Acme Bread Company

Acme is an East Bay answer to a restaurant problem. The bakery’s own history: in 1979 Steve Sullivan was a busboy at Chez Panisse, baking in a student co-op kitchen after reading Elizabeth David, and Alice Waters eventually asked him to bake the restaurant’s bread ¹. With Suzie Castello he founded The Acme Bread Company in September 1983 in Kermit Lynch’s building at Cedar Street and San Pablo Avenue in Berkeley, aiming at crusty, long-fermented, hearth-baked bread for restaurants and shops ¹.

That is artisan baking as infrastructure: loaves that other kitchens could serve. The company later added production in Mountain View and, in 2002, a bakery at the redeveloped Ferry Building, after developers asked them to be “the village baker” for that hall ¹. The Ferry Building remains a San Francisco door; the company’s story is Berkeley.

Since 1999 Acme states it has used 100% organic flour; its about page also reports 2024 use of California-grown Yecora Rojo in whole wheat and in a share of the white blend ¹. Those are producer claims about sourcing, useful because they tie Wheat flour and Milling to regional farms. They are not a tasting note, and they are not a claim that the bakery buys from any particular mill such as Giusto's Vita-Grain.

Acme’s story is professional hearth bread, organic grain, and the market hall at Ferry Building. Sourdough describes the craft; San Francisco sourdough describes the civic story around it.