[Photos: Andrew Coe]

For decades, the Hudson Valley has been a breadbasket for New York. Back in the 1970's and 80's—when the artisan back-to-the-bakery movement was at its peak—idealistic young bakers fled the city determined to hone their craft in a less stressful environment that was closer to the soil. They founded bakeries like Bread Alone and Our Daily Bread, which today are institutions that sell thousands of loaves a day across the region. One of the first, however, was Rock Hill Bakehouse, which only retains a tiny foothold in the city, at a Saturdays-only stand in the Union Square Greenmarket.

Michael and Wendy London founded Rock Hill Bakehouse in 1985. They began their baking careers in Manhattan, working at places like Éclair Pastries, William Greenberg Desserts, and the Ananda East health food store before escaping Upstate. After running a Saratoga Springs patisserie for a few years, they decided to concentrate on breads, baking Eastern European pumpernickels, sourdoughs, and other loaves in their farmhouse kitchen. These caught the attention of chefs at white tablecloth restaurants like Aureole, and soon trucks were hauling loaves four hours down to Manhattan. In the early 1990s, the Londons sold controlling interest in Rock Hill to Matt Funicello, who has kept the original recipes but expanded distribution throughout Upstate New York and neighboring Vermont and Massachusetts.

Like Bread Alone and Our Daily Bread, Rock Hill is a large-scale artisan bakery. Its bakers use high quality, often organic flours, natural leavens, and no preservatives or other additives to extend shelf life. However, their loaves still have to retain their freshness on the journey from the bakery to the supermarket or farmer's market. Consequently they generally have a fairly dense crumb and high moisture content. These requirements are a perfect match for loaves like Rock Hill's Jewish rye ($6), which is a paragon of the genre. It's made from wheat and rye flours, ground caraway seeds, salt, and yeast. A slice is more than dense enough to stand up to the juiciest pile of pastrami, with a rich caraway flavor and pleasant chewiness.

Another of my Rock Hill favorites is the bakery's farm loaf ($5), which seems to carry a whiff of Upstate hayfields. It's made from wheat flour, stone-ground organic wheat flour, salt, and natural leavening. Using these leavens can work both ways: Sometimes they impart the aroma of fresh-cut grass. However, if the leaven has turned, the bread can reek of the stall at the back of the barn that needs to be shoveled. The farm bread is the former. I just wish the bakers allowed the crumb's hole structure to develop so that the texture would match the delicious flavor

The sourdough loaf ($5) is one of the first made by Rock Hill, with a recipe of just flour, water, salt, and sourdough starter that was imparted to the Londons by an old-time San Francisco baker. It's a big boule with a golden crust and fairly dense crumb with a well-balanced sourdough tang. Unfortunately, like almost all Rock Hill loaves sold at Union Square, it was shipped to the market in a plastic bag, ensuring a moist loaf but also softening the crust.

I'm a sucker for chocolate breads, but Rock Hill takes the genre to—almost—its logical conclusion. Its chocolate cherry loaf ($6) seems to have almost as much chocolate as bread dough. This is a small but weighty boule made with cocoa powder, cherries, and a very generous portion of chocolate chips added to the dough. A thin slice, well toasted, is more than enough to start the day.

Rock Hill Bakehouse

Union Square Greenmarket, Saturdays only
rockhillbakehouse.com

About the author: Andrew Coe is the only reporter covering the city's bread beat.

[Photographs: Andrew Coe]

The re-opening of Smorgasburg has brought a dizzying array of new vendors selling food products you didn't know you wanted: Teriyaki balls! Chicken burgers! Bite-size cheesecakes! Amid them all, it's great to discover a vendor offering something that we really need: great bagels made by a top-flight baker.

Growing up in Central Pennsylvania, Melissa Weller didn't see a bagel until she was a teenager, and that was a Lender's from the freezer case. In college, she was introduced to blueberry bagels. (The experience still makes her shudder.) Then she became a baker, moved to New York, discovered real bagels, and took over the bread ovens at Per Se. She baked bagels for staff meals, and they became so popular that the chef began making matzo ball soup and egg salad to fill out the New York Jewish deli experience. From there, she went to Roberta's to build its (bagel-less) bread program. She left Roberta's earlier this year to found East River Bread, starting with just one product.

"I wanted to do something that I love, that's fun, and a little different."

Melissa's bagels are different from the rest of the New York bagel pack in a couple of crucial ways. Unlike most city bagels, hers are relatively small, usually weighing in at three or four ounces. Most bagels are made with simple yeast starters; Melissa uses a sourdough starter that adds a touch of sour flavor and gives the finished product some extra chew. Finally, she wasn't content with the traditional ways of flavoring a bagel, but we'll get to that in a bit.

The plain ($2) East River bagel is an orangeish torus with a chewy crust dotted with occasional blisters (like a classic sourdough). Inside, the crumb has more structure and a lot more flavor than the average fluffy New York bagel. To fill it, Melissa also makes salted butter and an excellent cultured cream cheese ($6 for 4 oz. jar) made from whole milk, cream, buttermilk, sea salt, and rennet. Slice one of these bagels, smear it with cream cheese, add good smoked salmon, and you've made the New York classic, only better.

Of Melissa's flavored bagels, only the sesame is relatively straightforward—a plain covered with sesame seeds. She wasn't happy with the dried onion and garlic flakes that most bakers use, so she began chopping and cooking her own onions. She puts the onions not on the outside of her onion bagels but inside, giving them a mild, slightly sweet onion flavor. Her everything bagel is coated with everything but the onion: sesame, caraway, poppy, and fennel seeds and salt. It's equally good with jam as a savory filling. Finally, she's probably the only city baker to add rye flour to a pumpernickel everything bagel, which gives it a slightly softer texture than her other bagels.

Melissa now bakes at Hot Bread Kitchen's East Harlem incubator. However, she's looking for Brooklyn oven space and plans to add to her line-up regular loaves, starting with a rye. I hope she opens a retail bakery, because I can't wait to get her bagels fresh from the oven.

