The history of California bread as a prominent factor in the field of bread baking dates from the days of the California Gold Rush around 1849, encompassing the development of sourdough bread in San Francisco. It includes the rise of artisan bakeries in the 1980s, which strongly influenced what has been called the "Bread Revolution".

Bread in San Francisco

There have been independent retail bakeries in San Francisco continuously since the California Gold Rush of 1849, and many restaurants make their own bread. However, the wholesale market (which distributes bread to restaurants and grocery stores) was marked by a slow decline from the early heyday, and the subsequent emergence of a new generation of artisan bakers.

Gold-rush era Sourdough bread traces its origins to ancient Egypt and is common in parts of Europe. It became a staple in San Francisco during the California Gold Rush of 1849. Gold miners valued it for their camps because of its durability, and the relative ease of obtaining yeast. Although many different kinds of pre-ferment (a dough-like mixture of fermented flour and water containing bacteria and wild yeast) are suitable for making sourdough, specific species of bacteria (Lactobacillus sanfrancisco) and wild yeast (Candida humilis) have been identified as the predominant cultures in local breads. Sourdough starters were carefully kept and maintained by each bakery as a "mother sponge". Using the same starter over time helped bakers continue traditions that had been practiced for generations.

By 1854 there were 63 bakeries in San Francisco. The Boudin Bakery was founded in 1849 by Isidore Boudin, son of a family of master bakers from Burgundy, France. Boudin applied French baking techniques to the fermented-dough bread. The bakery continues to use the starter which originated in the 19th century. Parisian, a popular bread in San Francisco for many years, started in 1856. Parisian supplied San Francisco's oldest restaurant, Tadich Grill, for 141 years until the bakery closed. In Oakland, Toscana started in 1895 and Colombo in 1896. Also in 1896, the Larraburu Brothers bakery, located at 365 3rd Avenue, was started by two Basque brothers who immigrated to the U.S. from France, bringing their starter with them. In 1899, Fritz Schweninger founded the Carmel Bakery, on Ocean Avenue in Carmel-By-The-Sea; it remains the oldest bakery in California still in its original building.

Post-war era Starting after World War II, a generation of decline and consolidation saw Americans increasingly eating packaged, sliced loaves. Beginning in the 1950s and continuing through the 1980s, there was less fresh bread available across America, leading writer Henry Miller to complain, "You can travel 50,000 miles in America without once tasting a piece of good bread." Much of the decline paralleled nationwide trends, both for bread and other foods, toward consolidation, lower-priced and frozen ingredients, reduced labor costs and added preservatives for longer shelf life. Mechanization requires drier dough than hand-formed loaves, leading to drier loaves that do not have the same large gas bubbles and chewy consistency of good sourdough. Despite this trend, sourdough remained popular in the bay area.

Bakery Main location Est. Closed PrincipalsBoudin 399 10th Ave., San Francisco 1849Still openIsidore Boudin;Daniel GiraudoParisian*1995 Evans Ave., San Francisco1856 August, 2005 Toscana*939 3rd St.; 3924 Market, Oakland1895 ? Larraburu Bros.*365 3rd Ave., San Francisco1896May, 1976Larraburu Bros; Harold Paul, Sr. & Jr.Colombo*580 Julie Ann Way, Oakland1896 November, 2012Carmel BakeryOcean Ave. between Lincoln and Dolores St., Carmel-by-the-Sea1899Still OpenFritz SchweningerBaroni*Baroni French Baking Co., 7801 Edgewater Dr., Oakland Inc. 1968 ? George ValerioVenetian2200 Powell St., San Francisco ? April, 1979 Aldo Bertolina PisanoMain & Chestnut; Maple St. & Veterans Blvd., Redwood City1950?*Studied by USDA in 1969 Colombo also produced sourdough rolls in its bakery at 1329 Fee Drive, Sacramento, which closed in 2003.

In 1969, two researchers at the Western Regional Research Center of the U. S. Department of Agriculture in Albany, Calif., Dr. Leo Kline and Frank Sugihara, began a study of sourdough cultures from five bakeries in the San Francisco area: Parisian, Toscana, Colombo, Baroni and Larraburu. After years of trying to identify the bacteria responsible for the unique flavor of S.F. sourdough, they turned to the Microbiology Department at Oregon State University where a team led by Dr. William Sandine was finally successful in isolating the bacteria from the wild yeast (Candida humilis) and discovered the theretofore-unknown lactobacillus that produces the lactic acid that gives the bread its unique flavor. They named it (Lactobacillus sanfrancisco).

Some bakeries from the gold rush era kept the sourdough tradition alive and continued to produce bread. The Larraburu Brothers bakery produced a popular brand of sourdough but was forced to close in May, 1976 after protracted litigation arising from an accident in which a small child was severely injured by a Larraburu delivery truck. The owners had also taken on a great deal of debt which contributed to the bakery's financial woes.

