Sydney restaurants that bake the best bread

Potato molasses bread with whipped brown-butter butter
What is it about Pasi Petänen’s potato and molasses bread that makes it so damn alluring? Is it the way the Finnish chef combines a regular starter with a rye starter to add complexity? Is it the way he folds through-boiled, riced potato to lighten it? How he takes a festive Finnish bread as inspiration but twists it into a savoury opener with just a hint of caraway and a sticky-sweet molasses glaze? It could be any of these things, but that’d leave out the butter situation, where brown butter gets whipped back into regular butter for serious depth and nutty complexity. Nothing is as it seems at Café Paci, and it’s all the better for it.

Focaccia
Ben Abiad's focaccia at Ode proves that when it comes to breadmaking, experience tells. Abiad honed his skills at Brickfields and brings them to bear on Ode's focaccia, itself a take on the Brickfields ciabatta. In his hands, Demeter Farm Mill flour, olive oil, fresh yeast and Murray River pink salt come together in a moist, fluffy loaf that seeps olive oil with a salty crust that snaps like crackling. The result? The best focaccia in town. 

Wood-fired bread
Totti's bread is the stuff of Mediterranean fever dreams, a fat round of pizza-like dough that puffs up and blisters in the wood oven made all the better by a drizzle of olive oil and a scatter of salt flakes. And be it at the Bondi original or at the more snack-focused Bar Totti's in the CBD, you can count on two things: that bread being the centrepiece for a table laden with new-wave Italo-style antipasti, and scorched fingers all the way.

Sourdough with cultured butter
Attention to detail is everywhere at Arthur, from the brass and marble finishes, to the careful pacing of the tasting menu, right down to the sourdough. Chef-owner Tristan Rosier makes his dough with a mix of organic Provenance wholewheat, baker’s and khorasin flours; it's given depth with malt powder, sweetened with honey, and seasoned astutely with Tasman sea salt. The result is a loaf with a dark crust, good chew and a light crumb served with butter cultured with kefir grains.

Potato bread, sourdough bread and sourdough ice cream
The only question at Ester is which bread? There are the potato rolls, steaming hot and dark-crusted, to be spread heavily with kefir-cultured cream, dashi jelly and orbs of salmon roe. There’s the wood-fired sourdough, deep brown and made sweet and rounded with malt, that Mat Linsday has quietly perfected. Then, of course, there’s the leftover sourdough ice cream, a cool scoop of toasty comfort given crunch with a crumble of breadcrumbs. Which bread? The only right answer here is all of them.

Sprouted rye bread
A collaboration with Shady Wasef at Pioik Bakery in Pyrmont, Lennox Hastie’s bread is made with a blend of rye, wholewheat and unbleached stoneground flour on a starter kicked off on rhubarb, pear and apple juice. The loaves are baked in the cooling furnaces, gaining a distinct char and a fine crust, and are served with butter churned from cultured Pyengana cream smoked over plum wood and sprouted rye grains crisped over coals. Distinct, and distinctly delicious.

Sourdough
A tin of sardines in oil, an oversized wedge of Basque blue cheese or a platter of top-shelf charcuterie is only improved by good bread and nobody knows it better than the pros at Continental. Made on a mix of rye, wholemeal and baker’s flour, the sourdough is deliberately dense and deliberately cut extra-thick to stand up to all the richness coming out from behind the counter. Add seasonal Australian olive oil and a canned cocktail or two and it’s a combination to write home about – when you’re done eating, that is.

Sourdough and leftover-sourdough sourdough with mascarpone butter
Take a seat at Sixpenny, enjoy the flurry of snacks that open the meal, break the bread, and spread it with sweet mascarpone butter that comes concealed under a dainty butter cloche. Nice bread, you’ll think, and it is – classically sour with a thick crust. But that’s just the start of it. Another slice comes out after a few more courses, this one made with the toasted crumbs of yesterday’s loaf blitzed up with coffee grounds and sweetened with golden syrup. Smart, waste-conscious, and memorable as all get out.

Fougasse
In a city of so many sourdoughs, classic yeasted breads can fall by the wayside. Not so at Fred's, where Danielle Alvarez keeps it straight and simple with good ingredients, handled well and proved quickly. The dough, which combines baker's flour with organic white flour, is shaped and scored before being slid into the ironbark-fuelled wood oven and served hot and steamy with sweet house-churned butter and a dish of olive oil for good measure. Some choose butter, some choose oil, but those who know best always do both.

Flatbread with za’atar and toum
When Nomad temporarily relocated up the road in Surry Hills without the wood oven, it seemed the flatbread would be decommissioned, too. Turns out adaptation can have delicious results. Taking the same focaccia dough, they prove it hard to develop air pockets, then fry it on the plancha in enough oil to turn it deeply crisp and dark golden, with a centre that stays soft and fluffy. Garlic oil, a dredging of za'atar heavy on Aleppo pepper, and garlicky toum for swiping seal it.

Bread rolls with chicken-and-anchovy butter
Clayton Wells veers away from the sourdough trend towards something whiter and fluffier, with soft mini rolls baked together in a loaf tin. They come out hot, ready to be pulled apart and spread with flavoured butter, at times whipped together with yoghurt and Pecora Dairy sheep’s curd, but most often mixed with sticky reduced chicken stock and anchovy for an ultra-lush, deeply savoury bread course that’s as much of a draw as the rest of the menu.

Focaccia
The focaccia that spans the menu at Wyno x Bodega and neighbouring Porteño hits all the spots good focaccia should: it’s fluffy without being dry, just the right amount of crusty, and it does as good a job cleaning up the dregs of a spiced pork sausage with pear cider sauce on the Bodega side as it does dabbing up roasted meat juices at Porteño. Look out for the Argentinian focaccia special at Porteño, too. Dark, handsome, and shot through with grapes and rosemary, it's most often served with wicked-good chicken-liver parfait. Yes, please.