True Loaf Bakery

Naturally leavened bread and a French-butter croissant

True Loaf Bakery has been baking in Sunset Harbour, Miami Beach, since 2013, and the three things it is judged on have not changed: naturally leavened sourdough, traditional baguettes and croissants laminated with French butter. Dough is mixed from scratch and shaped by hand, without additives or preservatives, which is why the bread has a shelf life measured in a day rather than a week. The founder came to it sideways, leaving finance and signing the lease before the baking was settled, then training at the San Francisco Baking Institute and apprenticing with Richard Bourdon at Berkshire Mountain Bakery. Getting bread to rise reliably in Miami humidity took a while after that, which is a more honest origin story than most bakeries tell.

The case runs wider than the bread

Past the loaves, the pastry list is long and mostly French. Almond and chocolate croissants, kouign amann, brioche, madeleines, canelés and financiers cover the classical end. Filled donuts, chocolate chip walnut cookies, banana bread and blueberry muffins cover the American one, and guava cheese pastries put Miami in the case. Burnt Basque cheesecake returns often enough to count as a fixture, and panettone arrives at Christmas after several years of the team working on it. Sandwiches are built on the bakery's own ficelle or sourdough, which makes lunch an extension of the bread rather than a separate menu, and there are gluten-free peanut butter cookies dipped in chocolate for anyone avoiding wheat. Pumpkin pie shows up for Thanksgiving.

Come early and start with the bread

Order the sourdough, a baguette or a plain croissant first, because those are the items the whole operation is calibrated around and the fastest way to judge whether the reputation holds. The sourdough shows the wild-yeast fermentation, the baguette and the croissant show the French technique, and none of the three hide behind a filling. After that the seasonal pieces are the ones worth chasing: Burnt Basque cheesecake when it is on, panettone in December, challah on the days it is baked. Bread can be gone by the middle of the day, and the donuts and challah go faster than that, so the order of operations matters more here than at a bakery that holds stock. The Infatuation has included True Loaf in its bakery guide.