Photography by Katherine Bish
In Catalonia, where they love food only slightly less than they hated Franco, the word is panarra. It describes a person who can eat an entire loaf of bread at one sitting. We qualify. What we were looking for was a loaf worthy of such gluttony. And not just any bread. We sought a loaf with a crust as golden brown as Halle Berry’s cheek, with the inside contents exactly like those of Doonesbury: light and white and airy. Not that we’d turn down any of the hefty, more robust breads, your Swiss bangeli or Polish ryes, your bhakris, boulkas or biovas we found along the way. But it was those long loaves of oven-fresh goodness, staff-of-life stuff; it was the Parisian baguette in the boulangerie of our imagination that fired our quest. We set out to find it in St. Louis. And, as usual, we got sidetracked.
The first diversion came at McArthur’s Bakery. A legend in South County, McArthur’s from the outside looks like an ordinary bakery in an ordinary strip mall. Inside, especially if you’ve a penchant for baked sweets, is a glass-cased Museum of Temptation of staggering proportions. There’s a cozy corner with tables and chairs and a section of the store devoted to greeting cards. (The last is a clever bit of marketing. McArthur’s sells about 800 birthday cakes on a typical weekend and has a room next door devoted entirely to the planning of wedding cakes.) Aside from that, it’s all baked desserts.
Virtually every square inch of the case shelves are covered by the sweet, the sugary, the stupendously caloric. Florentine cookies are mounded like giant poker chips, spun from sugar, butter and eggs, studded with pecans, then dipped on one end in chocolate. Beside them, a pile of Hungarian horns. (Imagine a crescent of sweet dough that tastes like a bready stollen, dusted with sugar and cinnamon and crumbles of pecan.) Speaking of stollen, they come the size of auto mufflers, burnished with snowy frosting and glistening with cinnamon apples, candied cherries and chunks of sweet pineapple. Above the stollen, a McArthur’s must: big-enough-for-two brownies dunked in—no, not just chocolate—melted Belgian chocolate. European influences are heavy here, with several tortes, tiramisu and other Old World dessert classics.
But David McArthur, company vice president, explained that while some members of his staff have actually trained in European bakeries, they’ve adapted most recipes to meet the American taste for a more pronounced sweetness. He also noted that each of the several cakes offered is also available by the slice. He took us on a tour of the bakery. One staff is devoted entirely to French confections. Another works full time airbrushing frosted cakes with edible ink designs, and still other workers do bakery-type things we didn’t exactly get because we were by then a little woozy with insulin shock.
We do remember that the French bread was credible. But much better were the butter-crust sandwich breads, split while still at the rising dough stage and drizzled liberally with butter. Many commercial bakeries advertise this; virtually none does it by hand as they do at McArthur’s. The difference is noticeable.
We knew we were in trouble at Las Palmas when we asked the girl behind the counter if she had any bread, and she hoisted her eyebrows, looked around and pointed hopefully to a stack of paper bags. If your español, like ours, is limited to inquiring as to the whereabouts of the biblioteca, meaningful conversations will be limited at this place. Doesn’t matter. This is a delightfully stocked panadería, a bread and bakery shop that couldn’t be more authentically Mexican if a flour-dusted Don Fernando were tending ovens in the back.
But here’s what the linguistically challenged need to know. The rack of tongs and stack of paper bags are for you to help yourself to the goods. Pay at the counter. The emphasis here is on pan dulce, or sweet breads. There are more than a dozen in bins and racks, all perfect for a light breakfast or evening snack. (Eat them as they do in Mexico, with a cup of hot chocolate.) Among the choices: conchas (shell-shaped), puros (cigar-shaped tubes) or small sweet breads with a crumbly sugar coating called novias (“sweethearts”). The crescents, or curenitos, supposedly represent unfaithful spouses—one can only imagine the hijinks ensuing over a breakfast of these crusty conversation starters.
Proving nobody’s all bad, the ultimate ugly tourists, Maximilian and Carlota, at least brought bolillos, a softer and sweeter version of French rolls, when they came for a ruling stay in Mexico. Mexico bid them adiós but kept the rolls. Las Palmas has an excellent version. This is also the place for teleras, a flat, oblong loaf that is essential for tortas but also tasty for molletes, cut in half, topped with beans and cheese and toasted.
The Hill is intimately associated with bread in the minds of most St. Louisans. With good reason. A number of neighborhood bakeries (some selling only wholesale) have been supplying markets and restaurants in St. Louis for generations. Among the oldest is the Missouri Baking Company, which has been turning out bread, cookies and other baked goods since, well, probably the last of the mastodon hunters dropped by for a loaf of warm shampa before heading out to the field.
The Missouri Baking Company sells only retail, and most of the year it is a quiet neighborhood establishment, catering to locals who drop by on the way to work for a cake to share at the office or on the way home to get a dozen elaborate Italian cookies for dinner’s dessert. Come Christmastime, though, the crowds are livelier and more sugar-coated than a Family Circle retrospective. St. Louis holiday buffets, parties and dinners are stocked with more than 18,000 pounds of this bakery’s cookies. The rest of the year, shampa, or “claws,” are a specialty. Since it has long been a tradition for the ends of baguette-style breads to be torn off and nibbled on the way home from the bakery, shampa evolved, a knobby, lumpy looking loaf of Italian bread that essentially is all ends. (Epi are the French version.) Mekets—hard rolls with or without sesame seeds scattered on top—are another big seller, just right for sandwiches, even better for swabbing through leftover gravy.
