Acme Bread Company

What can I say about Acme Bread? We simply love it! That’s it. We love it.

They’ve got a location in the San Francisco Ferry Building. We’ve also been to the one in Berkeley by Kermit Lynch Wine Merchants. On weekends, Hegui and I usually have morning coffee with a sweet baguette from Acme. Sometimes H will get the sweet loaf for a breakie surprise mid-week as he works quite near the Ferry Building. I frequently buy the olive loaf to go with Italian food, particularly for Roman style tomato pasta or drizzled with fava topping. And though we’re unlike most San Franciscians in that we generally dislike sour dough bread, those from Acme are delicious.

These breads remind me most of some from my childhood in the Seventies when my family lived in Geneva, Switzerland. Often my mother would buy large round boules from little boulangeries in the city. They had this thick chewy flaky crust with a soft, doughy chewy interior that I came to think of as one of my best memories of childhood. Acme isn’t quite that but it comes close.

They do offer a large variety of delectable loafs, all at fairly reasonable prices. Aside from the ones that I’ve already touched on, we really enjoy their herb and onion “slabs:” elongated rectangular breads with herb or spring onion in the filling. They also make wonderful rustic round and oval loafs in both sweet and sour and many others. The epi bread is another crowd pleaser.

Fortunately, if you live in the Bay Area, you don’t have to suffer. Acme operates four stores and distributes their breads to numerous retailers including Whole Foods, Costco, Good Life and even restaurants like Fringale, and of course, Chez Panisse.

This is way better than a boring mass-produced loaf of white bread!

Didn’t Wylie E. Coyote shop at Acme for stuff with which to capture the Road Runner? Can this be where they got the name?!?