In 1971, Toscana merged with Colombo Baking Co, both of which were located in Oakland. The Parisian Bakery was purchased in 1982.

Steven Giraudo, a baker who immigrated from Italy in 1935, took his first job in America at Boudin, then bought the bakery out of near bankruptcy in 1941. He later sold it to a larger company, but after a series of ownership changes the bakery was bought back by two of Giraudo's sons through their investment bank. The Giraudo family bought Parisian in 1982, transferring it in 1984 to the San Francisco French Bread Company of Oakland, which in turn acquired Colombo and Toscana, replacing the hearth ovens with high-capacity ovens. In 1993 the San Francisco French Bread Company was sold to Illinois-based Specialty Foods Corp. The sale marked the end of local ownership for three sourdough bakeries which had been in operation since the 1800s.

In March, 1997, San Francisco French Bread Company was purchased from Specialty Foods Corp. by Interstate Bakeries Corporation of Kansas City, Missouri which went bankrupt and shut down the Parisian bakery in 2005, saying the bakery was no longer profitable. At the Colombo bakery in Oakland, recipes, ingredients and fermentation times were changed, impacting the quality of the bread. Before its demise on November 21, 2012, Interstate was making 217,460 loaves of Colombo sourdough per week at its Oakland factory, and 71,540 rolls per week at its bakery in Sacramento, as well as Wonder Bread, Twinkies, and Ho Hos snacks from a sister factory at 1525 Bryant street.

The old bakeries that survived were large, mechanized operations. They were not small "artisan" bakeries in the modern sense. The top three bakeries employed 1,000 people and made sixty million units of bread per year (mostly loaves) that they sold in more than 4,000 Northern California outlets, as well as airports and supermarkets throughout the United States. Boudin operates 32 retail outlets, mostly as coffee shops, including outlets at Disneyland and Fisherman's Wharf.

Bread in Southern California

Louis Mesmer's first business in 1820s Los Angeles was a bakery; he was also apparently the only local producer of matzah, “which he sold to nearly all the Jewish families of Southern California.”

Bread bakeries in Los Angeles include La Brea Bakery. A popular sour dough bread was widely available from Pioneer Baking in the Los Angeles area, but it disappeared from shelves around the year 2000.

Artisan bread movement The artisan bread movement represents a return to low-volume production of handmade loaves. It is in some ways a return to older techniques, but in other ways it is a shift. Unlike the Gold Rush bakers, they were based on French and Italian techniques and very crusty. Among the hallmarks of the new artisan breads, loaves are exposed to steam while baking (a technique developed in Vienna, Austria), creating a shiny surface that may be crusty or chewy, while keeping the interior moist. "Rustic" breads use whole grain flours, including rye flour and whole wheat. Breads are scored with decorative cross-cuts, along which the bread cracks while rising and baking to allow the crust to expand. Scores are made in distinctive styles that identify each bakery.

Early proponents

The first of the many new companies arose out of the Tassajara Zen Mountain Center near Carmel Valley, California, a group of monks derived from the San Francisco Zen Center (which owns Greens Restaurant) that began baking bread in 1963 and operated a bakery in San Francisco's Cole Valley from 1976 to 1992. A pastry shop, Just Desserts, operated the bakery from then until 1999.

The Cheese Board Collective opened in 1967 in what would later be known as Berkeley's "Gourmet Ghetto", and became a worker-owned cooperative in 1971.

In 1970 Narsai David, food and wine editor of KCBS and a nationally syndicated food writer, opened a highly successful catering business and restaurant, Narsai's, in Kensington, California. Narsai's became renowned for its bread making. David explained his philosophy: "Using nothing more than flour, water, salt and yeast, you could bake a loaf of bread in as little as three hours, or you could take 24 hours. The one that takes 24 hours has developed a much more sophisticated flavor. Take two to three hours and the bread tastes like flour and water."

Modern-era companies

San Francisco Bay Area

Acme Bread Company is an early, influential modern artisan bread maker, reported to have "launched an artisanal bread-making revolution in the 1980s" with their sourdough bread. In 1977 founder Steve Sullivan, a student at University of California, Berkeley who was earning money as a busboy at Chez Panisse, bought Elizabeth David's 1977 book on bread during a trip to Europe, and began trying to recreate the bread he had tried in Paris on his return. In 1979 he became in-house bread maker at Chez Panisse, when the Cheese Board Collective could not keep up with demand. Jeremiah Tower, then head chef, encouraged Sullivan to study breadmaking at Narsai David's bakery. He later left to launch Acme with his wife Susan, half funded by Doobie Brothers guitarist Patrick Simmons. Encouraged by advice from a winery in Bandol, they obtained Acme's starter culture from yeast of wine grapes they found at Sullivan's father's vineyard in Napa.