The Bread Workshop

“All great changes are preceded by chaos.” -Deepak Chopra

Hi Bread Workshop fans,
Many have come in excited by the new grab and go salads, soups and our the limited sandwich menu prepared by our wonderful counter crew.  As I said in the last posting, we have discontinued the sandwich and hot food menu that has been part of our life for 8 years.  We are taking a bit of time to regroup and figure out the next steps.Lourdes, who’s been working for us for 20 years, is helping us make an assortment of salads, sandwiches and soups.  Meanwhile Sophie and Katherine have been expanding their pastry range with some savory items like quiche and savory bread pudding.  We will continue to make more grab and go items like baked green chile chicken empanadas.   We are dedicated to make  food that comes from our hearts, using our  training and skill. This means that quality, not quantity is going to be our focus.
Using the best freshest ingredients we can will allow us to make a variety foods from many cultures and backgrounds. We will also to create healthy nutritious items for many diets, though we hope they will be tasty enough for everybody.
As with all transitions, this may take a little time to perfect.  I assure you our focus will be on the food at all times.  I will keep posting our progress as we go, introducing new products. For example, our pastry department, Sophie and Katherine, have just introduced gluten free coconut macaroons. To track of all this we will not only post these on our website but on our Facebook page or just come in and see what we are up to.

Thank you for your dedication and patience.

The sad news is that our buffalo burger has left our menu due to increased popularity of buffalo (weird reason, huh? see why below). The good news is that we are now getting some delicious ground turkey from Diestel Ranch seasoned with organic sage, sauteed onions and garlic. This is now available on any of our popular burger combination’s.

This change represents one of the struggles which we are constantly looking at, that is to provide reasonably priced sustainable foods.  The popularity of buffalo in supermarkets, which fetches better prices for the supplier than restaurants, increased our price for buffalo to such an extent that we could no longer afford to sell it at our goal of sustainable products for under $10 (our regular menu goal, though some daily specials are higher). I don’t blame the supplier and am glad that buffalo is getting so popular,  but the best thing is that it led us to another delicious alternative.

For all those buffalo (OK, it’s really North American bison) fans it is still a great meat to eat, environmentally as well as for health concerns! But we, at The Bread Workshop, are trying to focus on sustainability in the wallet as well as all other forms of sustainability.

Thanks

William

These past five days have been a whirlwind of work. We looked at all the recipe’s of our wholesale and sandwich bread in minute details. Carefully playing with better fermentation times we have made the bread more flavorful with much better textures and crusts. Though we changed little of the recipe’s themselves, the techniques are going to be subtly changed over the next few weeks. Our sourdough breads are the best examples of our improved fermentation times.

Our Cafe is going to be closed from July 3rd to July 7 for cleaning, maintenance and improvements.

The Baylist readers voted us the second best sandwich shop in the Bay area for the second year running!

Thank you for your support and congratulations to Ike’s who got number one!

Last year we were voted 2nd bast sandwich shop in Baylist. The voting has just begun for this year! If you like us please, here is the link:

An essential part of sustainability is to be true to seasonal foods. If a food is in season then you can be pretty sure that it has its best nutritional value, its best price points and most important of all its best flavor. Organic production is much easier to do when a product is in season, so the price difference between organic and non organic diminishes. This means it is financially more sustainable as well.
It is now Citrus season! Blood oranges, grapefruits and tangerines are flavorful and cheap. Asparagus is also coming on strong, though it came in a bit later than last year. To find our seasonal weekly and daily specials, check out our Facebook Page.