With his burly physique, shaved head, and cauliflower ears, Il Buco Alimentari e Vineria's head baker looks like the wrong kind of guy you'd want to meet down a back alley in Bordeaux. And you'd be right: as a youth in France, Kamel Saci was a professional judo champion. But in his basement bakery, a completely different side to his personality comes out. For Kamel, dough is not an opponent to be beaten into submission; it responds best to a minimum of handling, the gentler the better. The results show his techniques work. Il Buco's ovens produce some of the crustiest and most flavorsome artisan loaves in the city. More

Latvians love their dense, dark rye bread. Latvian-Americans love it so much that they have it shipped over from the old country in loaves weighing over 17 pounds. It goes fast, because it's their staff of life, a necessary accompaniment to breakfast, lunch, and dinner. A number of mail order businesses have sprung up to cater to this community. Last year, Baltic Shop teamed up with the famous Laci bakery in Riga to sell their top quality breads in the United States under the Storye ("stor-eye") brand name. They're so good they might even wean Manhattanites from their baguettes. More

Flour, water, yeast, and salt. Back in 1903, a Neapolitan immigrant named Joe Parisi opened the Parisi Bakery at 198 Mott Street in Little Italy. The residents of that stretch of Mott were almost all from the Naples area, and Joe baked for them the kind of loaves that they knew from the old country. More

How do you invent a new loaf? Grandaisy Bakery is known for its white, Italian-style breads. But after they opened a store on the Upper West Side, they sensed a demand for a "health" loaf. More

Talk about crust. That's the first thing you notice about Sullivan Street Bakery's breads. Here's bakery founder and owner Jim Lahey: "The crust of bread has to do with how bread is cooked. The crust is something that forms during the cooling process. I like cooking things to their highest expression. I like the contrast of soft and crunchy. I like to taste the by-products of lacto-fermentation in dough. That's what gives a unique flavor to the crust." More

We here at Serious Eats love a good loaf of bread, and Bien Cuit in Brooklyn's Boerum Hill knows how to bake them. We stopped by for a day with owner and baker Zachary Golper, spending an early Sunday morning preparing everything from baguettes to croissants. More

The aroma of good bread wafts from beneath the rumbling commuter trains over Park Avenue in East Harlem. The smell comes from behind the moribund stalls of East Harlem's La Marqueta, where a half dozen bakers hustle loaves in and out of stainless steel ovens. This is the nerve center of Hot Bread Kitchen, the immigrant women's baking collective that produces some of the city's most eclectic and exciting loaves. Serious Eats has already lauded its puffy, scrumptious bialys; now let's look at the rest of its offerings. More

During the month of November, Momofuku Milk Bar dives off into rather savory territory with their Thanksgiving croissant. Each bite contains the most delicious parts of the traditional American meal, sealed inside warm, stuffing-flavored flaky dough. More

The yeasty heart of the Daniel Boulud empire is hidden at the end of an East Village alley, through an unmarked door, and down a long, brightly-lit corridor. There, amid a phalanx of stainless steel ovens, mixers, and other machines, genial master baker Mark Fiorentino and his team of assistants turn out a dizzying array of breads for Boulud's half dozen restaurants. More

With the opening of the staggeringly good Dominique Ansel Bakery in Soho, one thing is perfectly clear: the best training a pastry chef can have in New York City is to work for Daniel Boulud. More