East River Bread

Smorgasburg (Saturdays only)
eastriverbread.com

About the author: Andrew Coe is the only reporter covering the city's bread beat.

[Photos: Andrew Coe]

Herve Poussot did not expect Superstorm Sandy to harm his beloved bakery. But Almondine on Water Street in Dumbo was located in Flood Zone A, just by a hair. On the night of the storm, the East River's waters rose, broke through a sidewalk-level window, and flooded his basement work area, destroying his ovens, mixers, and everything else. His insurance company didn't pay him a cent. After a lot of help from customers, his landlord, and the city's French baking community, he finally reopened a few weeks ago. Once again we can enjoy Almondine's excellent patisserie and, more importantly, some of the best baguettes in New York.

Like many of his countrymen in the restaurant world, Herve entered the business young, starting culinary school to study pastry at age 14. In 1991, he migrated to California, and two years later he was pastry chef at Le Bernardin in New York, followed by Windows on the World and Payard. Finally, in 2004 he opened Almondine in Dumbo, adding a sudden ray of culinary excellence to that once-blighted industrial neighborhood. Unlike many of his contemporaries, who also have their eyes on the wholesale market, Herve's ambition has always been limited to running the best retail bakery. On the bread side, that means making loaves with slow fermentations (for flavor) and baking many batches throughout the day (for freshness).

Head first for the baguettes. Herve's French baguette ($2.75) is a classic version of the loaf, made from the basic flour, salt, water, and yeast formula. It's perhaps not as crisp-crusted as some of the competition, but it has the proper flavor and hole structure to its crumb. I prefer the flour-dusted Almondine baguette ($2.85), which has a bit of whole wheat flour added to the mix and is also given a slightly longer fermentation. The loaf comes out of the oven a bit denser—I like the chew—and with a more enticing aroma.

Most of Almondine's other breads are made with levain starter. One of my favorites is the hazelnut raisin loaf ($4.75), a medium-sized boule thickly studded with nuts and black and yellow raisins. The combination of chewy crumb, softly crunchy nuts, and juicy fruits is addictive. For a slightly more austere loaf, try the country ($5.75), a big boule made with a generous amount of whole wheat and a bit of white flour. The wheat gives it a nutty flavor, while the loaf's size helps keep its flavor and moisture on day two, three, and four. Finally, you should also try Herve's multigrain loaf ($4.75), which has so many ingredients that he's lost count. I saw, and tasted, cracked wheat, oats, and poppy, sesame, and sunflower seeds, but I'm sure I missed something. It has a great dense texture and so much flavor that you forget that it's probably good for you. And like all Almondine's breads, the price is right.

Almondine

85 Water Street, Brooklyn NY 11201 (map)
717-797-5026
almondinebakery.com

About the author: Andrew Coe is the only reporter covering the city's bread beat.

Righteous Rye from Orwasher's. [Photographs: Andrew Coe]

New York's bakeries have traditionally celebrated the approach of Spring by filling their shelves with Irish soda breads, egg- and butter-rich Easter breads, and a whole line of extra-sweet, cheese-filled pastries. This season, however, we can also enjoy a crop of new loaves not defined by their fat and sugar content. They're further proof of the competitive and creative ferment that has made this a golden age for bread-making in this city.

Inspired by the corn rye breads that are a touchstone of the disappearing Jewish-New York baking tradition, Orwasher's has created its new Righteous Rye loaf ($5). It's a boule with a nice chewy crust and a dense, caraway-seeded interior. It's not as soft and moist as the classic New York corn; I think it's more like a Jewish rye brought back to its rustic, peasant roots, the perfect base for a pile of juicy pastrami or corned beef. (I can think of more than one nouveau Jewish deli that should replace its house-made loaf with Righteous Rye!)

Strawberry walnut loaf from Dean & Deluca.

Dean & Deluca's head baker, Louis Volle, never ceases to amaze with his creative and consistently excellent loaves. His new strawberry walnut sourdough ($5) is more or less a classic walnut bread. The "more" is the addition of strawberries that have been macerated in balsamic vinegar and a dash of pink peppercorns for a bit of a bite. With its perfectly balanced texture and rich-sour-peppery flavor, it makes a supremely satisfying mouthful. You should also try his buckwheat crown, made with buckwheat flour, buckwheat honey, and buckwheat groats—heaven for buckwheat lovers. And coming soon: a laminated Pullman loaf that looks like it was crafted by space aliens.

Sourdough from SCRATCHbread.

Produced in a cramped Bed-Stuy storefront, SCRATCHbread's loaves still manage to go from strength to strength. The bakery's new sourdough ($5) is coated with olive oil and allowed to rise for 52 hours before entering the oven. It's then finished for a few minutes in a wood-fired oven, giving each loaf a caramelized, almost-blackened crust. The finished product is similar to the Roberta's City White, only with a softer crust and denser, slightly tart crumb. Like all of SCRATCHbread's loaves, it's supremely addictive—you find yourself even licking the blackened, slightly bitter crumbs of crust off your fingers.

Pissaladiere from Bien Cuit.

Bien Cuit's expansion hasn't hurt its product line. In fact, it seems to have spurred its bakers' creativity. The soon-to-be-introduced pissaladiere is a version of the classic French onion and anchovy tart. It's essentially a dense focaccia topped with caramelized onions, anchovies, olives, and a bit of fresh rosemary. With this combination of sweet-savory-flowery-salty flavors, it's hard to miss, a home run. Bien Cuit has also just released an amazing Many Grain loaf ($9), made with amaranth and black sesame seeds, millet, rye, and whole wheat. The grains give each bite a rich, savory flavor and distinctive crunch—a perfect base for runny, smelly cheese.

Irish soda bread from Hot Bread Kitchen.

And finally, I have to give a nod to one traditional loaf, Hot Bread Kitchen's Irish soda bread ($4). The original recipe for this includes just flour, baking soda, buttermilk, and salt. For decades, however, bakers have been adding a bit, or a lot, of flavoring to that bland base. Hot Bread Kitchen spikes the recipe with cheddar cheese, rosemary, and olives, giving a delicious, quasi-Mediterranean twist to the loaf.

