Baking Bread in San Francisco
The pandemic unleashed bread making upon the nation. But even now, there is growing interest, but not because it's something to do when locked at home.
In same way that people have become more discerning regarding beef, eggs and vegetables, turning to locally produced alternatives to the mass-produce industrial byproducts, people are recognizing the impact of commercial bread.
As in the case with the other foods, bread and flour used for making bread at home typically come with processing which reduces nutritional value. Most bread has a long list of ingredients as well as unspoken processing to accelerate the production time.
Although making at home from store-bought flour gives control over the additives (flour, water, salt and yeast), the flour itself has been drained of nutrients.
So, people are looking for alternatives: higher quality flour, including locally milled; and at-home milling from wheat berries.
I'm not yet ready for the mill-at-home berries (but getting close, now that I learned that Blendtec can substitute in the short-term for a mill), I have been looking around at flour options in the city.
And here is what I have come up with:
Casa de Case
This isn't locally produced, but is a local warehouse for imported Italian flour from the Pasini mill in Montava.
I put it on here because they have alot of option, and I have been curious whether Italian flour differs from American flour.
To be determiend.
Giusto
I heard that Giusto's used to have an open store, but as far as I could tell, they only sold online or through certain local retailers. When I looked at the Amazon store, it was bulk and expensive.
They do have an online shop, but the thought of paying 2x the roughly $10/5 pound for flour just....I wasn't that ready to go hard core.
But I'm keeping it handy for when that day will come, but meanwhile, have been looking to see where I can get it locally.
Update: looking online at Rainbow Grocery, looks like they may carry it in the store, so I'm going to check that out next.
Sour Flour
According to the website, sour flour has one of the coolest origin stories.
Apparently at one point, they gave out a thousand loaves of bread locally and built a community of bread makers.
That made me intrigued to drive down to their Bayview-based bakery to pick up some flour. It came in at a reasonable $5 for 4 pounds. According to Danny, it was milled by Central Milling, which definitely seems like a go to source.
Central Milling
This place has come up a number of times in the online forums. It's a bit of a drive from San Francisco to their distribution center in Petaluma. And their online purchases through Amazon are as expensive as Giusto's online store.
However, the milling is based in Utah.
Like Giusto's, the flour can be purchased right down the street at Rainbow.