Food for Thought: Acme Bread

Acme Olive Bread.

I don’t know how long Acme Bread has had a website, but here it is and it’s quite a robust reference for home bakers who want to emulate their products. We learn, for example, that Acme’s preferred flour is from Keith Giusto Bakery Products in Petaluma CA, which distributes flours milled at Central Milling in Utah. I’ve been there when I still lived in CA and they will happily sell you flours in small retail quantities. (Confusingly, there’s still a Giusto Vita-Grain in South San Francisco, and as I recall they are the source of the bulk flours sold at Rainbow Grocery.)

Acme Cheese Wheels (our version).

I also found out that the cheeses on the Sourdough Cheese Wheel are Asiago and Gruyere… something we’ll keep in mind next time we follow our own recipe. (Which we will soon, because the cost of a single wheel had risen to $4.45 when I was in SF last week.)

And, it turns out that the olives in their Olive Bread are Greek Halkidikis… a green variety which I’m sure is packed in brine vs the heavily flavored oil preferred at your supermarket olive bar. I’ve done well with olive bread yet have not come close to replicating the Acme product. Halkidikis (also called Mt. Athos) are big and often stuffed with cheese or peppers; it’s hard to find an unstuffed, pitted version but now I have to try.

Similar discoveries await the experimental home baker on each page of the Acme Bread website… check it out.