S.F. Rising: Sunday Cornbread from Sweet Adeline Bakeshop

Jonathan Kauffman

Cornbread from Sweet Adeline's.

​A weekly survey of bread in San Francisco ― the baked and the fried, the artisan and the novelty.

Name
Source: Sweet Adeline Bakeshop, 3350 Adeline (at 63rd St.), Berkeley, 510-985-7381.
Price: $3
Toast-appropriateness: Not really a toasting bread, but warmed up in the oven? 9/10
When SFoodie picked up a round of Jennifer Millar's Sunday cornbread at Sweet Adeline Bakeshop a few weeks ago, we had no idea it was a special-event thing. We were simply looking for a cookie to keep our sugar levels up until we made it back over the Bay Bridge. How could we resist the puffy, sun-colored round leaching melted butter into the bag it was sitting on, turning the paper translucent? And, at $3, the 8-inch round cost marginally more than a scone a quarter of its size.

Cornbread rarely tastes good a few hours after it's baked, but $3 was worth an experiment. The round came home, and we sliced off a wedge: neither dry nor sugary. We sliced off another. The bread was shot through with fat grains of cornmeal, swollen to soften their edges, but they gave the bread an appealingly rustic texture without scouring our mouth with grit. We stuck the rest of the cornbread in the freezer, bringing out wedges to warm and recrisp in a toaster or oven. Good stuff, this. The bakery may bake only a few loaves of cornbread on Sundays, but that doesn't mean you can't eat it any day of the week.