By Robert Seixas, ZAGAT.com staff editor
The laudatory loaves at L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon.
photo: Emily Capo
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In restaurants, nothing symbolizes hospitality like bread. Or at least, nothing should symbolize hospitality like bread. But all too often, cold rocks and stale slices are the norm, and what should represent a warm welcome winds up tasting – and feeling – like an icy greeting. Of course, there are exceptions, where the kitchen puts time, effort and thought into their bread service, with glorious results.
Some restaurants elect to make their own breads in-house, as is the case with the crunchy, airy loaves – crosses between ciabatta and focaccia – made each day (right after midnight) at Sfoglia on the Upper East Side. “We use a starter dough – the term is 'pâte fermentée' – that’s eight years old,” says co-owner/pastry chef Colleen Marnell-Suhanosky. Each bread there, in a sense, can trace its origins to its "mother."
L'Atelier de Joël Robuchon’s petite baguettes are noteworthy in their own right. “We don’t use an old dough," says Jeff Sytsma, a tournant in the restaurant’s baking/pastry department. “We do use a starter dough made from water, apples, raisins, malt syrup and lemon juice, which ferments for about six days.” Rye flour is then added, and the fermentation begins again, in what Sytsma calls an overall “costly” process.
Bottom line aside, the preponderance of tiny kitchens in this city means most restaurants balk at the idea of making breads on site. But a few have defied space constraints by capitalizing on the resources and expertise of established outfits. Blue Hill works with Tom Cat Bakery to produce the restaurant’s ficelle-like loaves. “When the bread comes to us, it’s 75% baked,” explains executive chef/co-owner Dan Barber. “We finish the cooking in-house, and the effect is the bread feels freshly baked.”
Similarly, at Café Gray, the flaxseed bread (based on an old Swiss milk dough recipe) is produced by Blue Ribbon Bakery, "according to our specifics,” says chef-owner Gray Kunz. “We worked for months to get it right.” (Sullivan Street Bakery will supply the breads at Kunz’s forthcoming Grayz.)
In the end, a little ingenuity – and hard work – can go a long way to satisfying diners and setting the right tone for the meal to follow. Why then does it seem that so many places treat bread as an afterthought when it should be a principal consideration?