In October my wife and I will be heading west to attend a wedding, and we are combining that event with a drive around the area. Three particular places where we will be staying for a few days apiece are Santa Fe, Albuquerque, and Salt Lake City.
If you can recommend any favorite bread bakeries in these locations, please post a reply in this thread.
Thanks and happy baking.
Ted
In Albuquerque you must go to the Coda bakery for the banh mi sandwiches. It's Vietnamese and makes extremely good ones. I'm not familiar with other Albuquerque bakeries but I believe there are some good ones.
I moved away in 2019 but go to the Santa Fe Farmers Market Saturday mornings. There was always a large display by a local baker everyone calls "the Dutchman". I suppose he's still there. I forget the name of his bakery and he had stopped selling retail except for the Farmer's market.
Also in Santa Fe, make sure to have breakfast or lunch at Clafoutis, a terrific French bakery and restaurant. They concentrate more on pastries but bake excellent croissants, and baguettes and such too. There's also the Sage Bakehouse, which has its own cafe and sells breads in many area stores. Too bad I never liked their bread that much even though their loaves always look good.
There's the Chocolate Maven, where they make very good croissants among other things, and you can get a very good meal and look through the large picture windows at the bakery operations. One time we watched croissants being cut out and shaped right next to us.
Other bakeries either I never tried or are new since I left. And don't forget to get a green chile cheeseburger while you are in New Mexico. Ask around, there are some places that make a really good one. And if you are getting a New Mexico meal and you are asked whether you want red or green chile, no matter what you might read, which one is hotter varies from day to day and restaurant to restaurant, so ask. Or say "Christmas", meaning both red and green.
Not bread, but if you want to hear some fine music in a very small ("intimate") space, check to see if there will be anything scheduled at The Gig Performance Space during your stay. The owner is an absolutely top notch guitarist and always books interesting and good quality performers. The Gig happens to be very close to the Chocolate Maven, BTW. Check it out at https://gigsantafe.com/home
TomP
Good recommendations all, TomP. Especially GIG... Bruce has been a good friend for decades.
He's something else, isn't he?
Wild Leaven in Santa Fe has gotten some buzz. The owners/bakers have a definite philosophy -- long ferments, local ingredients. Two yrs ago, when I was last there, I had mixed feelings about their loaves. I'd be interested in your take.
Rob
PS: I agree with TomP regarding Sage: the breads look ab fab & taste ab meh.
Hruska's Kolaches makes delicious sweet and savory stuffed pastries for breakfast. I've never been to their SLC location, but the one in Provo always sells out by about 10am, so make sure to go early.
That's a long drive from Santa Fe for breakfast! : )
Thanks to all who posted replies. This is all really helpful, and I will have to make a list and see where the various bakeries and so forth are located.
We are back from our trip, and here's an update. In Santa Fe we went to Clafoutis, but the food was inconsistent. The baguette was fairly mediocre with a doughy interior and lacked a crisp crust. Not even close to what we had in Paris in May 2024. The cream puff was excellent, with great choux pastry and a nice cream filling, but the walnut brownie was a bit overbaked. My wife and I were not impressed.
On the other hand, we enjoyed Sage Bakehouse. A nice meal included some of their bread, and I also got a loaf of plain sourdough. My only complaint about their bread is that every loaf has a somewhat pale crust (reminded me of when I began baking and was afraid to go past 35 minutes in the oven -- eventually I gravitated toward the Ken Forkish philosophy of a dark crust with enhanced Maillard effect).
In Albuquerque we did go to Coda Bakery. Their baguette had the outward appearance but lacked anything other than that in terms of being a baguette -- it was essentially plain bread in the shape of a baguette. On the other hand the Vietnamese food was excellent, so thanks for suggesting the place.
That was it for bread. While in New Mexico my wife and I sampled several green chile cheeseburgers and other chile-enhanced meals in various locales, beginning in Taos and then to Santa Fe and Albuquerque. I should include the Navajo Taco we had in Monument Valley too.
Before heading out on the trip, I sent an email to Maurizio Leo at his website, but never got a response. Oh well.
Thanks again for your replies.
Ted
Thanks for letting us know how it went. I agree, the Vietnamese buns that look like baguettes aren't really like Parisienne ones. Vietnamese bakers adapted them under French colonialism for the climate and usage and available flours, so they are a different product. The fillings are what really make a banh mi, at least for me.
Thanks for the report. I'm glad you liked Sage. As I recall the sourdough and deli-style rye breads I got there, I have to agree: they seem to shy away from the 'bold bake' philosophy. Maybe the maillard was the taste I was missing.
To be honest, though, most of the time, I was far from the fancy bakeries in the cities and simply enjoyed fresh-from-the-pan sopaipillas or fry bread. Not good for the heart, I guess. But good for the soul.
Rob
Where were you, Rob? I lived in Chimayo for some time.
I didn't live there, Tom. I was doing some work in and around Espanola, Las Trampas, Dixon, Abiquiu, Jemez Springs, Mora, Las Vegas. I've been in Chimayo a couple of times (including once during Easter, witnessing the procession of pentitentes walking scores of miles to get to the sanctuary.) It's a beautiful place. Do you miss it?
Rob
I do miss it in many ways. Some of those penitentes would walk on the little dirt road next to my house. Many more walked along SR76, just a short block from my house. Of course, I've been to all those places you listed. Did you ever get to El Farolito in El Rito?
Las Vegas (New Mexico) has a very nice bookstore with the wonderful name of "Tome on the Range". A year or two before I moved away, it was bought up (but not closed) by a well-known bookstore in Santa Fe with its own good name: "Op. Cit.".
Sadly, I didn't get to Op Cit or Tome on the Range or El Farolito. But I had a bunch of green chile stew and huevos rancheros at the Spic 'n' Span in Las Vegas and a memorable sopaipilla & stew at Angelina's in Espanola (which I think got a new name recently.) As for books, I admit to checking out Collected Works and I visited a discount & used bookstore whose name I forget but where I bought a collection of novels by William Eastlake. I also got to spend a little time with Stanley Crawford, a novelist/essayist/garlic farmer in Dixon, who died last year. --Rob
I didn't know Stanley died. That's too bad. I used to go to his garlic farm on the annual studio tours, I've read several of his works, and talked with him at the farm.