Sourdough Bread at Boudin!
For those who don’t know what I am talking about I can’t help you. If you want to experience it you must visit San Francisco and come to the location shown on this post! It is the Boudin Bakery and it makes sourdough bread. It is as simple as that. I have visited this bakery every single time I have visited the city and this time around, since I was by myself and do whatever I please, I have had three meals there. A breakfast, lunch and dinner on the same day! :) why not!
I could have started with many pictures but I will start with a croissant!
Breakfast!
It is an Almond frangipane croissant with a coffee. The croissant was $7.19 and the coffee was $3.50! Yes, nothing is cheap at Boudin, but so what?! If you are a bread maker that that money in the bank for you! @beelzael
Boudin’s daily revenue is easily north of $50K - $100K at the pier 39 location. There is no way to get the actual number as Boudin is a private company, but just looking at the traffic and the price of the food on offer, I say that number is a conservative average guess.
Apology for the slightly tilted picture, trying to juggle too many things at the same time, all these blog is written on the phone as it happens, so that sort of gives you an on the go, scatter-brain vibe. Anyways, how was the Almond Croissant? Heavenly! Do I pay $7 for it? You bet! Do other people pay $7 for it? Absolutely! The store opens at 9:30 AM, fairly late of a bakery, but I had to go there at the open to avoid long lines. After 10:00 AM it gets really crowded.
So, there is nothing much to say about the coffee, I have had better coffee. Hey, even I can make better coffee than that, but it was passable. The croissant made up for it. It was excellent breakfast, especially while watching the bread making through the window. The smell, the smell alone gets me every time!
The Window
I haven't shown you the store front yet, but that can wait. The two main thing about Boudin Bakery is not its bread, it is their large floor to ceiling demonstration window, and the second thing is the smell of bread. Demonstration window is in fact a misnomer. Because they are not really demonstrating, they are working. Their entire work area is transparent, open and visible to the public. I don't know about any other well known store that has this feature.
Here you can see a young baker making crab bread our of sourdough. The Alligator bread in front is real product and you can buy it.
Here is her work a few minutes after.
These little bear breads are also not just for display, they are actual product and people buy them constantly. You can see many people are working multiple stations and they are all busy doing their day job, but time to time they play a little for the gallery too, which swells!
People always gather around to see some baking action!
The Store Front
Here is the store front before it get busy.
It is right on beach street on Pier 39 at Fisherman Wharf, probably the most festive address in San Francisco. It is almost always full of locals and tourists alike.
It is a fairly large warehouse looking building with 3 floors.
This is the view of the store from the back. Yes they have their own trucks, quite a fleet. The warehouse covers almost half a city block it is that big.
Inside it is just like you probably have expected. There are breads of all difference size and shape. They are stacked up high from floor to the ceiling.
As everything is transparent, you can also see the next batch of bread bowls in the pipeline for the famous clam chowder.
Lunch
Anyways, I decided to buy a chicken sandwich for lunch and head for the Fort Mason Park. There is a large grassy meadow there which is great from people watch and has sweeping view of the city and the San Francisco bay.
I walked around a bit and got a glimpse of Alcatraz island through lift of the low clouds. It was still a gorgeous day. I thought this is a great place to open my $19 chicken sandwich!
There you have it. My $19 sandwich. No there was no bitcoin in it. Just grilled chicken! :)
Looks good though. Oh, the water was mine from the hotel. If I bought the bottled water that would have been $6 more. Yes, $25 for a meal, that is SFO for you. However, mind you if you are a sandwich seller what is the problem, people are happily lining up to buy your expensive product. Price is relative!
Dinner
After lunch, I did some more walking around the city and went all the way up to the Golden Gate park. Walked the land's end trail, but that will be a different story. Let keep this one focused on Boudin. So just to make a point, I came back there in the evening after a couple of glasses of wine at a local wine bar, and wanted to have the iconic clam chowder in a bread bowl!
There you have it. $15.80 for that ticket, and I even saved it :) That is a legacy San Francisco business for you. It is big recognition from the city and its people! Long live Boudin!
That chowder looked the business! As did all of the breads actually. I love sourdough, just can't often be bothered making it!!
I have news. My teenager just made one last weekend following TikTok! It was no Boudin, but if someone makes me anything remotely edible at home I am eating it! :)
Woohoo! Fantastic, hopefully it's something they keep up! I have got my youngest making bread but my god, it's a messy business!
Everything they do is a messy business in the beginning! But hope is with time at least some of the mess gets manageable or perhaps even cleans itself!
These are fried bread/cheese balls! They are absolutely amazing with a tea or beer or scotch! Done 100% by my 13 year old. Her mom and sister was away on a playdate. Older came to me and asked “Dad do you like some snacks?”…. Bless her! :) :)
Sourdough and chowder. Fucken yum!
I'm salivating at the thought!
Indeedy.
And when temp is 57F and windy and with low clouds, very few things can beat that!