Orwasher's

308 East 78th Street, New York, NY 10075 (map)
212-288-6569
orwashers.com

Dean & DeLuca

560 Broadway, New York, NY 10012 (map)
212-226-6800
deandeluca.com

Scratch Bread

1069 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11216 (map)
scratchbread.com

Bien Cuit

120 Smith Street, Brooklyn, NY 11211 (map)
718-852-0200
biencuit.com

Hot Bread Kitchen

1590 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10029 (map)
212-369-331
And at NYC Greenmarkets.
hotbreadkitchen.org

About the author: Andrew Coe is the only reporter covering the city's bread beat.

[Photgraphs: Andrew Coe]

Pain d'Avignon is the great New York City bakery hiding in plain sight. It doesn't advertise or otherwise toot its horn. Yet its delicate, crispy rolls fill the breadbaskets at many of the city's top hotels and white tablecloth restaurants. And for the last dozen years, its consistently excellent—and very reasonably priced—European-style loaves have been a mainstay of the bread counters many gourmet stores and in its retail shops in the Essex Street Market and the Plaza Hotel's Food Hall. Not bad for three guys from Belgrade who arrived here a little over 20 years ago with only a few dollars in their pockets.

Bane Stamenkovic, Uliks Fehmiv, and Tole Zurovac were part of a group of Belgrade high school pals who managed to get out of the former Yugoslavia just as the country was breaking up. They ended up in Cape Cod, where they discovered that Eastern Massachusetts was devoid of the great bread they'd grown up with in Belgrade. "We were young and knew nothing about baking," says Uliks. "But we shared this love for life, for the simple foods and flavors of our childhood." They taught themselves the trade and opened the first Pain d'Avignon bakery in Hyannis, making crusty French and Italian-inspired loaves. Then about a dozen years ago, Bane, Uliks, and Tole decided they were ready for a new challenge: New York City.

It wasn't easy to break into the city's highly competitive bread world, particularly when the trio couldn't afford rent for a retail bakery. They opened a small wholesale operation in Long Island City and got a big break when a chef helped them figure out how to bake perfect, tiny, and always-fresh loaves for the breadbaskets at his white tablecloth restaurant. Since then, Pain d'Avignon has slowly but inexorably grown; last year they moved into a big new baking facility near the East River. They're now thinking about opening one or two more retail outlets, but otherwise plan no big changes, just to continue concentrating on their customers and baking quality bread.

The first time I tasted Pain d'Avignon's bread was about a decade ago. It was a slice of a seven-grain Pullman loaf ($6) at a now-defunct Austrian restaurant in Brooklyn. I don't remember much about the meal, but I do remember savoring the bread, with its nutty aroma and lovely texture. Fast forward to the present: the seven-grain is tastier than ever, to my palate the best of the city's "health"-style loaves. It's made from wholewheat flour, yeast, and salt mixed with wildflower honey, flax, sesame, and sunflower seeds, and sprinkled with oats.

Pain d'Avignon introduces breads only rarely, after much tasting and experimentation. Its dark rye sourdough ($4) is one of the newest, made from 70% dark rye flour, 30% white flour, levain, salt, and water. Like almost all their loaves, it's given a long fermentation, coming out of the oven with a crisp crust and mild rye aroma mingled with sourdough tang. With its moist crumb, it has a longer shelf life and tastes just as good on day three—with a mellower flavor—as day one.

The bakery's whole wheat sourdough ($4) swaps out the rye for New York State whole wheat flour milled by North Country Farms. It has a similar moist texture as the rye, only the flavor tends toward the nutty-hayfield end of the spectrum—a great base for a slab full-flavored cheese or salumi.

The ciabatta (large, $4) is another of the bakery's exemplary loaves. The word means "slipper," but it comes out of the oven looking like an irregular clown shoe. Its crust has a slight crunch, while inside the crumb is a wonderland of Art Deco hole structure, with a wisp of lovely yeast aroma.

You can buy the country loaf in one pound ($3.80) or crowd-pleasing five pound ($16) loaves. It's made from about 85% white flour and 15% dark rye flour and leavened with poolish. In flavor and texture, it reminds me of the great loaves made by Brooklyn's Royal Crown Bakery (particularly those made before it moved to its new, smaller quarters)—a perfect rustic sandwich bread.

Pain d'Avignon

In the Essex Street Market
120 Essex Street, New York NY 10002 (map)
212-673-4950
paindavignon-nyc.com

About the author: Andrew Coe is the only reporter covering the city's bread beat.

[Photographs: Andrew Coe]

When I first began this column at the end of 2010, I thought it would last at most a year. I believed that the number of great bakeries in the city was finite, so I planned to stop when I ran out of anything new to say. More than two years later, I'm still at it, with a long list of bakeries I have yet to try. This is a golden era of bread in New York City, thanks to established bakers creating new and delicious loaves, and to excellent new bakeries seemingly opening up every month. Case in point: the ambitious new Breads Bakery, just off Union Square.

Uri Scheft, the head man at Breads Bakery, arrives in New York with a distinguished baking pedigree that spans from Israel to Denmark. Born and raised in Israel to Danish parents, he returned to Denmark to attend baking school and then traveled across Europe taking bread courses. About a decade ago, he opened his famous Lehamim (Hebrew for "breads") Bakery in Tel Aviv. There, he helped give Israelis a taste for dense, Northern European style breads. With his Israel bakeries now well established, he finally accepted an offer to open a branch on East 16th Street. For Uri, it's a challenge, but a happy one—he finally gets to design his ideal bakery from the ground up. And as in Tel Aviv, he only uses the highest quality ingredients and makes sure that his customers get fresh loaves from his ovens.

The first thing to remember about Uri's breads is that they're his loaves, not slavish re-creations of Danish or Israeli bread styles. Although he does bake challah for the weekend, most of his breads tend toward Northern Europe. The loaf that's closest to his heart—the one he eats at home—is his 100% Rye ($7.50). This is a dense, dark Pullman loaf made from 100% organic dark rye flour, Danish rye sourdough, and water. Its crumb has a slight sour bite and manages to be supremely moist without succumbing to the gummy texture of undercooked bread. You don't need a topping for it; the flavor and texture make every bite satisfy.

