Learn Bread & Boulangerie in San Francisco / Bay Area

What you can realistically reach: A week in a bakery teaches you to build and read a levain, shape, score and bake a real crusty loaf — honestly enough to bake well at home. Running a production bakery is another craft entirely.

Masters & lineage

• Chad Robertson

Schools in San Francisco / Bay Area

Checked by hand against each school's own course pages. No school paid to be listed.

• San Francisco Baking Institute (SFBI)
  Artisan I & II Bread Workshop series
  South San Francisco institute founded in 1996 by Michel Suas dedicated solely to artisan baking, running multi-day Monday-to-Friday bread and pastry workshops including guest sessions led by figures such as Chad Robertson and Steve Sullivan.
  https://sfbi.com/
• Tartine Manufactory
  Chad Robertson and Elisabeth Prueitt's larger San Francisco bakery-restaurant; no multi-day immersive bread course is run under its own name, though its founders teach guest workshops at the San Francisco Baking Institute.
  https://tartinebakery.com/san-francisco/manufactory
• Acme Bread Company
  Pioneering Berkeley artisan bakery founded in 1983 by Steve Sullivan that helped launch the American artisan-bread movement; it is a wholesale and retail bakery rather than a school, with Sullivan teaching occasional guest classes at the San Francisco Baking Institute.
  https://acmebread.com/

The room

• Group — Small, hands-in-the-dough classes, a few students per baker.
• A normal day — Early starts on the bakery's clock — mixing, fermenting, shaping and baking through the morning, dough theory between.
• Who comes — Serious home bakers and career-changers, mixed ages.

Want the rest — a normal day, first hour to last? Ask the school; a serious one answers in two minutes.

The credential

CAP Boulanger (State Diploma) — or the EIDB state-recognized organic-sourdough diploma · Certifying body: CAP Boulanger (French State Diploma) / Bac Pro Boulangerie

A recognised qualification an outside body stands behind is not the same as a certificate a school prints itself. We name which it is — you should ask the school the same.

Also for Bread & Boulangerie

What I check before I send you anywhere

I'm Arnaud. I cook for a living, and I've spent fifteen years on the water — so I know the difference between a real school and a good-looking website. I built the Atlas because I got tired of the second kind. Here is what a place has to clear before it goes on here, and what I'll tell you straight when it doesn't.

• The craft is actually alive there. A working scene, with people who do this every day — not a demo put on for visitors.
• There's a real teacher behind it. Named, still practising, and certified where the craft has certificates.
• The credential is what it claims to be. A state diploma and a certificate a school prints itself are not the same thing. I check which, and I say which.
• I tell you how sure I am. Most pages here are verified by hand. A few say "still checking" — I'd rather admit that than pretend.
• Nobody pays to be here. No commission, no selling the trip. The order on this map is the strength of the community, never the size of the wallet.
• If I wouldn't send a friend, it isn't on the map.