A thought breezed through my head as Chad and I walked for about 15 minutes from our parking spot at the La Brea Tar Pits to the La Brea Bakery, which was founded by Nancy Silverton: “This might be pointless.”

After all, La Brea Bakery bread is available in supermarkets around the country , and going to a local Albertsons would have used less gas than getting to the intersection of La Brea and Wilshire from our base in El Segundo.

But I was wrong. Having been to Campanile’s Grilled Cheese Thursdays and Jar’s Mozzarella Mondays (where Silverton herself plated a burrata right in front of me that I still occasionally yearn for; this article says she does it for free) — both propelled by the Silverton’s genius — I should have known that there is more to Silverton than just bread. La Brea Bakery has a wide array of sandwiches, pastries, cookies, cheese, and gourmet jarred goods… But, as far as I can tell, no Silverton anymore (she sold it, or maybe 80% of it, to an Irish conglomerate for $55 million, or thereabouts, depending on what article you read); I’m guessing that her recipes live on there, though.

Btw, I was surprised by how small of a space this is. There’s an “L” shaped counter with a few feet in front of it for customers, and that’s about it. It feels cozy and rustic, and there’s a lot packed in there. We didn’t get any bread loaves, but in addition to more standard types, I was intrigued by the Cranberry Walnut and Currant Rye.

For lunch, Chad got the Autostrada. Unlike the legendary version that he once got at Grilled Cheese Thursday, this did not have meat pressed onto the outside of the bread, but was instead packed with meat and cheese on the inside of its crispy country white bread slices: coppa, mortadella, salami, proscuitto, provolone, and cherry peppers. Just pleasantly spicy enough, and very good.

I got the Turkey and Bacon pressed sandwich with caramelized balsamic onions, smoked provolone, and sage. I liked it for its savory, salty, and smoky earthiness. By the way, this time I got the prized Stuff-Adhered-to-the-Outside Sandwich. I love that.

Then it was time for dessert. Generally, they were quite good — and quite dense. I think of them as more Italian influenced, perhaps because I’ve been training mostly in the rather delicate world of French pastry. They also weren’t that sweet, relying more on the powers butter and flour instead. A saner person than myself would be more than satiated by one of these, or even half of one. We got seven total.

I liked this Vanilla Custard Tart more than I thought I would. Instead of a hopelessly dense and eggy filling, it had smooth milk and vanilla taste, and a pleasingly smooth, somewhat dense texture. It balanced portability and custardy grace well.

Then I got my dessert(s) (um, round one). Clockwise from the top, Cherry Tart, Ginger Scone, and Sour Cherry Brioche.

The Cherry Tart was the clear favorite, with wonderful bursts of cherry flavor, and a hefty crust that was even supplemented by a thick sort of sugar-y crumb topping (which also allowed for a kind of window effect into the tart). I don’t usually eat the shells of tarts much, but I really liked the sweet and crunchy topping mingled with the cherries. If only I could figure out how to put it on the bottom as the only crust.

The Ginger Scone was too dry for Chad’s taste, but I thought it was fine. It had a nice, not too sweet, candied ginger flavor, and would have been good with coffee, if I drank coffee. Dense, yet also flaky and crumbly. For the curious, the recipe is here.

The Sour Cherry Brioche was a bit odd. The brioche part was definitely the densest I’ve ever had, and the mini-loaf shape was unruly and daunting; I would have felt like a cavewoman eating the whole thing, but is really meant for multiple people? The cherries were plumped in some kind of colution, which after some deliberation on Chad’s part, was identified as resembling Grape Tootsie Rolls. Not that that’s bad. Just unexpected. And a little distracting.

My request for a chocolate chip cookie got lost in the frenzy of ordering, so I went back inside to get one… and saw a graham cracker that I couldn’t resist… and came back to the table, but discovered an Almond Cookie instead of a chocolate chip cookie in the bag, so I had to go back inside to get another one… and they let me keep the almond cookie… so that’s how I wound up with six desserts. Honestly, I only ordered five. And another for Chad.

Surprisingly, it was the long sought after Chocolate Chip Cookie that was a bit disappointing. It was too dense for my choc chip cookie tastes — almost like a biscuit. It would have been nice to have a walnut-free version, too. I liked the wafer-like pieces of chocolate, though, as opposed to chips.

I was further surprised by the delicious Almond Cookie, whose matted exterior hid the caramelization inside, which made it more like a thicker, chewier, non-chocolate florentine cookie.

In my third surprise of the bag, the Graham Cracker was very bend-y when I broke off a piece, but was utterly fantastic once I tasted it — full of honey with a hint of vanilla, and I liked the little bit of chew; and actually, it was quite light. For the curious, the recipe is here.

A few other notes:

• There’s also another location of the La Brea Bakery at Disneyland. Yes, that Disneyland.
• Clementine, across town in Century City, is owned by Chef Annie Miler, who trained at Campanile and La Brea Bakery, and they regularly have wonderful grilled cheese sandwiches, too. In fact, they just finished their 5th Annual Grilled Cheese Sandwich Month (which is April, of course). When I worked at MGM Studios across the street, my frequent lunch here was a highlight of my day.
• The La Brea Bakery is able to have its bread available in so many locations around the country b/c of a parbaking technique in which the bread is baked to a certain stage and flash frozen. It is then shipped and baked in its frozen form until it comes out of almost any oven as a rather decent loaf of “artisan” bread.

Oh, and La Brea Tar Pits! I was amazed by how cool this place was, and within a 15 minute walk of the bakery. Outside, there are some watery yet murky pits from which the fossils inside the museum were found. Basically, the animals, from as far back as about 40,000 yrs ago (so no dinosaurs), would get trapped in the tar, and archaeologists were able to recover their bones and reconstruct whole skeletons, such as for saber-tooth cats, ground sloths, and dire wolves… and American lions and camels (which were said to have originated in North America about 45 millions years ago).

By the way, Ground Sloths were huge….

… and had bones in their skin as a kind of armor…

I don’t want to spoil it all. It costs $7 for adults, or $4.50 for students like me, and it’s worth it.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, May 2nd, 2006 at 5:04 pm and is filed under Bakeries/Pastry Shops, Los Angeles, Sampling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.