I'm a huge fan of walnut bread, so I'm always happy to welcome another player to the city's walnut loaf roster. The Breads Bakery version ($7) is definitely a contender, made from rye and white whole wheat flours, sourdough starter, a bit of yeast, and a lot of walnuts. It emerges from the oven with the requisite slightly crisp crust, soft crumb, and delicious walnut flavor.

With its generous coating of oats and pumpkin seeds, I expected the Breads Bakery cereal bread ($7) to fall into the dense "health" bread category. But it turned out to be a relatively light loaf made from half organic rye and half white whole wheat flours, mixed with liquid malt, rye berries, and sesame, sunflower, and flax seeds. I'm sure it's healthy, but it tastes so good that you forget about it.

If Breads Bakery had opened a few months earlier, I certainly would have included their French sourdough in my round-up of the city's best sourdoughs. Baked in either medium ($4.50) or large ($10.50) boules, this loaf is made from organic whole wheat and rye flours and sourdough starter, then given a long ferment to develop the flavor. It comes out of the oven with a crisp crust and soft, slightly sour crumb with a lovely, almost hay-like aroma.

This only scratches the surface of Breads Bakery's offerings. Beyond these loaves, you should also try the bakery's range of focaccias, particularly the remarkable multigrain focaccia. And if you see the cheese straws (5 for $9) for sale, grab them. They might be the city's best, crisp and cheesy on the outside, soft and buttery on the inside, and totally addictive.

Breads Bakery

18 East 16th Street, New York NY 10003 (map)
212-633-2253
breadsbakery.com

About the author: Andrew Coe is the only reporter covering the city's bread beat.

[Photos: Andrew Coe]

In Lisbon, Alfama is the name of the historic center of the city, built around a medieval castle. Today a neighborhood of narrow, twisty streets, and little houses, Alfama is also the center of hip, Bohemian life in the city, overlaid with a healthy spread of international tourism. In New York, Alfama is the name of little Portuguese restaurant in Midtown. After years of procuring their loaves elsewhere, last year its owners decided to hire a baker to make their own Portuguese style bread in their kitchen overnight.

"We wanted to make something artisanal," said co-owner Tarcisio Costa, "something that's not mass produced, that didn't pass through anyone else's hands, and that's Portuguese."

Alfama's miniscule bakery—essentially one little oven in a corner of the kitchen—makes bread for the restaurant and a pocket retail operation consisting of a few shelves of bread just inside the front door. Even if you've sampled the Portuguese delights of Newark's Ironbound district, a trip to Alfama's bread counter is well worth the trouble.

The restaurant's signature loaf is its broa, the classic Portuguese cornbread. There are many regional variations on broa, from massive loaves with a deeply cracked crust to the lighter and more refined. The Alfama version tends toward the refined side, with a smooth crust and a dense but somehow not heavy crumb. Traditional ways of eating broa include thin slices topped with cheese or jam, chunks for dipping in stews, or slabs topped with grilled sardines, garlic, and olive oil.

According to Tarcisio, his restaurant's pao de bico is another Portuguese favorite, a favorite of diners in Lisbon's cafes. It's a long, thin, crisp, white flour loaf; obviously, it's a baguette. "In Lisbon," he says, "they love to eat baguettes and croissants." Just like in France, they top their pao de bico with butter, jam, ham, and whatever else they choose. And although the name is different, this loaf clearly holds its own against any of the city's more Frenchified baguettes. Its crust is crisp but chewy, with a moist crumb with a faint wisp of sour from the starter. It's totally addictive.

For a more exotic loaf, you should try Alfama's pao de deus, also known as "God's bread" or "heavenly bread." It's a large, slightly sweet roll topped with a generous portion of shredded coconut. You can eat as is with coffee, or maybe spread with jam. But the Portuguese love the combination of sweet and savory, so they slice it in half and stuff it with cheese or, better still, ham and cheese.

Alfama's little bakery also makes delicious raisin walnut bread and two types of savory foccaccias. But I can't resist an excursion into pastry territory to honor their pasteis de nata, or egg custard tarts. I've tried these Portuguese specialties everywhere from Hong Kong to Manhattan's Chinatown to Newark—but not Lisbon—and the Alfama version is the best yet. Topped with the faintest hint of powdered cinnamon, they're tiny, crisp, and bordering on achingly sweet. One of them just makes a mouthful, but oh what a mouthful.

Alfama

214 East 52nd Street, New York NY 10022 (map)
212-759-5552
alfamanyc.com

About the author: Andrew Coe is the only reporter covering the city's bread beat.

[Photos: Andrew Coe]

The Gowanus Canal was once a tidal inlet, bordered by rich grasslands and filled with oysters rumored to be the "size of dinner plates." Back in the 17th century, a Dutch settler named Adam Brouwer built Brooklyn's first flour mill there, powered by the flow of water in and out of the inlet. Local farmers brought their wheat and other grains there to be milled; they then sold the flour to bakers and housewives in New Amsterdam, just across the East River.

Four centuries later, inspired by this history, baker Peter Endriss and chef Chris Pizzulli have finally opened their bakery and restaurant a block from the Gowanus. They have named it Runner & Stone after the top and bottom halves of a traditional millstone. One of our city's best bakers, Endriss has had a peripatetic career that's taken him from a bakery in South Germany to a job overseeing Per Se's bread ovens to a weekly bread stand at Smorgasburg. Finally, he has his own ovens in a space that's a bit cramped but actually has natural light. And in flavor and texture, his breads, some of them new, have never been better.

The first bread I'd grab would be Runner & Stone's baguette. Peter now leavens his dough with a mixture of levain and poolish starters, and gives the loaves a long ferment. Without getting too technical, the levain adds a bit of sourdough bite and also deepens the flavor. It also allows him to bake loaves from the same batch throughout the day, so you can always be sure of getting it fresh. The result is a baguette with a crisp crust enclosing a slightly moist, chewy, and aromatic crumb with an amazing hole structure. For me, it achieves the ultimate bread accolade: It's so good that you don't need to eat anything with it.

