Torrance Bakery UPDATE - Torrance

I rarely go see someone without picking up some pastries from this neighborhood treasure first. 

They make understated baked goods, and my appreciation grows every time I go. Just a regular old Buttermilk Donut remains my go-to with a cup of coffee made hot, but I also appreciate a good Apple Fritter or their classic Croissant, chocolate or not. One is fluffy butter, the other is flaky sweet.

Newer discoveries include these surprisingly good muffins. I love the crumbly Sour Cream, and the seasonal Cranberry Orange is one I want all year round. Apple Turnovers are a good, gooey filling, but here's the best thing they have; the Bear Claw. So many little toes of cinnamon-sugar goodness. 

I rarely get their sweets. The Maple Bacon Cupcake is a sugar splurge, and I like the still-crunchy bacon bits with creamy maple frosting. It's heavy, though, probably better to share. 

A sweet, sweet-seller in old town Torrance, one of the places I'll sorely miss, now that I've moved away. 

The Trim Tart - Lomita

 

Lomita is full of treasures if you know where to look.

So far I've found a brewery and so many restaurant gems, and now they're brewing coffee as well. 

It's a traditional cuppa Cappuccino so be prepared. It's a concentrated ounce of milk-foam bliss so drink it up but sip it slow. 

There's a creative selection of sweets and savories, like this gorgeous Goat Cheese Puff with crumbs of gooey fig offset by a bitter burnt honey. You can't go wrong with a plain Butter Croissant - take a bite and feel the layers dissolve. 

A better breakfast for sweltering summer is the Tres Leches, a milk-sugar concoction of your wildest iced-coffee dreams.

The Spinach Ricotta Croissant is perfect. Enough spinach to make a point, not too much to belabor it. Ricotta adds a nice cream to the flaky croissant. 

Haven't had enough croissant? Try it in Bread Pudding form. Perfect dessert, so rich you can almost share this personal size. This one is bourbon brown butter, and it's the only one I need to try. 

No better way to start my day than at Lomita's best-kept secret. Just make sure it stays a secret or they're sure to be swamped. 

Torrance Bakery - Torrance

Welcome to your neighborhood bakery. They're pretty well-known in Torrance and much of the South Bay, but that sweet blue awning helps keep the local feel. 

Across the street from a small green mini-park in an area built for walking, they have plenty of options to go with your morning coffee, whether you sit and sip or take it to work. My favorite is the Buttermilk Donut, prefer the plain to the glazed. It's simple, but this hearty loaf has a crisp outside and not much sugar so it highlights the flavor of the milk. The Apple Fritter has chunks of apple and cinnamon sugar encased in a glaze to keep it moist, and other options abound like a fluffy Glazed Donut, a long Chocolate Bar Donut, and a doughy Blueberry Scone.

We always get the buttermilk, but we try a few new things every time. Sugar Cookies keep it simple, and the malasada-like Filled Donuts have a nice gooey raspberry or custard pudding.

Despite being all about the sweets, they err on the side of less sugar. The Snickerdoodle is one such example, and I appreciate not being assaulted by sweetness.

They also make a large Black and White Cookie, a plain base with firm frosting. 

I don't have a favorite bakery yet because I just don't go to many, but I do appreciate the one I can walk to. But don't just judge by my opinion - judge by your own palate and the line out the door!

Huge Tree Pastry - Monterey Park, CA

I’ve never met anything from Taiwan I didn’t like, and breakfast is no exception.  

They have my beloved basics, like those fluffy, golden sticks of You Tiao waiting to be soaked in silky soy milk or a more viscous peanut milk. 

More filling side dishes like the Tea Eggs are perfect for splitting or taking to go. Theirs are dark with salty marinade and almost too good to share. 

Try their claim-to-fame Fan Tuan or don’t bother coming. Their salty iteration is indescribably savory. The purple jasmine rice has a certain structure and fragrance that white rice often lacks, and a roll of paper-thin egg strikes a mouth-watering balance with crunchy pickles. 

If you’re really hungry, the Baked Sesame Bread with egg is a must. The bread splits into crispy pastry layers with each bite, and don’t underestimate the savory simplicity of a fluffy egg with dots of scallion. Just imagine the best Asian breakfast burrito.

