Food coverage is supported by a generous donation from Susan and Moses Libitzky.
Part of being J.’s food columnist means being asked by readers where they can find the best fill-in-the-blank. The blank has been “a good rye bread” more than a handful of times.
I just found a swoon-worthy one in Santa Rosa.
While Marla SR Bakery and Cafe isn’t a Jewish bakery per se, co-owner Joe Wolf is proud of its Jewish offerings: bagels and fixings that are all made in-house (more on those in a moment), and a rustic rye sourdough loaf that gets just the right amount of tang from its rye flour and sourdough starter. Wolf said the bread went through many iterations to get to the recipe they use now. While it’s a deviation from the classic Jewish rye and more of a California hybrid, I believe it should satisfy the demand for discerning rye lovers.
Wolf, 43, is the owner with his wife, Amy Brown, of Marla SR Bakery and Cafe, offering breakfast and lunch as well as baked goods in the historic Railroad Square district. They opened last year after a successful run in the Outer Richmond of San Francisco. Brown is the baker and pastry chef of the pair, while Wolf does much of the savory fare.
Marla is an acronym for the important family members in their lives from whom they inherited their love of all things food. For Wolf, that includes his mother Ruthi, great-grandmother Reba and grandmother Lois.
Wolf’s background is pretty uncommon in the Bay Area food world. He grew up Orthodox in Des Moines, Iowa, where his uncle Joey was the kosher butcher in town. Wolf’s paternal grandparents were Holocaust survivors. He attended Jewish day school and wrapped tefillin daily from his bar mitzvah until he graduated from high school. The family kept strictly kosher.
He recalled making kreplach with his great-grandmother Gertie as a child, and the warm memories associated with that.
“I was enamored with the traditions of the Jewish holidays and Shabbat since they were so food-centric,” he said. “I fell in love with them early on.”
He recalls food as the driving force that kept his family close.
“Every Shabbat, we’d go back and forth between Bubbe and Zayde’s and Nanny and Poppy’s,” he said, referring to both sets of grandparents. “Food drove all the fun in our lives. During Pesach, we’d have a huge seder, and all our family would drive near and far. I always saw it as something that brought my family together, and that was my favorite thing in the world.”
At the same time, food was complicated for him, since he was diagnosed with Type 1 diabetes at the unusually early age of 6 months. “Food has always been enemy and ally for me,” he said.
Wolf moved to San Francisco in 2008. After some less than satisfying years in the film industry, he attended the California Culinary Academy in San Francisco, motivated both by his love of cooking and his desire to better understand nutrition. He began working in restaurants like San Francisco’s Nopa (where he met Brown, then its pastry chef). In 2012, he was part of the opening team of Wise Sons Jewish Delicatessen, where as kitchen manager and head pickler he made all of the pastrami, corned beef, pickles and matzah balls.
“I was employee No. 2, and did all the prep work,” he said. “Anything on your plate, I had a big part in creating.”
At the same time, he and Brown wanted to start something of their own. They began with a kitchen space with a takeout window selling pastries and coffee in the Mission District. They ran that for a while until they decided to open a dedicated bakery space in 2014. Located on Balboa Street, across from the classic movie theater, it was the site of their wedding before the space was completely finished. In 2019, they moved their young family, and their business, to the Santa Rosa area.
They started by baking in a kitchen in Windsor and selling in farmers markets, which worked well during the Covid pandemic. A year ago, they opened the bakery and cafe in downtown Santa Rosa.
Wolf continues to make his own pastrami and pickles. They offer a limited number of bagel toppings, but all are house-made. Wolf smokes trout; he won’t do salmon since it’s not sustainable. The smoked trout has a similar mouthfeel and easily satisfies the smoked fish craving.
Brown makes the schmear. It’s not cream cheese, but a house-made farmer’s cheese instead.
“Amy loves making cheese, it’s one of her favorite things,” he said. Hers is inspired by the soft French cheese Boursin and made from buttermilk and cream, to which she adds lemon zest and scallions.
The cafe also has some lighter fare. I had a wonderful fall salad when visiting, with frisée, roasted delicata squash and toasted hazelnuts with a poached egg on top.
They make their own bagels, as well as challah every Friday, their own matzah every Passover and sufganiyot for Hanukkah, too.
Marla also offers catering, and Wolf and Brown have done some special dinners. One earlier this year paid homage to Sammy’s Roumanian Steakhouse, a New York institution that Wolf’s family always visited when in New York.
While he left his kosher observance behind a long time ago, Wolf said he applies the same mindfulness about ingredients to organics. Nearly all of their grains are organic, and almost all of their produce comes from local farms.
Marla SR Bakery and Cafe, 208 Davis St., Santa Rosa. Open 8 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursdays, 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Fridays and 9 a.m. to 3 p.m Saturdays and Sundays.
Small Bites
After too many false starts to count, Bubbala’s finally opened in San Anselmo on Nov. 2. While I will have a full report on it in the next column, I just wanted to be sure to announce the news, since eager locals have been hankering for the deli to open for well over a year now, ever since J. announced it in August 2023.
Owner Greg Bernson said that they’ve been running out of certain items since they didn’t know how busy they would be at opening, and didn’t even know when they would get the green light to open. But he hopes to rectify that soon.
“I’ve been trying to make blintzes for four days,” Bernson said. “Maybe tomorrow.”