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Toast is the tie-dye shirt of foods - and still one of the Bay Area s finest culinary wonders
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Slices of milk bread for the grilled cheese sandwich are seen inside the Breadbelly kitchen on Monday, Nov. 4, 2019 in San Francisco, California.Stephen Lam / Special to The Chronicle
After a few weeks away from San Francisco, the thing I craved the most was good toast: a sandpapery facade shielding the tender, steamy insides of artisan bread, served with stew, soup, dip and fine butter. If you don’t bake it yourself, you have to try very hard to find decent bread in rural Illinois, and I was in no state of mind to knead. I wanted what I couldn’t have: thin slices of sourdough, their interiors tightened by the heat, with corners made for piercing through jelly-like egg yolks. Or, yes, the crumbly and rich cinnamon sugar brioche toast at Trouble Coffee in the Sunset District, where the smell of sea air mingles with the aroma