I've long been a fan of buckwheat bread (I still dream of a buckwheat loaf that Almondine once made), and now Runner & Stone has given me an excellent buckwheat baguette to chew on. Peter likes buckwheat flour for its flavor and texture, but also because buckwheat plants (not actually a grain) drain less nutrients from the fields than wheat. His buckwheat baguette, made with levain, comes out of the oven with a mild buckwheat aroma, crisp crust, and touch of sourness—great for smoked fish topped with a touch of crème fraiche. Peter also uses buckwheat and organic wheat flour to make his delicious pear buckwheat loaf.

Another new loaf is Peter's spelt ciabatta. If you're expecting the white, spongy, flavorless ciabatta loaf that's the norm around the city, forget it. The only similarity is the bread's slipper (or maybe it should be clown shoe?) shape. The crust is baked until it's dark and a bit cracked; inside the crumb is dense but soft, with a pronounced nuttiness from the spelt. Peter makes the loaf from organic spelt flour produced by Farmer Ground up near the Finger Lakes, mixes it with a bit of olive oil for moisture and texture.

Finally, I have to give another tip of the fedora to Runner & Stone's Bolzano rye. Based on a bread style from up in the Italian Alps, it's a hearty miche flavored fennel seed, cumin, and coriander. When he was selling the Bolzano at Smorgasburg, you could only buy small rounds. Now he bakes the delicious loaf the size of small tractor wheels, which is great because you never want to run out.

Runner & Stone

285 Third Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11215 (map)
718-576-3360
runnerandstone.com

About the author: Andrew Coe is the only reporter covering the city's bread beat.

VIEW SLIDESHOW: Good Bread: The Story of Sourdough in NYC; 9 Loaves to Try

[Photographs: Andrew Coe]

About 40 years ago, scientists identified the bug that helped build the American republic. That was the species of bacteria now known as Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis, which not only gives sourdough bread its tangy flavor but also improves its texture, makes it more nutritional, and helps it last longer. Sourdough loaves, with their golden, leathery, and blistered crusts, first appeared in San Francisco during the Gold Rush. From there, hardy L. sanfranciscenis cultures spread across the Western Frontier, helping feed everyone from Alaska gold miners, who were known as "sourdoughs," to Texas cowboys.

For the first century or so of the bread's history, one place you couldn't find sourdough was New York, where bakery shelves were stocked with English, French, Jewish, and Italian-style loaves. That is until the Great Good Bread Drought of the mid-20th century, when many small ethnic bakeries closed and all you could find was crappy supermarket bread. Then around 1970, city gourmet stores began importing frozen San Francisco sourdough loaves. After sampling this delicious West Coast bread, a disparate group of food rebels began making their own sourdough from home-brewed ferments, sparking New York's artisan bread revolution.

It's fitting that we begin of our roundup of the city's great sourdoughs with Eli Zabar, who helped start that revolution. The first handmade bread he sold in his E.A.T. shop was the sourdough ficelle. Eli didn't believe in over-mixing his doughs. Back in the 1980s, his ficelles were dense and sour little batons, frequently streaked with veins of flour that hadn't quite been blended into the dough. Today, the Eli's ficelles are a lot more consistent, but still dense, with a great chewy crust and a thick crumb. All you need is some brie and a bottle of oaky Chardonnay to induce flashbacks of Ed Koch-era NYC.

Most city sourdoughs on the market today range from updated versions of the classic San Francisco loaf, like the Orwasher's Soho Sourdough, to more restrained loaves that are essentially whole wheat breads with a bit of sourdough flavor in the background. It's also a very versatile dough that can be used as a platform for all kinds of more creative loaves, including the Silver Moon Ethiopian Sourdough, made with nigella seeds, and SCRATCHbread's dense and crusty STUYVESANTsour.

With its roots in the 19th century West, the sourdough is one of the most distinctly American of world breads. However, that plucky bacterium, L. sanfranciscensis, does not recognize politics or national boundaries. Scientists have discovered that same microorganism in many traditional European bread ferments, particularly from Italy and France. So if you're looking for a loaf with a sourdough tang, you should also consider those artisan bakeries that European-style starters, like the French levain method. Some of my favorites are the crust Bien Cuit miche, or the blackened City White from Roberta's with its delicious tangy crumb.

Take a look at some of New York's standout sourdough loaves in the slideshow.

E.A.T.

1064 Madison Avenue, New York NY 10075 (map)
212-772-0022
elizabar.com

Orwasher's

308 East 78th Street, New York NY 10075 (map)
212-288-6569
orwashers.com

Scratch Bread

1069 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11216 (map)
scratchbread.com

Roberta's Pizza

261 Moore Street, Brooklyn NY 11206 (map)
718-417-1118
robertaspizza.com

Bakeri

150 Wythe Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11211 (map)
718-388-8037
bakeribrooklyn.com

Silver Moon Bakery

2740 Broadway, New York NY 10025 (map)
212-866-4717
silvermoonbakery.com

Bien Cuit

120 Smith Street, Brooklyn NY 11211 (map)
718-852-0200
biencuit.com

About the author: Andrew Coe is the only reporter covering the city's bread beat.

VIEW SLIDESHOW: Good Bread: 10 Breads for the Holidays in NYC

[Photographs: Andrew Coe]

December is the fat month for New York City's artisan bread bakers. For eleven months a year they prove how much they can do with the fewest number of ingredients, usually just flour, water, salt, and leavening. But in the weeks before Christmas and New Year, they throw restrictions aside and revel in every over-the-top ingredient they can find, including butter, eggs, sugar, candied fruit and nuts, liquor, and even (or should I say of course?) pork.

When my editor assigned me to sample these holiday goodies, I didn't quite think through the possible repercussions: sugar overload, heaviness around the feet, and a generalized feeling of lassitude. It was as if I'd been eating the Christmas feast for weeks, and it wasn't even the 25th yet. Yet I persevered, and among those sugar and nut covered mounds, I've managed to find some treats that will stand out on any holiday table.