They also have the lunch/brunch time classics like Green Onion Pancake. This one is dense and flat-fried, with alternating chewy and crispy layers.

Steamed Pork Dumplings are small juicy delights. They pack small pockets of sweet porky broth under thin skins. Unexpected quality in a place that doesn’t specialize in making them.

The menu is impressive for a small cafe. They specialize in baked goods, and in addition to hot breakfast, they also have more traditional pastries that are more suitable to go. Refreshing drinks like soy milk and plum juice wash down the carbs, and it’s impossibly to eat more than $20 of food even if you’re starving. Come-as-you-are casual and polite yet cut-to-the-chase service makes an ideal quicker bite before work or a mildly lingering catch-up with a friend. But it doesn’t matter why you come here, just be sure to make a trip.  

Day 1 - Hawaii Kai, O’ahu - Nanding's Bakery

Getting up for a 7 AM flight is brutal. The squinting stumble to the Uber is unwilling, as you crawl through the peri-dawn chill. Slog through the TSA as they confiscate your bottle openers and limit your cosmetics for the common good, and fling yourself into your assigned seat so you can pass out promptly. The silver lining to your sleep deprivation is that napping shortens the ride.

Our landing is smooth, and we get the rare bonus of an airport pickup, a car full of friends who immediately understand we’re starving.

We fuel up at Nanding’s Bakery first, basking in the pastry smells and savoring the purple swirls of an Ube Ensaymada. The dough is all air, and the top is dusted with sugar and a summation of sweet potato and sweeter cream cheese.

A veggie Lumpia costs a mere dollar, and it’s a mini spring-roll cave of wonders. Shreds of simply-seasoned cabbage crunch within layers of paper-thin crispy wrapper.

I’m starting to get the swing of the island as we unwrap the third and final Glazed Custard Roll. This one shimmers like a silver dollar, and each bite is a little bath of custard and glaze.

A small back-lot bakery on an island full of back-lots. Even the malasadas weren’t this good. Well, I may not have loved Oahu food the first time around, but something tells me I just need to dig a little deeper this time.

Erick Schat's Bakery - Bishop, CA

There's is no other reason to stop in Bishop. After the pizza in Independence, I would have driven through Bishop as fast as their unreasonably crawling speed limit would let me...if not for Erick Schatz. 

Any trip through Bishop is pretty pointless, but picking up a load Sheepherder Bread lets you pretend you have a purpose. It's worth the leg-stretching stop for a bit of the purest white bread you'll ever see, made from all sorts of natural well water and flour, unbleached. The crust is chewy, the heart of the bread is cotton-soft and floats on air. Don't bother making a sandwich - the bread by itself is treat enough.

Come for the bread but skip the Sorbet. The watermelon isn't real sorbet; just sugar, water, and a red dye. The lemon is more refreshing, though. Sugary frozen foods are usually my guilty pleasure, but this is too fake for even me to like.

If you're looking for the sugar-rush, go with the Pull-Apart Bread instead. It's sweet and chewy with sugar and cinnamon, the texture is so moist it's practically bread pudding, and it's an opportunity to literally break bread with your friends...(groan). 

Don't want bread? Can't eat bread? Let them eat cake. The Dutch Coffee Cake, to be exact. A flawless breakfast boost: firm, not so crumbly as to be inconvenient, and evenly and impossibly moist all the way through. The glaze on top is just perfect.

Independence was desolate enough! Bishop is pretty barren aside from that small strip of town on the 395, and there is no way I would stop for anything other than gas if not for the bakery of Schat's. Ready-made bread is a camping staple, convenient for long roadtrips and super-light for backpacking hikes. I wish Bishop were closer so I could get this bread more often. for now, I will plan on stopping by every time I pass though!

Van's Bakery - Garden Grove

I'll take any excuse to get Vietnamese food in Garden Grove, but the opportunities are rare. Not enough to do for a daytrip and too long a drive for just a meal.

Pageant of the Masters is my excuse; Garden Grove presents a small inland detour between the beaches Redondo and Laguna. 

Van's Bakery is a random stopover, a small place in a large complex, just a chance to get some macarons. 

