Baked Goods. Northern Coast California, USA

November 2019

If you’re on the hunt for picnic supplies to soak up the wine on a day exploring Sonoma’s vineyards, be sure to stop at Freestone.  This village is tiny with only a handful of houses but it’s big on artisan produce.  There’s a queue out of the door at Wild Flour Bread which makes many exciting flavours of sourdough, including lemon, olive and tarragon; Greek olive and zaatar; and caramelised smoked garlic – absolutely delicious with a crisp crust contrasting with the slightly chewy inside, and the sweet and smokey garlic balanced with the sour tang of the loaf.  In the queue, there was a lot of excited chatter about the cinnamon, walnut and raisin sticky bun.  I was envisioning a bun sized offering but it was in fact an entire loaf.  The filling wasn’t evenly distributed which meant some bites were overly sweet, and the cinnamon eclipsed the other flavours.  But maybe that’s just me as this loaf certainly had a fan club!

They also bake scones in all sorts of enticing, regularly changing flavours – apple and marzipan, peach and pecan, mushroom and onion.

Join the queue and stock up for your picnic, or if you can’t wait that long to devour your goodies, take a seat outside and then wander around the gardens where they grow their own herbs and vegetables.

Just a little further along the road is Freestone Artisan Cheese where there is a

wide selection of cheese, both from local creameries (there are a lot given this is dairy farming country) and from Europe.  I highly recommend Cowgirl Creamery’s Red Hawk which is made on the coast at Point Reyes using a bacteria specific to the area.  It’s pungent but smooth, creamy and very Moorish - definitely one for strong cheese lovers.  Not local but delicious nonetheless, try the Italian Moliterno truffle cheese – the earthy nuttiness of the marbled truffle really shines through to complement the mature sheep’s milk cheese.  Salty, sweet and bursting with flavour, it really is exquisite.  They also stock locally pressed olive oils, raw local honey, small-batch jams, crackers, chocolates and charcuterie.  And if that wasn’t enough, they make crepes and hot drinks to order.