My third day in San Francisco started out with me making my way to a near by trolley stop. You can’t go to San Francisco, and not go on a trolley ride at least once. It would be like flying to Hawaii and not going to beach. Aside from the novelty of riding on one of the city’s famous trolley cars, it was the easiest and fastest way for me to get to another famous San Francisco attraction, Pier 39 Fisherman’s Wharf.
I had always been a fan of San Francisco sour dough. There’s just something about the bay area climate that produces some of the best bread in the world. Top of my list for the day was the Boudin Bakery. With an bakeshop, museum, cafe, restaurant, and store all in one place, it was the epitome of a tourist trap and I, being a tourist, could not resist. Just as I expected, the building was huge. The shop was filled with a variety of artisan breads, wines, books as well as other odd knickknacks. Along the ceiling was a sort of rail system which carried baskets of bread from the bakeshop side of the building into the store where they were either put on display for sale or used for orders in the cafe. It was a brilliant system, and I swear that i stood in the middle of the store for almost thirty minutes just watching the baskets of bread go by.
From there, I made my way to the bakery side where a big glass window allowed you to look into the bakeshop. The machines in there were a sight to behold. Conveyor belts, ramps, lifts, rollers. It wasn’t until I went up stairs and looked down into the bakery that I was able to figure out entire process from where they put the dough in, where it came out, and all the processes in between. I found it very interesting, but in the end, the entire process was entirely too mechanized for me. I’m sure that the system was very efficient for the amount of volume that they had to produced, but all the belts, and lifts made it seem too impersonal.
After, I finished with my tour of the bakeshop, I made my way to the cafe to sample some of the famous Boudin sourdough. Perhaps my expectations are too high but unfortunately, I was disappointed. As I suspected when I was looking into the bakery, they bread had a manufactured quality to it. There was almost no crumb to the crust. None of that gratifying crackling noise when you bite into it. There was really nothing that set it apart from any other bakery in the city. It was good, but not quite the phenomenal loaves that San Francisco was famous for.
I suppose that it was foolish of me to think that I was going to find that exceptional piece of bread at the first place I looked. Still, the sourdough at Boudin was vastly better than most of the bakeries in Hawaii, but I continued my search for the best sourdough in the city.
Song stuck in my head at the time of this post: Rumble by Link Wray