There are, to be sure, other diverting roadside attractions on the path toward the perfect loaf. No exploration of St. Louis bakeries, for instance, would be complete without dropping in to Carondelet Bakery for its apricot coffeecake made with whole apricots. Or the hot ham croissants at Soulard Bakery. Or Pratzel’s braided challah. Remember the immortal words of Clemenza, who advises in The Godfather to “Leave the gun. Take the cannoli”? Try the crusty tubes stuffed with creamy sweet ricotta and candied fruits and dusted with powdered sugar at Vitale’s Bakery for an incredible taste of Palermo that’s worth committing a felony. Or two.
Having packed away enough baked calories to fortify us for the entire winter—the next ice age, actually—we finally waddled into La Bonne Bouchée. Just west of the I-270/Olive interchange that has been under construction since the Taft administration, “The Good Mouth” probably has a good little café, with breakfasts and light lunches. We wouldn’t know. We never got past the bakery in the front. Desserts here are extravagant and delicate. Layered with chocolate mousse and whipped cream, laced with dark, sweet cherries and slathered with a buttercream frosting, a black forest cake manages to be excruciatingly rich and simultaneously dainty. There are little, buttery yellow tart moons, chocolate and vanilla éclairs and Napoleons and those “fluted scallops” of Proust’s memory, madeleines. The madeleines at La Bonne Bouchée are worth the trip. Crispy on the outside, moist and cake-like inside, simple but irresistibly luscious.
And there, in a basket on the counter, was the panum for our nostrum: The bread of our dreams. This is one of the few places locally that distinguishes between—and sells both—the baguette and the skinnier flutes. It doesn’t matter which you buy; both are superb. The alchemy of salt, water and flour animated with natural yeast results in arguably the greatest food in Western civilization. Too many today confuse “simple” with “ordinary.” A loaf of bread at La Bonne Bouchée reminds us of how extraordinary the perfectly simple can be. The crust crackles when you bite it, the texture of the bread is light as August’s clouds. Shelf life? Real baguettes grow stale and tasteless faster than a Cialis commercial. This is bread that must be eaten the day it is made. You won’t have much trouble doing just that. A baguette from La Bonne Bouchée, along with a bottle of Burgundy or a California Sauvignon and a pungent, bulging slab of Brie de Meaux—as we panarra would say, nothing but crumbs, my friend. Nothing left but crumbs.
Breadsmith
Yes, Breadsmith is a chain. Yes, it features trendy and irritating neologisms like “artisanal” in its advertisements. Yes, the beret-and-Birkenstock crowd can be obnoxious. Even so, by any measure, Breadsmith is one of the best bakeries in St. Louis. The shelves are amply stocked with dozens of excellent breads and pastries, muffins and buns. Breadsmith’s brioche is unparalleled, properly made with a hefty butter-to-flour ratio that gives this bread its richness. It’s available as petite brioche breakfast rolls or in larger loaves. (A must-try: bostock. Lamentably little known outside of France, it is simply brioche slathered with an almond extract cream and sliced almonds, then baked. French toast made with bostock? Déjeuner deluxe.) Marbled rye, onion rye, black rye, light rye studded with caraway seeds and an unusual sourdough rye with a bubbly, crispy golden crust—Breadsmith scores high on all. The discerning will recognize that focaccia is correctly baked here, in an oven so hot the crust is flecked with blackened flour, like the great pizza crust descended from this bread, and not soft and leathery as the focaccia in virtually all store bakeries. Batard rolls are just the right size for sub sandwiches.
Note that Breadsmith’s scones are entirely creditable (especially the ones studded with currants), and you can one-up the double-latte league that frequents this place by pronouncing the word correctly when you order (it rhymes with “pawns”).
Lubeley’s
If you plotted St. Louis’ bakeries on a map (we did—and drove all over Hell and back visiting them), you would see they’re heavily concentrated in the south part. Maybe it was the populations of Germany and Italy that settled in those St. Louis neighborhoods. Whatever the reason, South St. Louis is to bakeries what Kyoto is to temples, and the area’s grand shrine is Lubeley’s. Those from outside the area may not be aware of it, but South County weddings are not legally recognized unless the cake at the reception was provided by Lubeley’s.
Amelia Earhart took a wrong turn over the South Pacific the year Lubeley’s opened, and close to 70 years later, the place, if old photos on the wall are any indication, doesn’t look much different. It’s homey. The kind of place your Aunt Ethel would have run, with soft blue and white paint and tiles on the floor. A corner section with tables and chairs is a perfect place for a breakfast of a house specialty, danishes or a lunch from the bakery’s deli counter. The Lubeley’s Special, with deli meats, two cheeses and a “special” sauce along with a side of potato salad, is even better because of the breads available. Lubeley’s forte is the heavier breads—thick, white disks of Italian and French sandwich loaves, butter-crust bread and ryes. Note, too, that the passing of the seasons can be marked just by checking the cookies in the display cases, from scarlet-frosted Cardinals to autumn’s footballs, Christmas trees to Easter eggs. Lubeley’s renowned white chocolate mousse cake transcends not only seasons, but the entire time and space continuum.
