Golden flakes covered chairs, shirtfronts and the long table where a panel gathered to compare croissants from premier San Francisco bakeries in a blind taste test last month.
Members of the Chronicle’s Food & Wine team ranked 14 plain croissants, comparing the gloss and crunch of their outer shells, the loft of their inner structure and the nuances of their flavor. The bar is high in one of the country’s best baking scenes, with standard-bearer institutions competing against a proliferation of new San Francisco bakeries that specialize in croissants and other types of laminated pastries, also called viennoiserie.
“There are so many good croissants in San Francisco,” said French native Clément Goyffon, executive pastry chef at ONE65 in Union Square, a multistory compound with a patisserie, bar and two restaurants. Goyffon said that San Francisco croissants are “very close in quality” to those in Paris, where he previously was pastry chef at Michelin-starred restaurant L’Ambroisie. “The bakers (here) have their own style and very nice products.”…