Well a good local Chardonnay and a friendly barman!
Now you're killin' me...can't think of much else but a nice old lunch with AZ!
Either you have to cross a big ocean or two, or I have to do the same! :)
Lol, yeah it's a long way for a lunch huh?
Absolutely marvelous! When I open Pandala Coffee Shop again, maybe I can achieve a similar fame in 20 years. I doubt it, though, too small and no ambition to grow 😅
I would've up-voted each picture of bread 100%. That looks really, really good. You can see that they use a long term cold fermentation, and they have it on the spot - the blisters on the crust give it away. We use long term warm (27-30°C) fermentation, as I don't have money for a walk-in-fridge - yet. Can't do the blisters that way, unfortunately. But the bread is still delicous :-)
You would have loved this place. The smell is what gets me every single time!
I bet, it's one of the favorite things about owning a bakery. Besides being able to just give into the instinct and bite that fresh baguette, just because.
Three meals for less than $50 total in San Francisco is a bargain 😀
There is a fantastic little bakery in Yountville where you can also watch them making bread. It's much smaller than Boudin of course. It's a boutique bakery. This is a good photo from Google maps https://maps.app.goo.gl/M4aeFH8NHXGpZt8X8 , the window on the right is where you see inside the bakery.
I have to check that place out on the next trip.
Regarding prices, I want to discuss another extreme hopefully in a next post. I had a full meal another day for $6 :)
Breakfast lunch dinner at China town. $1.5 + $2 + $2.5
Three different Baos
Right next to this famous one on instagram! It’s hard to get in at Good Mong Kok Bakery and I hate standing in line for food.
https://maps.app.goo.gl/gD9sar5GqrpFsESC8?g_st=ipc
That's a post I'm looking forward to reading. I haven't been to China Town in SF.
Now that is some impressive bread! I like that they have a relatively small menu. That means that they do the things they do really well.
Yeah and they are doing it for 100 plus years!
Wow, that's impressive!
WOW that sure is an artisanal bakery, I love the way the special breads look!
Your meals were quite expensive indeed, but they look small too I think I would still be hungry afterwards 😅
Well those are big meals for sure. But yes, expensive. Everything in San Francisco is expensive.
The clam chowder in a bread bowl reminds me a lot of a soup I have every time I visit Lithuania. It's a creamy mushroom soup in Rye bread like this one:
pic from google
It tastes amazing, but if you order this as a starter - which it's most often served as - don't try to eat much of the bread, that will revenge itself when you start the main course 😅
That looks similar and it is the same concept. Here also it is considered starter especially when you don’t eat the bread. However I like the bread so much I eat everything! So that is my meal!
I really want to eat fresh bread, to inhale its aroma, but it's already late evening. The huge glass display case in the bakery is a great marketing move, I'm sure it increases bread sales to tourists.
It's an old and popular place
Maaaan, this looks like a fantastic place for brunch (my favorite meal of the day!)
It is. People travel across country just to go there.
Now this is something a lad can read and smile...
Good food, not smiling at the cost though 😭😂😂
The art with the bread is admirable, that unbaked crab looks beautiful
Everything is expensive at San Francisco, except perhaps at Chinatown.
The first time I saw the word 'Sour' whether it be in Crips (Potato Chips in your language), or in Bready products was around the mid-90's. In England.. sour was just that... not nice and who wants Sour tasting stuff?
I thought it weird that Sour Cream Crips were all the rage. Now, it's quite normal here, just like Self-Service Checkouts are.., they were in America first of course.
Drive through Drug-Stores never quite caught on.. as did the Self-Service Teller machines, where you card was sucked through pipes.., that always did make me laugh.
Chips (crisps) with sour cream and onion is popular here. Not my favorite, though. Sourdough bread on the other hand I like very much :)
It is here now, but it's another description for 'Cheese and Onion', which still exists.
Wow, reading this makes me hungry right away! 🤤 From the almond croissant to the clam chowder in the bread bowl, everything looks so tempting. Agreed, the price may be a bit steep, but the experience and aroma are definitely priceless...🍞✨
yes, I have to agree there.
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Mmmm su yummy!
@tipu curate
Upvoted 👌 (Mana: 33/53) Liquid rewards.
Cheers!
Located in San Francisco, Boudin Bakery is a unique place where you can buy different types and sizes of bread. When looking at the prices, it seemed that the prices were high. But the transparent work place is visible to the customers. Seeing how the bread is made and enjoying the aroma of the bread is an additional experience for the customers. The Alligator bread is incredibly large, and how much does it cost?
I don't know the price. Large and decorative breads are sold by the pounds and not written on the menu and I didn't ask.
Watching bakers work through the window makes the whole experience so cool!
Wow, this post made really amaze with all the design of bread, such a talent! 🥖 The croissant, sandwich, and clam chowder all are beautiful made — totally worth the splurge for the experience!"