme, and they are both markedly superior to anything marketed as San Francisco Sourdough bread.
Ed Levine at 7:19PM on 04/19/07
@Adam: Oblique and Italic are two completely different font styles.
oblique != italic
Oblique Fonts
I suggest you shut this discussion down now, since it is not food related, is off-topic, and may well involve personal attacks.
Just kidding.
Lou at 6:11AM on 04/20/07
Ooops. Sorry, Lou. I was typing with my brain off -- trying to find a synonym for "italic" so I didn't have to repeat it. From your link: "Oblique and italic type are often confused." Guilty. I was wondering if you'd pop up here. Heh.
And you're right. This whole bit has gone off topic. So, from now on, folks, it's all sourdough, all the time on this thread. ;)
Adam Kuban at 4:55PM on 04/20/07
@Adam: I was just kidding. Now that both Strunk and White are gone, I wonder how many people would have noticed this. Once a tech writer...
Now I feel bad. I'll work on my humor. I appreciate your comments; you know what you're taking about.
Oh, and to stay on-topic, sourdough bread.
Lou at 5:48PM on 04/20/07
The problem with making San Francisco sourdough bread outside of the bay area is that there is a bacteria specific to the bay area called lactobacillus sanfrancisco that gives the bread a unique flavor. That is why it is one of those "Only in San Francisco" phenomena.
(Notice the correct usage of italcs.) ;-)
Calichef at 10:31AM on 04/21/07
Thanks all. I will certainly try Baltahazar and Our Daily Bread. I should re-state this slightly by the way -- for me what makes SF sourdough interesting is the sourness. NY sourdoughs I've tried are much more genteel and sometimes very sour is desirable. I thought the problem was just wild yeasts (easily fixed in NYC by opening some Cantilon Lambic Ale and using it as part of a starter), but special thanks to Calichef for the bacteria info that lead to a great page about how and why it's different at http://www.nyx.net/~dgreenw/sourdoughqa.html
Ed Levine -- nice to hear from you. It's TerryMcC, first registrant for the first How to Open...seminar you did with Drew & Co. some years back, and as we discovered then also from IAR. How are you? Do you have contact info for Ben's Dairy (makers of the excellent cream cheese)?
terrynyc at 1:59PM on 04/21/07