Bernal Bakery

Last weekend I had the opportunity to visit Bernal Bakery, a brand new bakery in San Francisco that opened as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic. This bakery was started by 2 chefs who were furloughed as a result of the pandemic but still had to figure out a way to make money so that they could pay rent. The idea behind the bakery was to bake bread for their neighbors as well as friends and for it to be a small thing. But then, as people in their neighborhood began talking, more and more people found out about the bakery and wanted to get some bread as well. So, the Bernal Bakery was started and the two chefs began to bake more bread and cinnamon rolls to account for the demand. The bakery is located in between the Bernal Heights and Mission neighborhoods of San Francisco and is actually in front of their house. Basically, when you arrive to the house, you see a basket as well as signs for the bakery on a retaining wall. When you want to get your baked goods, you press the doorbell (also on the wall) and one of the chefs comes out to ask you what you ordered and lowers your items down to you in the basket. The Bakery serves up sourdough bread, sourdough cinnamon rolls, cookies and cookie dough. They are often sold out up to 5 days in advance so make sure that you order ahead through their website or instagram. So, without giving it all away here, here are my thoughts on this cute popup bakery and how the food tasted.

The Experience:

My mom first found out about Bernal Bakery in an article from the SF Chronicle that she read on May 7th. After reading the article, she was intrigued and decided that she wanted to order some items. But when she went to order, she saw that they were sold out until May 17th so she decided to order for pickup then. Fast forward to May 17th and we were on our way to the bakery. When we were first driving to Bernal Bakery, we plugged the address into Google Maps as we did not know where we were going. While we were driving there, we wondered where we were going and if we were going the right way. Eventually, we found out that we were going the right way and arrived at the front of Bernal Bakery. Upon arriving, we got out of our car and immediately saw that you had to ring the bell to get your food delivered. We run the bell and after a few minutes, a lady came out (probably one of the two chefs) and asked us for our order number and what we ordered. I told her that we had ordered 3 cinnamon rolls and a loaf of bread. After I told her that, she went back into the house and after a few minutes, came back out with our items. She then proceeded to lower the baked goods down through the basket so that I could pick them up without having to touch anything. Once the basket was down to my level, I grabbed the box that the items were in and took it out of the basket. That was all there was to it. I then said thank you and got back into the car. After that the fun part came: the taste test. But, I will say that the highlight of visiting the bakery was the actual basket delivery of the items as I had never seen that before at a bakery.

The Taste Test:

After picking up the cinnamon rolls and bread, we left the bakery and drove around a bit until we found a good spot to eat. After about 20 minutes of driving, we finally found a good spot to eat the cinnamon rolls and it was time to dig in. We opened the box to find 3 gooey, doughy and frosted cinnamon rolls that looked 10 times better than your average cinnamon roll. After opening up the box, I pulled one of the cinnamon rolls out and passed the box around so that my mom and brother could also get one. Once we all had a roll, we all took a bite and we were instantly transported to heaven. The cinnamon was gooey and sweet, the dough for the roll itself was soft, and the cream cheese frosting was the perfect complement to it all. Before eating this cinnamon roll, I had never had one with cream cheese frosting or any frosting for that matter. But now, after eating this one with frosting, I want every one of my cinnamon rolls with frosting. Although it was not needed to make this a great treat, the frosting definitely put it over the top and added a depth of flavor that cannot be matched. The other good thing about this cinnamon roll was that it had a lot of gooey cinnamon which made it taste amazing. Often times, cinnamon rolls do not have enough cinnamon and thus, taste dry and just like bread. But luckily, this roll had a ton of cinnamon which made it one of the better cinnamon rolls I have had. All in all, it was one of the best cinnamon rolls I have ever had in my life and I highly recommend that you go to Bernal Bakery when you can to try one.

The next thing we tried was the sourdough bread loaf, although we did not try it until we got home as we had to cut it and toast it. Upon arriving at home, we immediately cut the bread and stuck it into the toaster so that we could try it. Once it was toasted, we stuck a little bit of butter on it and began to eat it. The bread itself tasted very fresh and had a nice crispy crust while still being soft in the middle. Although it is called a country sourdough loaf, it kind of reminded me more of a brown bread but nonetheless, it tasted super good! We went through the whole loaf in just a few days as fresh bread like this does not survive very long. We used it for sandwiches and also as toast and both ways tasted really good. Although I probably liked the cinnamon rolls a bit better, the bread was amazing and if you are going to this bakery, I highly recommend getting the bread as it can be used for many different dishes and meals.

Overall:

To sum things up, I really enjoyed my visit to the Bernal Bakery and highly recommend going if you get the chance. Before this pandemic hit, this bakery did not exist. But now as a result of Covid-19, two chefs were forced to shift gears and opened up this hit bakery in their house. This bakery is a prime example of the good things that have come through during this pandemic and is an example of how one community is reacting to help each other out during this tough time. Although this bakery may not exist forever as these two chefs have to go back to work, it helped out a lot of people during this time period and made many people happy. I was lucky enough to try the amazing bread and cinnamon rolls from the Bernal Bakery and I hope that you get a chance to as well. But, if you do not get a chance to try this bakery, at least take away the idea that there is good coming out of this pandemic and that we will get through it eventually. Thanks for checking out this blog post and I hope you learned something about Bernal Bakery.

Instagram For Bernal Bakery: bernal_bakery

Website: https://www.bernalbakery.com/

Press For Bernal Bakery: https://www.sfchronicle.com/bayarea/article/On-the-bright-side-Bernal-Heights-baker-delivers-15252200.php