Sol Bakery

Guava tart first, then everything laminated

The guava tart is what most people come to this Panhandle corner for: almond praline underneath, guava curd above, and enough fruit acidity to keep it from reading as a sugar exercise. The New York Times named it one of the country’s best desserts in 2025. Around it the case splits cleanly in two. The laminated side runs to pain au chocolat, a gruyere and mustard croissant, a sunflower cream and huckleberry croissant, and a twice-baked huckleberry version. The sourdough side becomes focaccia, sold in rotating seasonal flavors that have gone from tomato to rosemary, sage and olive oil.

The rest of the shelf stays deliberately short: pan dulce, baguettes, gougère, apricot chausson, choux au craquelin, a chocolate chip cookie, polenta kumquat cake and chocolate sourdough cake. Trays come out through the morning rather than being set down once, so the case looks different at the front of the day than it does later.

Marisa Williams and the pop-up years

Sol Bakery ran as a pop-up before it took the lease, which is why the shelf reads like one baker’s programme rather than a general pastry counter. Chef-owner Marisa Williams worked through San Francisco kitchens first, with time at Tartine and Craftsman and Wolves behind her, then built the bakery on a single idea: California fruit handled with Nordic technique. It shows in the fermentation as much as in the flavors. Sourdough is treated as a base for savory baking rather than a bread-only project, and the fruit work moves with the season, so the tart you meet in February is not the one from August.

How to order at the counter

The efficient order takes one item from each register: a fruit tart, a square of focaccia, a laminated pastry, and something from the cake end if the case still has it. Take the guava tart if it is there, since it is the clearest statement of what this bakery does. Focaccia is the savory anchor and carries home better than the croissants do. The gruyere and mustard croissant is the least predictable thing on the shelf, while the polenta kumquat cake and the chocolate sourdough cake show how the kitchen handles crumb rather than layers. Lamination goes first, so an early arrival gets the widest choice.