The perfect loaf of bread?

Image by Shopping Diva via Flickr

My wife called today and said, "I'm in Englewood. Do you need anything?" She meant food.


Let's see. Should I ask her to pick up a few of Jerry's restaurant-quality dinners to go? How about cabbage kimchi from Gaboh Inc. or Korean dumplings from the place across the street from the firehouse? Or did I feel like having a few Colombian empanadas and hot sauce from the little bakery off Palisade Avenue?


Instead, I asked her to stop at Balthazar Bakery for its signature baguette -- still $2 nearly eight years after the place opened on South Dean Street.


Here is the short ingredients list: unbleached wheat flour, water, rye flour, sea salt, yeast and barley malt. That's it. The weight is 8 ounces and the taste is incomparable.

Balthazar Bakery,  214 S. Dean St., 
Englewood; 201-503-9717. Closed Sunday.

(Photo: Original Balthazar Bakery in Manhattan)