Rustica Rising

The day was gray. The kind of gray that reminds you of nothing so much as the plank of lint you get when you stuff the dryer with muddy sheep. That, or the grave. Icy blocks clung to every wheel well, cruelly, unavoidably, like publicists sucked onto the side of Paris Hilton, and just as depressing for general aerodynamics. In my car, folks on the radio yammered on about blind women with lower incidences of breast cancer, probably because they're not poisoned through the eyes by lethal lamplight. The evening's lead headline was written: "Gouge Out Your Eyes Now, Doctors Advise."

I got to where I was going. Was I surprised to find a large black dog tied up outside, howling? I was not. Minnesota February. Skies of lead, streets of salt, howls of dogs--no surprises there.

Little did I know that the dog had better reason than I to howl: He was aware that inside, his human companion was glomming down slices of moist frangipane tart and tearing into bread so alive it practically breathes. It's enough to make anyone forget the salt in their paws.

Now, Rustica is the newest of the southwest Minneapolis wonder bakeries, opened last fall by Steve Horton, a man so crazy about real French bread traditions that he has been known to ship in bread overnight from Paris's legendary Poilâne, so that he and his head baker, Tammy Hoyt-Simonds, could enjoy it. Without question, Hoyt has now successfully joined our little upstart army of Bakery on Grand, Turtle Bread, Patrick's Bakery, and French Meadow in Minneapolis's efforts to usurp Paris as the baking capital of the world. (You can also find Rustica breads at the Seward Co-Op and at Surdyk's cheese shop.) Don't believe that Minneapolis could unseat Paris as best-baking city? Jog in one day and try Rustica's "levain" loaf, or sample a slice of their frangipane tart, and you too will be chortling with triumphant glee at every Parisian you see.

That levain loaf ($3) is a thing to behold: A dark fin rises along the whole of its back, making it look like a very domestic sort of shark or dinosaur. Concentric rings spiral around it, visible evidence of a childhood spent growing in a coiled basket called a brotform, a reed basket meant to draw moisture from the crust and make it particularly crisp. In fact, every detail of Rustica's levain brings to light a particular facet of careful making: Blisters on the sparrow-brown crust reveal a spritz of water during baking, meant to further crisp the crust, while the deep brown of that crust sings of a life sealed in the hottest, fastest oven. The solid eighth of an inch of bottom crust tells of long, long proofing and of the sheer weight of the loaf itself, bearing down on its bottom edge, while the tender, glossy-crumbed center, full of organic and curling holes, chronicles a bread left to mature in its own time, to develop character, depth, and volume. And the taste! And the smell! Crack into this loaf and it smells sweetly, distantly sour, the way the new spring wind does, the way babies do if they fall asleep on your shoulder, the way the soil does when you bend down to look at a crocus, that little bit of sour that tells of life. How does it taste? Just exactly like bread--the earthy, resonant depths of it. It's the levain bread at Rustica that speaks to your soul.

But it's the frangipane tart that will steal your heart. You'll see it sitting in the bakery case the second you walk in the door--a glowing pale gold disk, decorated with thin slices of apricot that sink slightly below the surface of the crust; it looks like some kind of fairyland manhole cover. And it tastes like something halfway between ice cream, cake, and the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. To say it's made with almond paste, eggs, flour, and cream doesn't begin to explain this magical concoction: In my house it quickly became known as The Thing. As in: Where's The Thing? Did you finish The Thing? Well, you better get down to Rustica before they run out of The Thing, it sells out, you know.

Which led to further visits to Rustica, where I didn't see any more howling dogs, though I did find a dozen baked goods of great charm. The pastries, such as the croissants and Danish, open up to reveal zillions of layers of thin dough separating tasty microscopic vacancies lined with the haunting, telltale flavor of cultured butter--that carefully crafted butter with a little of the resonant tang of yogurt or sour cream. When I tried the fruit and nut bread ($4.25), it was so chockablock with apricots and walnuts that all it needed to be transformed into a head-turning appetizer was mere slicing; if you dotted it with a bit of spiced cream cheese or smoked salmon, you might never need dinner. Rustica offers a number of breads only one or two days a week, and some of these daily-special breads were outstanding. I can't say enough good things about the white pain de mie ($3), a pullman loaf of white bread that is very retro-1920s in appearance, basically a 14-inch-long brown rectangle in a plastic bag, but slice it, and each careful rectangle practically flutters up to the ceiling with airy elegance. The crumb is a pale, pale golden white, full of small, graceful bubble holes; it reminded me of what white bread must have been when it was new, fine, and Edwardian, not inescapable, industrial, and gross. Have you ever wanted to make tea sandwiches with watercress and cucumber? This is the best loaf I know of in the state with which to do that. Have you wished to agree with your four-year-old on your favorite bread? You can really see why this sort of loaf launched a century of imitators.