We fell slowly into our obsession with finding and eating at the best bakeries in the United States. When we set out on the road in August of 2016, bakeries were not among the things we went looking for.
Around Thanksgiving, about three months into our journey, we were house sitting in Novato in Marin County, and during that time stopped a couple of times at Marin Coffee Roasters — the one next to the Nugget Market (where we shopped for food) on Ignacio Boulevard. Some of the pastries they sell with their coffee are terrific, and when we asked the owner, Tammy Mock, about them, she told us that the pastries come from a bakery in St. Helena each morning.
By Christmas, we were down the coast in Dana Point eating pastries and drinking lattés at Pain du Monde on Pacific Coast Highway near the Ritz-Carlton, and walking down to the harbor for more of the same at Coffee Importers. And later that stormy winter, while we were house sitting in Pebble Beach, we several times sought shelter at Paris Bakery in Monterey. We found something both comforting and decadent in sitting in coffee shops and bakeries, and eating gorgeous and delicious pastries while drinking smooth hot beverages with annoying layers of foam on top. Breve? What’s breve?
It was at about this time that we grew to miss reading newspapers. I had been a newspaper reader since I could read. The Washington Post and The Evening Star were both delivered to our door when I was a kid, and I read them both. Even while living in Cape Town, where the newspapers were simultaneously censored and awful, we still subscribed to the Cape Town newspapers and read them each day. After six months on the road, we wanted to hold and read the paper again. So we began a Sunday morning ritual — wherever we were in the country — of hunting for The Sunday New York Times, taking it with us to the best bakery we could find, and spending a piece of the morning reading the Times and eating pastries. Yum.
It didn’t take long to discover that there are at least a million bakeries, doughnut shops, and coffee shops in America, all of them selling pastries, and that they fall neatly into four categories: the truly awful (Flying with Jerome in Clearwater), the mediocre middle (How You Brewin’ Coffee Company on Long Beach Island, Alexandria Pastry Shop in . . . where else, and Renaud Patisserie in Santa Barbara), the they’ll-do-if-there’s-nothing-better-around (Red Twig in Edmonds and Paris Bakery in Monterey), and the truly special (Social Bakery on Hilton Head Island, Tulie Bakery in Salt Lake City, and B. Patisserie in San Francisco). Someone needs to identify the truly special, and spare the world from the rest. We’re volunteering.
Our goal here is to steer the reader to the very best bakeries in the country, and away from the hopeless and the pretenders. To butter, and away from shortening. You won’t find us recommending this particular pastry or that certain blend of coffee as you will the authors of other websites and blogs. We don’t think our specific tastes in chocolate almond croissants match those of anyone else. And we’re confident that readers can make smart choices for themselves once in the door of the right places. We’re giving you directions to those right places, not telling you what to eat.
