THE BEST: Bread in NYC

[Rail Paul]

The otherwise estimable Simon has damned all of the bread in New York as inferior slop in a post on the UK board. Apparently, the bread in London is far superior in his judgement.

For purposes of comparison, might we nominate five examples of New York bread to stand against the UK offerings? My comments -

Rye - Orwaschers

Baguette - Pain Quotidien

White / Country ?

Whole Wheat - Amy's multi-grain

Ciabatta ?

Comments or alternatives?

[Fat Guy]

Pain Quotidien is excellent but it's an international chain and not one based out of New York. There isn't a branch in London but that should change eventually. I don't know that New York can really claim Pain Quotidien, though I do think the two main offerings from Pain Quotidien are the two best loaves in New York.

You will find more better bread in London than in New York, or at least that's been my observation based on a lot of sampling in New York and a little sampling in London. The best bread being baked in North America is coming from the San Francisco area, and also there's Passe-Partout in Montreal and Berkshire Mountain Bakery in Housatonic, Mass. Probably a few other artisanal bakers that have escaped my notice or that I'm forgetting right now.

Still there's plenty of delicious bread in New York, such as at Balthazar and Sullivan Street Bakery. You've got to know your way around a place like Amy's because not every product is good and Amy's isn't what it used to be. I always get ridiculed for saying this but I think Eli's Bread makes some of the most reliable and excellent mass-produced commercial bread in the world. (For you Brits, Eli's bread is the All Bar One of the New York gourmet bread scene.)

I'd be interested in R. Schonfeld's opinion on all this.

[anil]

Fat-Guy: Where are you now getting your Amy's Bread from ? 9th Ave or Chelsea Market ? I have been a fan of Eli's from the time he was really small and having difficulty breaking into the market so to speak. He started doing ethnic sounding breads so that heavies would ignore the fringe niche market -- They he really took off

I'm still looking for a good garlic bread outlet in Hell's Kitchen.....

[Toby]

Sullivan Street filone

Parissi's (Mott betwn Spring & Kenmare) lard bread (also available at DiPaolo's)

Zito's prosciutto bread (like the lard bread but not as dark and oily)

Ecce Panis used to make an Irish soda bread that was great; don't know if they still do

Eli's batard

(D&G made the best bread. I still can't believe they're not there anymore.)

[CathyL]

Sullivan St. pane Pugliese

Eli's sourdough ficelle (with or without onions)

Orwasher's Jewish rye

[Fat Guy]

Anil, I get my Amy's breads at various non-Amy's retail stores like Fairway. I don't know which location bakes them.

Toby, while I love some of the breads you're talking about, I love them without thinking they constitute good bread. Ditto for many of the raisin and nut and olive and gunk breads I like to eat. In other words, the actual bread baking skill at Zito's or Parissi's doesn't seem all that high to me -- all those additives mask the actual issue of the bread. I would love to see more bakeries in New York produce a killer plain old sourdough loaf or baguette. That's the benchmark.

[Bux]

Rye bread needs to be subdivided. There's good old NY Jewish rye (as well as pumpernickel and corn bread of the same genre--all less commonly found and rarely as good as it was) and then there's siegle--rye bread in the French style (which is really new to NYC). I particularly like Pain Quotidien's version of the latter, although they now make it in a small loaf and this is the one sort of bread in which my main interest is in the middle, not the crust. In texture, and to a degree in taste, this is much like their whole wheat bread and a really excellent dense bread. I wouldn't overlook their walnut bread without raisins, this is a versatile bread. It's also dense and good with honey or with cheese as well as just buttered.

Balthazar also makes an excellent rye that's nowhere as dense, but well flavored. It may have greater appeal because it's less dense. It's the darker of the two breads served in the restaurant. They were out of the siegle one day, but had a black olive siegle, which was terrific, but watch out for pieces of pit. That may be a problem with all black olive breads. I don't know why. I know that Sullivan Street Bakery stopped making black olive bread, because it has a problem with pits.

