Long, thin, blistered sourdough flatbread shards with flecks of gray salt and rosemary on a wooden board beside a wedge of soft-ripened cheese

Rustic Bakery Guide: The Flatbread a Cheese Shop Ordered

Published 28 Sep 20265 min read

Filed under Crackers Rustic Bakery California

Rustic Bakery exists because a cheese shop said yes. By the bakery's account, in 2005 Carol LeValley and Josh Harris stopped at Cowgirl Creamery's shop in the San Francisco Ferry Building and told the owners, Sue Conley and Peggy Smith, that their cheeses deserved artisan crackers. The two cheesemakers tasted the cracker and ordered 50 cases on the spot. The cafés and the wholesale line came later.

A wine bar with a bakery in the back

LeValley and Harris started Rustic Bakery on a whim. The cracker was a simple sourdough flatbread that had become a staple for serving with artisan cheeses when they entertained. After the Cowgirl Creamery order, the maker says, they found commercial kitchen space in their hometown of Novato and outgrew it within the first week, working with a rolling pin and a standard convection oven. The next space, in the bakery's telling, was a wine bar in Larkspur with a fully outfitted but unused bakery in the back. Two days after signing the lease, they bought the whole space and turned the wine bar into a café, serving coffee and croissants alongside the crackers.

Today the company runs cafés in Marin County, north of San Francisco, and a wholesale division. The baking has moved to a larger facility in Sonoma County. The maker says it bakes everything by hand and uses local and organic ingredients whenever possible.

What is on the label

The flatbread's defining word is sourdough. The ingredient list names an organic sourdough starter, made of organic wheat flour and water, in second place behind the flour itself. US labels list ingredients in descending order by weight, so by weight the starter ranks second. No commercial yeast appears in the list.

The rest of the label is short: organic cane sugar, organic olive oil, sea salt and sel gris, with organic rosemary added for the rosemary version. The maker's description of the sel gris flatbread calls the oil extra virgin olive oil and the salt grey sea salt from France.

The two flatbreads, side by side

The table below sets two of the maker's six-ounce flatbreads against each other: Olive Oil and Sel Gris (shop Sel Gris Flatbread) and Rosemary and Olive Oil (shop Rosemary Flatbread). Their ingredient lists differ by one ingredient, and their sodium by ten milligrams a serving.

	Olive Oil and Sel Gris Sourdough Flatbread	Rosemary and Olive Oil Sourdough Flatbread
Ingredients, in label order	Organic wheat flour, organic sourdough starter of organic wheat flour and water, organic cane sugar, organic olive oil, sea salt, sel gris	The same six, then organic rosemary
Per 1 oz, 28 g serving	80 calories, 1.5 g fat, 14 g carbohydrate, 2 g protein	80 calories, 1.5 g fat, 14 g carbohydrate, 2 g protein
Sodium per serving	340 mg	330 mg
Share of the 2,300 mg Daily Value (our calculation)	About 15 percent	About 14 percent
Pairs with	Soft-ripened and fresh cheeses	A firm sheep's milk cheese, cured ham, oil-packed anchovies

The FDA treats 5 percent or less of the Daily Value per serving as low and 20 percent or more as high. At 14 to 15 percent, a serving of either flatbread sits between the two.

What sel gris is

Sel gris means gray salt. The maker does not say where in France its salt comes from. One well-documented French gray salt is Sel de Guérande, from the salt marshes of the Guérande Peninsula on France's Atlantic coast, which carries a protected geographical indication. Under the IGP description, the salt crystallizes on the natural clay bottom of the harvesting basins, is gathered by hand with a tool called a las, and is neither refined nor washed after harvest. The same document puts the slightly gray color of Guérande salt down to harvesting in a thin layer of brine in clay-bottomed basins.

What the organic word requires

Under the USDA's organic rule, a product labeled organic must contain at least 95 percent organically produced agricultural ingredients by weight or fluid volume, excluding water and salt. A product labeled made with organic needs at least 70 percent. On both Rustic Bakery labels, every agricultural ingredient carries the word organic, and the three ingredients the rule sets aside, the sea salt, the sel gris and the water in the starter, do not.

How to use them

The cracker's first customer was a cheese counter. The sel gris flatbread is the plainer of the two, for soft-ripened and fresh cheeses. The rosemary version wants something with more fat and salt to stand against the herb: an aged sheep's milk cheese, a slice of jamón (see the jamón ibérico guide), a fillet of oil-packed anchovy (see the anchovies guide). A board with a few broken shards looks as though people have been eating from it. The cheese plate math guide works out the quantities for a board.

The same maker's savory cheese coins (shop Savory Cheese Coins) do a different job. The maker describes them as sharp cheddar and butter with red pepper flakes and cayenne, and suggests them as a snack with a cocktail or a glass of wine, or as part of a charcuterie board. For the Puglian answer to the same board, the ring-shaped tarallo, see the Puglia on a plate guide. The complete cracker guide sets the flatbread against every other style.

The Ambrosian Pantry ships across the continental U.S. from theambrosianpantry.com. The shop is at 263 Josephine Street in Cherry Creek, Denver, where visitors can ask staff questions.