San Francisco: Tartine Bakery

Oh lord, how I miss you sweet sweet Tartine. Every day Tartine starts selling bread at 4:30... They are often sold out by 5:30. Why? Because it's the best bread in the world.

Simple peasant loafs. A few ingredients magically turned into a symphony of textures, flavors and carbs. Yes terrifying CARBOHYDRATES!

Carbohydrate loafs so big they make your head look like a Mr Potato head (you really should get that looked at)

The crumb is wide open and full of big gooey holes of perfectly gelatinized gluten 

I got the Tartine Bread cookbook a few years ago and experimented with their cast iron dutch oven technique. It works well if you have a super wet dough, 75% hydration at least, otherwise you might be better off with a hot pan and a drizzle of boiling water. I would highly suggest that cook book, it's an amazing primer on bread and pastries.

Tartine's croissants are little rolled packages of heaven

Baked to perfection, bursting with buttery goodness and worth their (very light) weight in gold! I'm making myself drool just writing about them. Why do American style croissants even exist? Pallid, soft and limp... Better then the Italian sweet packaged version I guess... 

There are a multitude of other cakes, bars, and tasty goodness at Tartine, all of which are made with the same strict attention to detail and, dare I call it, love? 

Maybe it's for the best that I live exactly 2081 miles away from Tartine...

Homemade Tartine French Toast! Make it extra sweet for a little caramelization, this don't even need syrup!

Recipe:

Day old Tartine bread...Fine buy ANOTHER loaf so you have extra.

Day old Tartine bread, cut into 3/4 inch slabs.

2T heavy cream

2 eggs
2T raw sugar
splash vanilla extract
1T triple sec (or/and orange zest if you have it)
Cinnamon to taste

Whip the ever loving crap out of this mixture then let your bread soak it up for about 15 minutes. Fry lightly in good butter, and serve. Top minimally, the bread is the star here. The gelatin in the crumb will make this the finest textured french toast you've ever had!

OK, that's it, who wants to go to San Francisco! It's only a 30 hour car ride. Worth it for Tartine!

If you want to learn how to make Tartine Bread at home, they have an exhaustive cookbook which actually has a phenomenal technique to make incredible tartine-like bread at home! (disclaimer if you buy through that link I get a tiny piece of the action) but I own this book and I LOVE this book. No JOKE!

-NOM