I've divided the ten I've chosen into enriched and not-so-enriched. All the breads in the first category are made with the butter-sugar-eggs trinity, making them generally light and soft (or dense and heavy), sweet, and, yes, rich. Both the stollens, made by Bien Cuit and Silver Moon Bakery, were fairly traditional—fitting for a bread style that was invented in Germany over 500 years ago. Most panettones sold in this city are imported from Italy in those squat obelisk-shaped boxes that clutter up gourmet stores but never seem to get sold. The bread is originally from Milan, but ever since a baker figured out how to mass-produce panettone, the loaves have multiplied, popping up everywhere from the Italian Alps to Venezuela. I'd advise you to feed those imported loaves to the pigeons; the moist, fresh-baked panettone from Sullivan Street Bakery and Dean & DeLuca are far superior. For a distinctly New York take on the tradition, the Orwasher's Christmas Challah is a panettone made with oil, not butter—perfect for Chrismukkah.

The less-enriched loaves are more various. Dean & DeLuca's pear bread and Maison Kayser's chestnut bread would be equally good with a slab of brie or a smear of marmalade. Bien Cuit introduced a bitter chocolate bread that would be a perfect eye-opener with coffee after too much goose and champagne the night before. And our favorite Bed-Stuy bakery, SCRATCHbread, has invented a breadCUSTARD that would be equally good from Christmas breakfast, lunch, dinner, and dessert—a holiday homerun.

Enriched Loaves

• Silver Moon Bakery's Sicilian Bread
• Bien Cuit's Stollen
• Silver Moon Bakery's Stollen
• Sullivan Street Bakery's Perfect Panettone
• Dean and DeLuca's Panettone
• Orwasher's Christmas Challah

Not-So-Enriched Loaves

• Dean and DeLuca's Pear Buckwheat Bread
• Maison Kayser's Chestnut Bread
• Bien Cuit's Chocolate Bread
• SCRATCHbread's breadCUSTARD

About the author: Andrew Coe is the only reporter covering the city's bread beat.

[Photographs: Andrew Coe]

For New York's German community, the rarest holiday tree on the market this December isn't a plant but a cake. In Germany, baumkuchen, or "tree cake," is a Yuletide fixation ubiquitous in bakeries and holiday markets. It's made by coating a spit with layers of batter and baking them layer by layer in a special oven. The finished cake emerges as a thick cylinder, with a hole down the middle surrounded by concentric rings of dough that look exactly like tree rings. It's usually coated with icing or chocolate and sold whole, in rings, or in little chocolate-coated wedges called baumkuchenspitzen.

Variations on baumkuchen are baked across Europe from France to Lithuania and Sweden. In the United States, however, I estimate that there are currently only four bakeries making the traditional treat: one in California, two in Chicago, and one in Queens. The crucial ingredients are bakers with the specialized knowledge and the presence of a special baumkuchen machine. Both of those elements are present at Stork's, my favorite German/New York/Jewish bakery, where they've been baking and decorating baumkuchen for weeks now.

At Stork's, the baumkuchen machine presses down grooves in the dough as it bakes, so it looks like a series of rings stacked on top of each other. (Maybe this is so the cake can hold more icing.) Once the three-foot tall column has cooled, the bakers cut it into three or more sections and begin the decoration process. First the cake is dipped into hot apricot jam to give it a hint of tartness. Once that's cooled, it's either coated with icing or milk or dark chocolate, depending on the customer's taste, and then decorations are affixed to the top.

Like most in the trade, the Stork's bakers are tight-lipped about ingredients. However, they did divulge that their baumkuchen contains butter, sugar, eggs, flour, and heavy cream. There's probably vanilla in there also. Given those ingredients, it's no surprise that the flavor is highly reminiscent of pound cake. What makes it remarkable is its texture: dense, almost chewy, yet creamy at the same time. A little bit goes a long way—if only you could stop eating those little bits!

The Stork's version is the only freshly-made baumkuchen sold in the city, but it's not the only baumkuchen. In 1919, a German baker began making baumkuchen in Japan, where they became a national obsession. Thanks to the unpredictable currents of international trade and culture, Asian-made baumkuchen are now sold at numerous Japanese and Korean bakeries and markets around New York. However, they're usually made of sponge cake batter, so they're lighter and more, well, spongy. I prefer the good, solid German-style baumkuchen.

It takes bakers hours in front of the hot oven to make a baumkuchen, so they aren't cheap. At Stork's, one large baumkuchen, weighing almost two pounds, costs about $45.

Stork's Bakery

12-42 150th Street, Whitestone, NY 11357 (map)
718-767-9220
storkspastry.com

About the author: Andrew Coe is the only reporter covering the city's bread beat.

[Photographs: Andrew Coe]

In 1997, Balthazar opened its doors on Spring Street. Downstairs in the basement, a corner was set aside for a little bread-making operation. On the first day, every table was decorated with a basket containing house-made breads: a baguette, a whole wheat, a rye, and so on. Fifteen years later, nearly identical loaves are still sold by the Balthazar Bakery, which has grown to be one of the city's biggest and most consistently excellent artisan bakeries.

From the start, the guiding force behind the operation has been head baker Paula Oland. She began her bread career at the now-gone Sign of the Dove restaurant back in the 1980s, when it was a rarity for a restaurant to have its own bread program. She was working as a pastry chef, but when the baker disappeared, she took over his bubbling pots of ferments and soon figured out how to bake acceptable loaves. The Sign of the Dove's bread program eventually morphed into Ecce Panis, now a major commercial bakery, but by that time Paula had moved on to start a family and do consulting work. In 1997, Balthazar's Keith McNally asked Paula to found his bread program, and the rest is New York City baking history.

Balthazar Bakery quickly outgrew its basement space, and in 2000 the operation moved to a much better lit facility in Englewood, New Jersey. When they first arrived they didn't know how they'd fill all the space. But they've been operating at full capacity for years. After locals began knocking at the door looking for loaves, they opened a factory store displaying the bakery's full line of breads and pastries. A visit is highly recommended, because the prices are lower and the selection is better than in the cramped and hectic Spring Street location.

