11 Places for Great Bread

Bread is a truly versatile food. Whether it’s being offered as a stand-alone snack or served to you one basket after another as a tantalizing appetite ruiner at an upscale restaurant, great bread is one of dining’s simple pleasures. It can enhance a meal, or be the meal, and when it’s served fresh from the oven and done just right, it’s enough to make you keep coming back over and over again. With that in mind, here are 11 places from around the country where you can find some truly remarkable bread.

Broward-Palm Beach

Renaissance Baking Company (Saturdays only)

Baker Steve Bern was making “artisanal” breads long before foodie windbags got hold of the term and turned it into a cliché. With his background in economics and engineering, and some strong risk-taking genes, Bern was a natural at creating the optimal conditions to keep a sourdough…More >>

Baker Steve Bern (with Family)

Denver

Bluepoint Bakery

Man could live by bread alone, if it were made at Bluepoint Bakery. This is a huge production bakery with an enormous book for everything from breads to desserts to pastries, but the breads are the real star: at least a dozen kinds of French bread, twice the number of dinner and sandwich rolls,…More >>

Houston

French Riviera Bakery & Cafe

The farmhouse loaf made by brothers Louis and Robert Wu is a dense loaf of bread, about 15 inches long, in the shape of an elongated football that is dusted with flour, which makes everything it comes into contact with white. And it is so crunchy that taking a bite may cause scratches in your…More >>

Miami

Cioppino

As much as we love the simple Tuscan cuisine on Cioppino’s menu, we never seem able to finish our risotto scampi or signature mare e fetunta. Why? Because we gorged ourselves on the restaurant’s savory bread basket, which brims with ciabatta and grissini flown in from Italy. It’s even harder to…More >>

Minneapolis

Saint Agnes Baking Co.

Are you bored with the bread you find in the supermarket or your neighborhood bakery? Maybe it’s time for something new. How about a honey-pecan-hemp bread, hearty but light and soft, a bread whose creator was so convinced of its bounteous healthfulness that an accompanying sign at Saint Agnes…More >>

Bread from Saint Agnes Baking Co

New York

Philippine Bread House

If you love white bread, you’ll love the soft rolls called pan de sal at Philippine Bread House, where a steam table also presents savory stews and roasts, and every other baked good contains eye-searing purple yam. More >>