Thorough Bread & Bakery Embodies Gourmet Artisan

By Kellie Ell

From the lettering on the wooden storefront sign reading “Thorough Bread & Pastry,” barely visible from a distance, you would never guess that a pastry-lover’s paradise lies inside.

But when you enter the bakery-bistro, just off the corner of Church and Market streets, the smells of breads, freshly made croissants and cakes are intoxicating. Bakers in starch-white uniforms work with hearth ovens to prepare the day’s menu of treats and fresh sandwiches. Sunlight pours into the café as rainbows of pastries glisten behind the glass counter, with local artwork garnishing the walls. Patrons are busying typing away on their laptops or chatting. Outback is a multi-level patio where customers can relax with a pint of beer after work, definitely a well-kept secret.

“I like to be low-key and want to create a space for our neighbors,” explains French-born owner and baker Michel Suas of the little-known eatery that opened in March 2008. “Every neighborhood should have a good artisan bakery, where people can drop in for their morning coffee and croissant, stop by for lunch, pick up their bread for dinner, and order a cake for a birthday.”

Suas, who is well-known within the industry as the “Bread makers’ Guru,” envisioned a “community with high-quality fresh artisan breads and pastries at an affordable price.”

Since its conception, business has yet to slow down. Weekends are always busy, along with wedding cake orders, catering requests, holiday events, and graduations. Most days the bakery sells out so much that they’ve had to increase production, according to Erin Bailey, vice-president of the San Francisco Baking Institute. Any leftovers are donated to Bay Area charities to preserve freshness.

“Michel won’t let anything out of the bakery unless it’s good,” Bailey said, who has been with the company for over two years.

Favorites include “the perfect baguette,” the hand-shaped and baked chocolate-flavored breads and the breaded Challah sprinkled with sesame seeds. Pastries that can only be described as sculptures, such as the Baba au Rhum, dotted with raisins, soaked in rum and garnished with crème Chantilly and raspberry, or the elaborate chocolate soufflés resembling the pyramids in Egypt, meant to arouse the taste buds. One of Bailey’s favorites in the Gibassier, a combination bread/pastry that is painted with melted butter and dipped in sugar.

Suas began apprenticing on his 14th birthday in the little town of Saint-Malo, in Brittany of northwestern France. “I was a bad student,” he says, revealing his French drawl. But, “I liked the baker’s lifestyle.”

He spent three years as a culinary apprentice, then two years as a pastry apprentice, but never formally trained in a classroom. While working as head pastry chef in a three-star restaurant in France, Suas established a name for himself. In 1986, Suas came to the U.S. After various stints across the country with the best professional bakers of the time, and frequent trips home to care for his mother, he decided to stay for good. With his future wife and business partner Evelyne by his side, he settled in San Francisco at the height of the country’s interest in artisan bread when “European bread had gone into a slump” and sourdough was still a relatively new taste, Bailey says.
“I felt at home in sour dough bread city,” Suas says. “I settled next to the ocean, where the climate is very similar to my hometown.”

While consulting with other bakers, he was repeatedly asked to hold classes to share his unfamiliar education and methods of the craft.

Fast forward to 1996, when Suas opened the San Francisco Baking Institute in South San Francisco, the first baking school of its kind in the United States, offering the Bread & Pastry Professional Training Program.

“No other school has a bakery focus, and no school really teaches people how to make high-quality artisan products,” he says. “It’s important to show people how to understand and control the process, not just follow recipes. We want to give them the knowledge and skills they need to open their own artisan bakeries.”

Next came Thorough Bread, opened in the Castro because of the neighborhood’s “diversity and energy.” His daughter Julie Marie, now 13, supplied the name and designed the store’s logo.

Neighbors can’t get enough of the goodies. Recent events, such as the “Suds and Sweets: A Lesson in Beer and Dessert Pairing,” have been so popular they added another tasting on April 24.
“He’s really honestly the best [baker] out there,” Bailey says. “He works for true excellence. It’s really cool that good quality artisan bread is becoming common.”

For his part, Suas believes there are now some “great” breads and bakeries all over the country, many of them better than their French-counterparts.

“Well-done pastries are incredible, no matter where they are made,” he says. “What is exciting, is that we are finally at a point where consumers are learning how to appreciate and demand quality, while bakers are able to be creative and collaborate with each other.”

Thorough Bread & Pastry is located at 248 Church St.

Copyright 2010 Castro Courier