Wild Flour Bread - Freestone

If I could, I would keep this post at the top of my blog, always. Wild Flour Bread was my favorite of all the places we visited on Saturday--and we visited a lot of good places. It's also my favorite place that I've been to so far in the Napa area--and I've visited a lot good places. I love it.

Put simply, no matter where you are in the world, if you book an airplane ticket right now to depart in 3 hrs (providing you arrive btw Fri-Mon), rush to the airport, arrive in Oakland or San Francisco, and drive like a madman to Freestone, CA to sample the breads at Wild Flour Bread, it would be completely worth it. You may not even be a bread person, but you will easily become a Wild Flour bread person.


It's amazing bread. Served warm, perfectly chewy on the inside and slightly crusty on the outside, and so full of flavor. It's like eating perfection.

And mind you, it's basically in the middle of nowhere. This is the view across the street.
The view inside is perhaps just as beautiful, but even more breathtaking.
That wood-fired brick oven in the back bakes these organic loaves to perfection.

On their website, they say that they sell 900 loaves daily through this retail shop, and I'd believe it. A lot of people were on in the perfection of this relatively small place, and it's a comfortable spot to relax; everything just feels right with the world in the bakery. It's the kind of place where a conterperson addresses the crowd by calling out "I'll help anybody."
So, what'd we get? The fougasse (with potatoes, jack cheese, cheddar cheese, garlic, potatoes, and rosemary) and the sticky bun. When we brought our purchases to the communal table, I felt the sticky bun, and said "Oooh, it's still warm." I then felt the fougasse, and said "Oh my god, this is warm, too." It was like Christmas morning.

I think that Wild Flour is a bit like the classic Ben & Jerry's of breads -- they like to throw a lot of chunks of good stuff in (though there are pure grain breads, too). They also have a tricky way with bread names. A fougasse is usually a leaf shaped lean dough with holes. Our fougasse looked like this.
The ladder-like ( /cough-cough/ fougasse-like) loaves on the mid-left of the interior picture above had goat cheese and had a different loaf name that I can't remember. I found that out later.

Anyway, the chunks in the breads are not just limited to potatoes and garlic. When they say there's cheese in the bread, they mean chunks of glorious melted cheese. So, getting it warm is part of the beauty. The rosemary is also more mellow when it's warm (it's stronger when you devour the leftovers later).
And the sticky bun. There's nothing like it in the world. Syrupy on the edges, chewy, cinnamon-y, wildly folded.
You can't really tell from the pic, but it's huge--about the size of a healthy hardcover book. Like the fougasse, it's whole wheat. They don't mention this on the menu board, but in a way, they don't really need to. It is what it is, and it tastes delicious; it doesn't taste like some lame Whole Wheat Wonder Bread. This the real stuff that just tastes good.

The owner used to work in specialty glass in Santa Rosa, so there's even stained glass to admire... in the bathroom.As well as a bread bunny in the window.
They have pizzas on Fridays and Monday. Sigh.... they must be spectacular....