Hey, No Sour Grapes, OK?

When the San Francisco Chronicle assembled a panel of some of the Bay Area’s brightest culinary stars for a tasting of sourdough bread, there was a lot of anticipation. After all, sourdough and San Francisco are so inseparable that scientific papers have been written explaining how essential one of the area’s native bacterial strains (Lactobacillus sanfrancisco) is to the making of good bread.

Whom would the panel--which included Zuni Cafe’s Judy Rodgers, La Folie’s Roland Passot and Cafe Kati’s Kirk Webber--anoint? Would it be Emeryville’s Semifreddi? What about Sonoma-based, family-owned Artisan Bakers? Of course, no one could overlook Steve Sullivan’s Acme Bread Co., whose baguette has been the culinary communion wafer of tout Berkeley for almost 15 years.

Imagine the panelists’ surprise when the winner turned out to be a bread from the sunburned, so-scorned south, made by Los Angeles’ La Brea Bakery. What’s more, the winning loaf wasn’t the best the bakery produces. Unlike the La Brea baguettes sold in Southern California, the bakery’s Northern California loaves are par-baked in Los Angeles before being trucked to the Bay Area for finishing.

The La Brea baguette, made with a starter grown from grapes, flour and water right here in Los Angeles, scored 95 out of a possible 100 points. That’s the highest score achieved in the Chronicle’s weekly product tastings in anyone’s memory.

So startling were the scores (because of Semifreddi’s poor showing, not because of La Brea’s triumph, panel organizer Miriam Morgan insists) that the Chronicle panel reconvened for a second go-round--with the same results.

“Not only did it make my day, it made my year, I swear to God,” says Manfred Krankl, manager of the bakery. “If my mother did it, she wouldn’t have done as good a job. After all, this is San Francisco, the supposed sourdough capital of the world. And here we are from Los Angeles. It doesn’t get any sweeter than that.”