The hand-shaped, wood-fired potato-thyme fougasse from Hungry Ghost Bakery in Northampton, Massachusetts, has a pillowy texture reminiscent of focaccia and a wonderfully herbacous taste.
With a moist crumb and pronounced crust, Tartine's country bread is the gold standard for artisan loaves in San Francisco and beyond. Remarkable.
Iggy's in Boston makes one of our favorite sandwich breads, the fluffy and pliant pan Francese.
The seeded fougasse at Standard Baking Company in Portland, Maine, tastes like the best everything bagel on earth: chewy, fragrant, great with good butter.
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Keith Kouris's two Long Island Blue Duck bakeries feature a vast range of international breads, but their dense Finnish-style sour rye is our favorite, particularly with a ripe, creamy cheese.
Think of the heavenly, crisp caramelized cheese atop a casserole; that's what the Asiago-Parmesan bread by Lionel Vatinet at La Farm in Cary, North Carolina, tastes like.
The fragrant rye ficelle Zachary Golper makes at his year-old Brooklyn bakery Bien Cuit is worth the trip to the borough.
Of all the creative loaves at Santa Monica's Milo + Olive, the cinnamon sugar brioche is our favorite. Think French toast.
The wood-fired, earthy-tasting country blond boule at Ken Forkish's 11-year-old Portland, Oregon, bakery has the perfect crumb-to-chew ratio.
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Edmund and Kathleen Weber bake this rustic air-pocketed pumpkin seed campagna at their Petaluma, California bakery, Della Fattoria.
The moist, briny three-olive batard from Seven Stars in Providence, Rhode Island, is the platonic ideal of this style.
Long fermentation is the key to the fine flavor of this epi baguette, from Pain D'Avignon in New York City.
We're crazy about Berkshire Mountain Bakery's Bread and Chocolate, a sourdough boule studded with bittersweet Callebaut chunks.
The amply charred, smoky truccione sare from Sullivan Street Bakery in New York City embodies baker Jim Lahey's classic-but-creative style.
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Acme's organic walnut levain is our favorite loaf from the seminal bakery in Berkeley, California.
The chewy pain de seigle, a wheat-and-rye sourdough boule from Balthazar in New York City, just might be the perfect table bread.
The chewy, aromatic Russian pumpernickel at 86-year-old Manhattan stalwart Orwasher's is old-world perfection, and our choice for a pastrami sandwich. (We also love their chardonnay miche, made with grape yeast.)
Gerard Rubaud, a French baker in Vermont, mills the flour for his insanely delicious organic levain.
The slightly tangy, rugged whole wheat sourdough from New York's Bread Alone makes a stellar PB&J.
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The fresh local flour used at Grand Central Bakery in Seattle and Portland is one reason the airy Como loaf (perfect for bruschette) is so insanely delicious.
