Tour of Boudin Bakery.

Day three in San Francisco was one of the highlights of the entire trip for me. We went to Boudin Bakery on the wharf for a tour of their San Francisco museum as well as their sourdough bakery. As it turns out, the Boudin sourdough starter, their “Mother Dough” has been around since the beginning of San Francisco and was the one thing that Mother Boudin saved from the burning building during the fires of 1906. If you know anything about growing yeast (we got a whole science lesson while we were there) you’ll know that yeast is a time machine. This time machine takes us back to the middle of the 19th century.

We had the pleasure of spending the afternoon with Terry who showed us around the museum as well as the factory. The factory bakes each day thousands of rolls of bread along with many more pieces of hand crafted artisan pieces as well. Below, you can see Terry {a master story teller if there ever was one} holding up a lobster and showing us it’s belly.

There is serious art in this artisan bread. Lobsters, crabs, alligators, fish, turtles, anything that you can imagine; and as it turns out, the Boudin Bakery can bake for you anything that you can imagine. While on the bakery floor, we saw a 10′ alligator cooling off with a chain around it’s neck. You know, just in case.

Now the bakery floor was something to behold. There must have been a small army of industrial engineers working many long hours with the folks at Boudin Bakery to make the whole thing work. The bakery itself is one of those places where form and function come together and leave one with awe and amazement. 800 lbs of dough at a time get mixed by custom built mixers similar to the Kitchen Aid in your house, but these ones have three phase motors running 208V/277V. These things were massive. I was impressed.

Well, once you mix a 800 lbs dough ball, you have to do something with it right? Why not start by dropping it from the second floor down to the first floor and force it through a funnel and automatic roller? Again, awesome!

After the tour, we were invited by the company to be their guests for lunch. Their full menu at the bistro read more like one of restaurants there they make you wear a tie and jacket, lend one to you if you don’t have one, give the ladies the menu without the prices, and have a Sommelier. Seared salmon on a bed of spinach, smoked salmon sandwich (on sourdough of course), and of course creme brulee for desert.

Overall, I would say that day 3 in San Francisco was a success.

Allison

Hello there! I'm Allison Czarnecki, founder + editor of Petit Elefant, a blog all about style on a budget for every part of your life: style / home / travel / family. I do a lot of how-to beauty + style tutorials, travel posts, easy recipes, home remodel projects, and cool DIY crafts you totally want to try. I'm super happily married (to a hot Polish immigrant) and am the mother of two kids, a daughter and son, all of whom are featured here on the regular. We live in the country but we're a little bit rock + roll. Welcome!