Better Than San Francisco Sourdough Bread

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Over 11,000 days of deliciousness from the Bakehouse

By Ari Weinzweig

The Buddhist monk Shunryu Suzuki was born in Japan in 1904 but spent most of his adult life teaching Buddhism in San Francisco. In his 1970 book, Zen Mind, Beginner’s Mind, he writes,

We may find it not so interesting to cook the same thing over and over again every day. It is rather tedious, you may say. If you lose the spirit of repetition it will become quite difficult … Anyway, we cannot keep still: we have to do something. So if you do something, you should be very observant, and careful, and alert. Our way is to put the dough in the oven and watch it carefully… Actual practice is repeating over and over again until you find out how to become bread.

Though Buddhism and meditation were his life’s calling, Suzuki was not unfamiliar with bread making. He had become good friends with the founder of the Tassajara Bakery, Edward Espe Brown, back when Brown began practicing Zen Buddhism in 1965. Brown later worked in a wide range of roles at Greens Restaurant in San Francisco, doing everything from bussing tables to buying wine. After years of study, he was ordained a priest by Shunryu Suzuki and later edited a book of Suzuki’s lectures entitled, Not Always So. Suzuki’s wise words work well for the skilled and dedicated crew at the Bakehouse. Thanks to Frank, Amy, Jaison, and all of the bakers, my back-of-the-mental-envelope math tells me that we’ve made our Better Than San Francisco Sourdough bread (BTSFSB) over 11,000 times during the 30 years and 10 months since we started the Bakehouse. I’m pretty certain that given their writings, their work, and the fact that they both lived in San Francisco, Suzuki and Brown would have tasted a good bit of Sourdough bread over the course of their lives.

More about our Better Than San Francisco Sourdough Bread

Thinking about Suzuki and Brown’s Buddhist teachings, I decided to go back to the BTSFSB to try to taste as best I could with “Beginner’s Mind.” I’m glad I did. Even on what might be the 10,000th time I’ve tasted it over the years, it remains remarkable! It’s got a wonderfully refreshing flavor with that distinctive gentle tingly sour tang in the finish. It’s so light and so lively—I realize now on retasting that it could almost work as a palate cleanser between courses. The BTSFSB is chewy with a lovely smooth, shiny, crust. The chewiness is particularly conducive to the sort of mindful tasting that Shunryu Suzuki is suggesting! The finish is really fine. Super clean and long and lively, reflecting the quality of the organic wheat we use and the skill of the mixers and bakers at the Bakehouse. 

The history of sourdough bread goes back thousands of years—all breads were sourdoughs up until the advent of commercial yeast in the middle of the 19th century. This particular flavor and style—tangier by far and also somewhat more sour than most naturally leavened “sourdough breads”—became popular during the California Gold Rush era in the late 1840s. 

How to enjoy our better than san francisco sourdough bread

The BTSFSB is almost universally appreciated, including people who hail from the Bay area, many of whom have been known to bring a few loaves of the Bakehouse’s version back with them. It’s great with Mariano’s new harvest olive oil from Spain or paired with cultured butter. Lately, I’ve been loving it with apricot jam! Or just ripped off the loaf and eaten as is (I far prefer the textural diversity of bread that’s torn rather than something sliced with a knife). There’s an essay on Mindful Eating in “A Taste of Zingerman’s Food Philosophy”—the BTSFSB would be a wonderful thing to practice with! I’m going to use the prompt of this piece to continue to taste mindfully every day going forward, to dive even more deeply into the wonders of this great loaf and see what I can learn from the repetition and the attention. As Shunryu Suzuki said, “When you understand one thing through and through, you understand everything.” 

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