La Farine

6323 College Ave., Oakland, CA - (510) 654-0338

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Posted By Michael Stern on January 21, 2008 10:15 PM

San Francisco's signature dish is sourdough bread. The best I've tasted is made at La Farine, an Oakland bakery that opened in 1974 and has become a bread beacon in the Bay Area. Available as a baguette, petit pain, or batard, with our without Kalamata olives laced into the dough, it is fantastically chewy with a crisp crust. Sour but not overwhelmingly so, this is bread that asks no condiment or complement whatsoever. During my last visit, I bought a loaf for the car and tore at it all afternoon while driving around on the hunt for Roadfood.

La Farine's loaves include soda breads, muscular levains, and rye. Beyond bread, the pastry repertoire is mouth-watering: fragile croissants, buttery scones, chocolatines (pain au chocolate), and the city's best morning bun. That's croissant dough rolled with brown sugar and cinnamon and copious amounts of butter and baked in a muffin tin.

La Farine used to have a communal table where you could sit down and have your bread or pastry with a cup of coffee, but when I visited in December, '07, there was no place to eat. Apparently, the table was being used as temporary storage for Christmas orders. My car seat soon was festooned with crumbs.

Overall Rating

Apple Croissant

Cheese Roll

Hazlenut Sour Cherry Tarte

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