The signature Balthazar bread is its pain de seigle, a big round boule (medium $11.50) with an ornate "B" stenciled on top in flour. It's made from a blend of whole wheat and rye flours, with some beer added for depth of flavor. The dark crust gives a satisfying crunch when chewed and exudes a pleasant, faintly bitter flavor. Its crumb has a pronounced rye aroma that pairs well with cheese.

Balthazar's whole wheat loaf (medium $10.50) comes in a similar boule shape, but its crust isn't quite so dark. Organic whole wheat flour gives the crumb an agreeable wheaty-nutty aroma that goes with everything from butter and jam to charcuterie.

Note to bakers: I'm a sucker for just about any loaf with walnuts. Balthazar's walnut bread ($6.50) has long been one of my favorites. Made from wheat, whole wheat, and rye flours, this loaf is lighter than most of the competition, but it still has a pronounced walnut flavor—thanks, I think, to the addition of walnut oil.

In the city's gourmet food marts, there's now a four-sided fencing match going on for domination of the baguette basket. Balthazar's baguette ($2.50) more than holds its own against the baking prowess of Amy's, Tom Kat, and Eli's. This is a narrow loaf, with a great crispy crust and a beautiful glossy crumb, with a hole structure so pronounced there may be more air than bread here. This is a twelve-hour baguette, so it doesn't have quite the flavor of a four- or six-hour baguette from one of the smaller French bakeries, but it more than makes up in crust and texture.

Balthazar Bakery

80 Spring Street, New York, NY 10012 (map)
212-965-1785

214 South Dean Street, Englewood, NJ 07631 (map)
201-503-9717
balthazarbakery.com

About the author: Andrew Coe is the only reporter covering the city's bread beat.

[Photos: Andrew Coe]

Thanks to its incredibly diverse immigrant population, the stretch of South Brooklyn from Coney Island to Sheepshead Bay is one of the city's richest feeding grounds for those interested in ethnic eats. Unfortunately, as readers know, it is also one of the low-lying neighborhoods hardest hit by the Sandy surge. As of last weekend, power was still out in large chunks of the district; dirty sand soiled the streets; and piles of sodden furniture were piled in front of homes. In the typically fickle aftermath of disasters, some businesses seem to have pulled through relatively unscathed, while others have far more damage to contend with.

This column has long been a fan of the dense and dark Russian and Lithuanian breads produced by New York Bread. Its ovens and retail store are housed in a building on Coney Island's north side, backing onto an arm of Gravesend Bay. On the night of the hurricane, Gennady, one of the owners, stayed hoping to protect his equipment. But when the water started coming through his door and kept rising, he jumped in his car and drove home over the Verrazano bridge just minutes before it was closed to traffic.

When he was able to return, he discovered that the water had covered the first floor to a depth of six feet. Since then, he has been waiting—so far fruitlessly—for Con Ed to turn on the power so he can see which of his refrigerators and ovens still work. Meanwhile, he and his workers are cleaning up, and every three or four hours they feed their bread starter, the heart and soul of their entire baking business. Once he gets electricity back, Gennady is planning to upgrade all his equipment and come back bigger and better than before. Up on the second floor, Gennady stored a few loaves of dense Lithuanian rye and fruit bread that he baked just before the storm. Ten days later, they were just as delicious as new.

Brighton Beach, the next neighborhood east, seems to have power. Shoppers bustle along Brighton Beach Avenue's Russian shopping strip under the elevated train tracks. Many of the stores and restaurants on the south side of the street appear to still be closed, perhaps due to water damage, while those on the north side are open for businesses. The exception here is M & I International Foods, one of the oldest and largest of the neighborhood's many gastronomic emporiums. One of the owners said that the storm caused the roof to collapse, destroying the entire interior. "We will rebuild," he vowed.

Sandy's floodwaters flowed many blocks inland. One of this column's favorite ethnic bakeries is Georgian Bread, where Badri, the owner, makes the city's best shoti and khachapuri breads. The bakery's address on Neptune Avenue is almost half a mile from the beach. Nevertheless, the relentless water filled its first floor storefront to a depth of about two feet. Georgian Bread is now back in business, but Badri is worried that the water somehow penetrated the walls of his special tandoor-like oven. The first few shoti loaves that came out didn't bake as evenly as before. They may have been slightly browned on the edges, but their flavor was just as good as always. We are confident that he will work out the kinks.

Two weeks after Sandy, South Brooklyn from Coney Island to Sheepshead Bay and beyond still needs your help. You can donate volunteer time, food, clothing, and other necessities through many organizations. And you can go there to dine and shop, because the district's many restaurants and markets need your patronage to survive the next few months.

[Note to self: The next time a hurricane approaches, buy a few loaves of Lithuanian rye!]

About the author: Andrew Coe is the only reporter covering the city's bread beat.

[Photos: Andrew Coe]

I generally stay away from the breakfast bread category. Stuffed with oil, sugar, zucchini, pumpkin, cranberries, and what-have-you, these loaves are really muffins made large, lingering heavily in your belly for most of the day. However, I break my rule for chocolate bread, which rises above the category thanks to the use of leavening. Richly flavored but not too weighty, the loaves make a perfect start to the day, particularly when washed down with espresso. Here are some of the city's best chocolate breads.

Balthazar

The granddaddy of the bunch is the Balthazar chocolate pan loaf ($9), which back in the late 1990s pointed the way for the rest to follow. In texture, it resembles a light brioche, made with cocoa powder in the dough and chunks of bittersweet chocolate that stay gooey in the loaf. The best way to eat it is toasted with butter, but it also makes a highly indulgent French toast. And if it goes a bit stale, you can turn it into chocolate bread pudding, the recipe for which has been an American mainstay for over a century.