Fat Guy, I wouldn't necessarily make the distinction you do about where a bakery or chain originated. Whatever is available in any market is what you can get in that market and as products improve, so such the standards by which the market selects it's bread. I am not fond of chain operations just because they make travel so much less interesting, but when you live someplace, you welcome any product or service that's an improvement. I welcome Pain Quotidian in my neighborhood, but I'm disappointed when I'm shopping in Lyon and find it the most appealing boulangerie in sight.

[Robert Schonfeld]

Bread made with commercial yeast is considerably easier to produce than pure sourdough bread. Still, there is sufficient variability in the basic ingredients, flour, water and salt, as to offer substantial opportunity for excellence as well as mediocrity. The FG is accurate in saying that novelty breads and additives are just a distraction from a fair evaluation of a baker's basic loaf. However, it's also true that great bread can support the addition of novelties without losing its exceptional character. Silverton makes this point repeatedly in her recipes for sourdough breads with additions.

Among the basic loaves that will reveal a baker's skill are: boule (round, with height), pain de campagne (aka many other things, like pane pugliese or pane di como, but basically meaning a largish round loaf with a high percentage of water, and therefore relatively flat, with larger holes), pain au levain, baguette, loaves with some percentage of other flours, usually whole wheat, rolls (for restaurants; Tom Cat had a very good one in the 80's), and rye, although rye is really another world. This list is by no means meant to be exhaustive.

A good loaf will have a nice cell structure, a crackly crust and a beautiful color. If it is sourdough, the crumb will have a translucency and will be springy. There can be as many as three colors of brown to the crust of a good loaf. Darkest brown-to-black where the slash has been made; a variable reddish brown to the body of the loaf; and a lighter brown to the area exposed by the slash (the "grigne").

Books have been written on all of this. But in the end, it comes down to this: Does it look good? Does it smell good? Does it taste good?

Re Hoboken: there are bakeries in NJ and in Queens that produce very good coal oven yeasted bread. Seen mostly in middle market Italian restaurants.

Best bread in New York right now (besides mine): Balthazar, Sullivan Street, Pain Quotidien (still made here even if it is a chain - a link with "what do chefs do?")

[Toby]

Steven, I agree with you about the quality of Zito's and Parissi's breads, except for the lard/prosciutto bread. (D&G used to make proscuitto rolls and also cheese rolls that were so wonderful.)

I lived in Northern California for a long time. At first, in the late 70s, early 80s, there was no good bread, and I was forced to learn to bake my own. But then I found Acme bread, which is just a beautiful bread, particularly the levain. Also, Tassajara (before it was bought up, or whatever happened to it) used to make a wonderful potato bread. And yet, no one there ever could do a good prosciutto or lard (tortano, I think is the name) bread. Il Fornaio did one on the weekends that was pretty good (they also do (did?) a very good semolina bread in a great shape), but too polite.

[rich]

Pain Quotidien, though I do think the two main offerings from Pain Quotidien are the two best loaves in New York.

FG - Where is it available? Do they have their own store?

Thanks.

[Fat Guy]

Several stores.

http://www.painquotidien.com/

They also bake for a very limited number of restaurants, like Jean Georges and Gotham last time I checked.

[yvonne johnson]

Earlier thread on bread. I see that Fat Guy is now taking the credit for stefanyb's and my posts. Impostor.

And, I never got my prize. Just thought I'd harp on about that one more more time.

http://forums.egullet.org/ibf/index.php?s=...&f=4&t=4010&hl=

[Fat Guy]

Hey that's neat. Maybe I can do it on other threads too.

[Charles Smith]

My favorite (not already mentioned) is the Tribeca Oven stand at the Tribeca Greenmarket. excellent focaccia rolls- multigrain, onion and tomato, as well as great multigrain loaves. most of their business is wholesale

[Robert Schonfeld]

My favorite (not already mentioned) is the Tribeca Oven stand at the Tribeca Greenmarket.  excellent focaccia rolls- multigrain, onion and tomato,  as well as great multigrain loaves.  most of their business is wholesale

Thanks for mentioning greenmarkets, Charles. There's a stand called, I think, the Rock Hill Bakehouse, or something like that, at the Union Square greenmarket. Very good bread, especially their levain. Not as good: Bread Alone.