Never again. They're terrible. The Pistachio tastes like...something. Something nondescript and green. Is there a reason all the fillings have the texture of mucus? The Green Tea is bitter but a little better, and the Earl Grey is just gray sludge. The Raspberry is a generic berry goop, and the Passion is fake-ly sour, nothing passionate except my gag reflex. The Taro...well, that one just tastes like slime. Mouthfuls of disappointment but I just keep munching, hoping that each bite will be better than the last.

Some bakeries can make macarons. Van's makes crackers with goopy fillings. Their have plenty of Asian desserts and snacks so I'm sure there's something edible in the building, but I will be getting my macarons elsewhere...GAG.

Infallible Flour – Boston

Flour was truly infallible. There is literally nothing bad here. I don’t love everything, but I can safely say I’ve liked everything I tried. And you know how picky I am. If you don’t, you clearly haven’t read any of my blog. But that’s ok. I’m glad you’re starting now. Welcome to my cynical world of food! (Insert sinister laugh here…)

Overall, I’m a firm believer that a healthy dessert is an oxymoron. And although Flour follows that rule, it manages to use good ingredients that will probably kill you less slowly than some of the other stuff out there…but I will confess, I don’t love the oily texture of the vegan stuff. But aside from the greasy texture of the vegan muffin tops typical of substituting oil for egg, everything else here is like most men; delightfully dense. Flour’s food also relies on real flavor rather than an overload of sugar, and it’s probably the only venue where it is socially acceptable to display visible muffin tops…

As for drinks, the coffee is standard, the Chai Latte is good but not the best, and I swear there’s crack in the Raspberry Seltzer because it’s the most addictive thing ever. I took a sip of my friend’s drink, and I thought I didn’t really care for it. But 2 days later I found myself venturing to Flour in the middle of an icy Boston winter for an ice-cold raspberry seltzer and 2 days after that…and after that…and after that…Buyer beware. When you take that first innocent sip, know that you may whittle away your trust fund $2.25 at a time...

Flour has mastered the art of the sandwich. The combinations are original, and the flavors of the top-notch ingredients somehow combine to form something even more exceptional.  I’ve tried several, but I’ll limit my review to my two faves. You really can’t go wrong with the sandwich selection. Just start from the top and work your way down!

The Roast Chicken with avocado & jicama is the perfect combination of flavorful but not too much, not soggy but not too dry, and the jicama is the perfect crisp, sharp but slightly sweet refresher to the avocado spread and neutral flavor of white meat chicken. This sandwich ties with the lamb as my Flour fave, and I really wish I could order two half-portions every time.

Mary had a little lamb…little lamb…little lamb…Mary had a little lamb…and she made the mistake of bringing it to culinary school. The Roasted Lamb with tomato chutney and goat cheese is yet another perfect sandwich. I don’t really like tomato, but that chutney is the perfect touch of sweetness for a heavily meaty sandwich, and I thought that goat cheese was too heavy for lamb, but the chutney lightens it just enough and I stand corrected.

Other highlights from the sweets menu include the perfectly sweet and slightly bitter and sticky ginger molasses cookie, the cupcakes in chocolate and red velvet (believe me, South End Buttery doesn’t even come close!), and the pricey but decent berry bread pudding. The banana bread pudding didn’t have enough flavor for me but I still loved that densely moist-but-not-soggy texture. Don’t love the oreos, but I still get them from time to time when I want a sugar fix…Last but not least on the sweets, the iconic sticky bun. The sticky pull-apart pastry on which Joanne Chang built her bountiful empire…would it be going too far to say she has great buns? Get one in the morning while they’re hot – they run out pretty quickly…

My advice: steer clear around lunchtime on weekends. The line is out the door and around the corner, and though I would happily suffer for fine dining, getting sick dulls your tastebuds, and you won’t let ANYTHING to come between you and your Flour, would you?

It’s taken me a long time to get around to writing about Flour, and I hope my heaping teaspoon of praise will atone for my neglect. I just didn’t know where to start – I’ve tried a lot of different things there, and frankly, it’s hard to come up with a fair way to rate a place with such a range of offerings. Plus I feared my personal struggle with addiction to their raspberry seltzer and the crack-like effect of the sticky buns would cloud my judgment. But I can see clearly now after several failed attempts at seltzer-rehab, and I see that nothing will stand in my way to giving Flour a whole-hearted 5 stars.