Balthazar Bakery

80 Spring Street, New York NY 10012 (map)
212-965-1785
balthazarbakery.com

Hot Bread Kitchen

Hot Bread Kitchen's new head baker, Ben Hershberger, recently introduced a delicious chocolate cherry bread ($5) to its line up. It's very dense and Mitteleuropean, the slightly tart preserved cherries making an excellent counterpoint to the very generous amount of chocolate chunks in the bread. Warmed up, it really doesn't need any topping, though I wonder how it would taste with a generous spoonful of schlag, aka whipped cream.

Hot Bread Almacen

1590 Park Avenue, New York, NY 10029 (map)
212-369-3331
Also available at NYC Greenmarkets
hotbreadkitchen.org

SCRATCHbread

Bed-Stuy's SCRATCHbread is now open seven days a week at their Bedford Avenue storefront window. It's always inspiring to see what new loaves the bakers are concocting in their wood-fired oven. (Their excellent new whole wheat "hot pockets" are pita breads like Sun Ra would have made.) On a recent morning, the day's special was a "chocolate pizza," ($4) really a big focaccia topped with rosemary, sea salt, and a light sprinkling of cacao nibs, and with, yes, a generous layer of dark chocolate in the center. At first, the flavor center of my brain went haywire, unable to compute all those familiar taste sensations in such an unfamiliar grouping, but then it suddenly decided: amazing, and delicious.

Scratch Bread

1069 Bedford Avenue, Brooklyn NY 11216 (map)
scratchbread.com

Blue Duck

For my weekday chocolate bread, I usually chose the Blue Duck chocolate loaf ($6.99), made out on Long Island and sold in the city through Union Market. Like most chocolate breads, it's usually only available on weekends. However the Blue Duck loaf is so dense that it lasts for days. It's one of the least sweet of the bunch, the only sugar coming from the 72% cacao chocolate. I like to top a toasted slice with cream cheese and blackberry jam, kind of like a deconstructed German chocolate torte—heaven!

Blue Duck Bakery

Available at Union Markets
blueduckbakerycafe.com

Post-Sandy Appreciation: The day after the storm, the aroma of baking bread suffused Brooklyn's Smith Street for blocks. The windows of Bien Cuit were so steamed up that you could hardly see within. Inside, a long line of people waited patiently, happily for great bread, pastries, and coffee. New York's bakeries are part of the glue that holds this city together. Here's hoping that all of them come back stronger after the storm.

Note: You can also find chocolate bread at Silver Moon Bakery and Payard, which I couldn't include in this roundup due to transit difficulties from the storm.

About the author: Andrew Coe is the only reporter covering the city's bread beat.

VIEW SLIDESHOW: Our Favorite Lard Breads in NYC

[Photographs: Robyn Lee]

The Winners!

Royal Crown Bakery: 6512 14th Avenue, Brooklyn, NY 11219 (map); 718-734-1002

Caputo's Bakery: 329 Court Street, Brooklyn, NY 11231 (map); 718-875-6871; caputosbakery.com

Parisi Bakery: 198 Mott Street, New York, NY 10012 (map); 212-226-6378; parisibakery.com

A peppery porkiness suffused the air at Serious Eats World Headquarters last week. The aroma curled around the nostrils of the worker bees, drawing them from their seats toward a big table covered with plates. "Oh my God, I love that smell!" said one. Ignoring that we'd just had lunch, we prepared to sample ten of the loaves variously called lard or prosciutto bread from around the city.

The roots of nearly all these breads come from the Southern Italian baking tradition. The first strain is the practice of cooking strictly from hunger: of using, and re-using, absolutely everything. If you were lucky enough to have pork with your meal, you would save the leftover fat and pork scraps, and mix them into your next bread dough, producing lard bread.

The second strain is the Italian festival cooking tradition, when you made up for months of hunger by packing big cubes of salumi and cheese into breads that left you feeling, for once, fat and happy. When Southern Italians arrived in the United States, they found a land of plenty where they could afford meat almost regularly. Italian bakeries in neighborhoods like Little Italy, Carroll Gardens, and along Arthur Avenue made these cholesterol-packed breads part of their daily menu, even adding prosciutto, a Northern Italian delicacy, to their recipes.

Of ten loaves we sampled, eight came from traditional Italian bakeries around the city. The other two were the Eataly prosciutto bread—more like a crusty Italian loaf into which some prosciutto chunks had been tossed—and the Amy's Bread's black pepper prosciutto twists, which were the only ones made with whole wheat flour.

The Contenders

Amy's Bread
Caputo's Bakery
Eataly
Faicco's
G. Esposito & Sons Pork Store
Madonia Bakery
Mazzola Bakery
Napoli Bakery
Parisi Bakery
Royal Crown Bakery

Evaluating Lard Bread

As described above, there are several styles of lard bread. Some are more lean and bread-like; others have a rich, cakey softness. Some rely on the dry intensity of prosciutto; others employ more moist salami. This makes it difficult to create one single standard for all our lard breads to aspire to, and an overall rating on which to score them. So in our blind tasting, we scored our samples on independent ratings of overall flavor, texture, and aroma.

Our Favorite Lard Bread: Royal Crown

Our tasting panel gravitated to the more traditional Italian loaves. Of these, the Napoli bread was the most like traditional lard bread, with flavor of rendered pork fat and bits of pork ends. But we preferred the flavor party provided by the festive cheese-and-meat breads.

The clear winners along all three scores were the three breads made with the most meat, cheese, and, sometimes, peppery flavor. These came from the Parisi Bakery in Nolita, Caputo's in Carroll Gardens, and, the overall winner, Royal Crown in Bensonhurst.

With its slightly charred crust, rich cheesy flavor, and big chunks of meat, the Royal Crown prosciutto bread ($4) was the standout, receiving the highest marks in flavor, texture, and aroma. One taster went so far as to call it the "Platonic ideal" of the genre. At the end of the tasting, that plate was empty, yet the tasters still lurked around, hoping for more.

NB: These bakeries do not all make lard bread every day. Call before you visit to see if the loaves are in stock, or if they can bake one for you.

For a play-by-play of all the breads, take a look at the slideshow, where they are ranked in order of overall flavor.

About the author: Andrew Coe is the only reporter covering the city's bread beat.