Bread Furst, Forest Hills/Van Ness, Washington, DC

In 1990, Mark Furstenberg started the revolution in Washington. I mean the Really Good Bread revolution. That was when he opened Marvelous Market on upper Connecticut Avenue. Before 1990 you could get second-rate baguettes — I forget where — and there was pretty good Italian Bread at the liquor store at Connecticut and Livingston, and good sub rolls at Mangialardo’s on Capitol Hill, a few blocks from our first house. There must have been other places, but in terms of bread, Washington was in the minor leagues.

Then Mark Furstenberg opened his shop and all of a sudden you could get beautiful crusty loaves of bread, and it came in all manner of forms and flavors. Sensational baguettes and big loaves studded with good olives or perfumed with rosemary, all manner of delicious breads poured from his ovens. This really was a revolution. All of a sudden there were breadlines and rationing for the wealthy of Washington, as people in Oxxford suits stood in line to buy the limit of two loaves.

Furstenberg left Marvelous Market and next opened the aptly named Breadline, a sandwich shop in the 1700 block of Pennsylvania Avenue. I went there several times a week when I worked in the neighborhood, often for a prosciutto and arugula piadine, or for beautiful minestrone spiked with a touch of pesto. In 2017, the James Beard Foundation declared Furstenberg the Outstanding Baker of the United States. Today, Washington is major league, in bread if less so in sports. We’re afloat in great bread, all because of the example and challenge set by Furstenberg.

Marvelous Market is now in other hands, as was the Breadline before it died of COVID. Since 2014 Furstenberg has been at the helm of his test venture, Bread Furst. Of course, the bread is great. I don’t go there as often as I’d like. When you eat as much barbecue as I you have to limit your access to great bread, and especially to limit your access to pastries, like this beauty (not one of Fursteenberg’s more delicate creations).

Photo by Al Lang of the Livingston Street Morning Coffee Group. He had two today.

I have held firm against pastries, but I’ve fallen off the wagon a couple of times recently for a Bread Furst sandwich. My first lapse was for a torta.

I selected the torta — chicken and Mexican cheese on a roll with a cumin-laced sauce and the odd jalapeño slice — because it was the most complex filling, and I was thinking of it as a test for the kitchen. The kitchen passed — it was a good sandwich. The filling was tasty, and well balanced, and there was a whole lot of it, plenty for two people. It was a wrong-headed order though. The filling was dominant and the bread an afterthought — not the sandwich you want from the best baker in the United States.

My next lapse was more bread-centric: a jambon beurre, ham and gruyere on a baguette with butter and dijon.

This was a great sandwich. The ham had a lot of flavor, and the gruyere had some age to it, as it should. (Aged gruyere dominates the World Cheese Championships, although an Oregon blue won recently, the first US win ever.) The butter added a nice nutty creaminess, and the light touch of a good dijon. Every element was good and the elements were balanced by the bread. Oh, the bread! The crust, and the interior, were just right, and just right for the fillings, the elements so mixed that Nature might stand up and say to all the world, “This was a sandwich!”

I guess I got carried away. I love good bread and I love Bread Furst. If you haven’t been to Bread Furst, go. Now.

***

And while you’re at it, click “follow” on our front page to receive blog posts in your email box.  Or bookmark us and check in from time to time.  If you’re planning a trip, you can “Search” the name of the destination city, state, or country for good restaurants (in Europe, often close to sites, like the Louvre or the Van Gogh Museum, that you’ll want to visit in any event). And stick around for news, all manner of recipes, and the occasional book or movie review and fine arts and architecture commentary.  Comments, questions, and suggestions of places to eat or stories to cover are very welcome.  And check out our Instagram page, johntannerbbq.