[Liza]

Charles

I agree with you about Tribeca Oven - I adore their rye, challah, and raisin-pumpernickel rolls, too. Every once in awhile Alan has their little onion rolls they make for Juniors. Or their little olive rolls...You can also find their breads at Fairway.

Note: Alan and Tribeca Oven will be at the Tribeca market this Saturday but not next Saturday, due to Rosh Hashanah.

[Charles Smith]

Oh yes- the junior's rolls are amazing.

the best lunch in the world is a flounder sandwich- the flounder from Blue Moon, the bread from Tribeca Oven-

heaven.

[Orik]

Apparently, the bread in London is far superior in his judgement.

That is true, but I'll bet it's only because the starter is made of old bread ashes. Just wait for the outbreak of mad loaf disease.

As for New York, I don't really have much to add - Pain Quotidien and the Balthazar rye (which is, imho, much better the next day).

[Bux]

Parissi's (Mott betwn Spring & Kenmare) lard bread (also available at DiPaolo's)

Zito's prosciutto bread (like the lard bread but not as dark and oily)

I recall seeing a bread in Zito's window that acutely resembled the Parisi pepper/lard bread. It was so much of a resemblance that I assumed he was selling the Parisi bread. In any even, I've found the Parisi lard bread has undergone two great changes since I first discovered it in the early seventies. It used to be a flakey bread and I mean that in the good sense. It was a bit like a croissant in texture, but coarser. I assumed it was made in layers with fat between the layers. At some point closer to today than the when I first ate this bread it became a stodgier loaf of bread and lost it's great individual quality and finesse. Then even more recently, the switched the meat. It may still have some prosciutto chopped, I assume, from the ends of a real ham, but now it seems loaded with some sort of thinly sliced cold cut--salame, or some such thing. I find it disappointing now.

No one has mentioned the "pizza bianca" at Sullivan Street. I guess its like a thin foccacia more than a blind pizza, but when's got lots of olive oil and rosemary and some chewiness to it, I love it. It's a great base for making home made mock pizzas. Topped with sauteed onions or onion marmalade with Romano cheese put under the boiler or in a hot overn for a few minutes it's great with aperatifs. Various cheeses and vegetables work as well. It's also good plain.

[thebaker]

In regards to Amy's bread

All the bread is baked in the chelsea market kitchen,sweets are baked at the 9th ave location

and Im not sure if they still do but when i worked there they baked some of the bread for Pain Quotidien........

[Rail Paul]

In regards to Amy's bread

All the bread is baked in the chelsea market kitchen,sweets are baked at the 9th ave location

and Im not sure if they still do but when i worked there they baked some of the bread for Pain Quotidien........

thebaker ...

if you're comfortable discussing the process (and aren't legally encumbered), do the various restaurant customers receive the same bread as Pain Q gets? Are there variations specified by the various customers? I've noticed the bakers at Chelsea Market refer to work sheets quite often, so I assumed there are special preparations.

Different thought, entirely. I've noticed the bread purchased at Bread Alone's bakery in Boiceville (NY 28, west of Kingston) has a slightly different taste than the bread sold at the greenmarkets. I have to believe some of that is due to the two hour ride to NYC, plus a sojourn in the hot marketplace...

[Mao]

I made trip to a local Amy's today and think that their quality control is a bit more erratic than it used to be. Some products are superlative, but some are weak. I still adore their almond croissants. Actually, where can one get good Challah? Its always been hard to get in NYC, but seems even harder now.

[magnolia]

You will find more better bread in London than in New York, or at least that's been my observation based on a lot of sampling in New York and a little sampling in London...

Fat-Guy - following on from my posts to the parallel discussion on the London board... I've exerted more time & effort to finding good bread in five years in London than I did for 25+ years in New York... that is to say, it barely takes any time or effort to find it in New York, and I am constantly searching for it - usually with disappointing results - in London.

I want to believe... Where on earth are you getting your 'better' bread in London ?

[MartyL]

Actually, where can one get good Challah?

If you like the really eggy slightly sweet style (as I do), my favorite is Zomicks, a bakery in Cedarhurst, Long Island. Fairway carries them (just aroiund the corner from the bagels underneath the pies).

[Fat Guy]

Mags, I put my London bread comments on the Henderson thread. Okay?