Tartine Bakery

In the Mission District, on a corner that smells of wood smoke and fermenting dough from early morning, Tartine Bakery has been baking since 2002. Chad Robertson and Elisabeth Prueitt opened it as a small neighbourhood bakery and watched it become something closer to a landmark: a place where the country loaf is debated the way other cities debate football, and where the Saturday queue is measured in patience rather than in minutes.

The country bread is the standard. A naturally leavened loaf, blistered and baked dark in a stone oven, the crust caramelised to near-black while the crumb stays open, custardy and faintly sour. Cut into it and the smell tells the whole story. The morning buns are the other reason people set alarms: croissant dough rolled with orange zest and cinnamon sugar and baked in a muffin tin until the sugar turns to caramel and the edges stick to your fingers. Around them are croissants laminated with real butter, a bread pudding built from the day's leftovers, and a hot pressed sandwich that has quietly become a San Francisco lunch in its own right.

Go early, and go on a weekday if you can, because the best loaves sell out by mid-morning and the seating is minimal. There are newer Tartine locations around the city now, but the Guerrero Street original is the one that built the reputation, with its tiled floor and hand-written signs and bakers working behind glass.

Samin Nosrat built Salt Fat Acid Heat around four elements and taught that heat is the one that most often decides whether baking works at all. Tartine is that lesson made edible: flour, water, salt and time, pushed through a very hot oven until they turn into something that tastes of far more than the sum of its parts.