Boulted Bread — Restaurant in Raleigh

Boulted Bread, will you marry me? I cannot write enough glowing endorsements about this bakery, but I will try. This morning marked my fourth experience and each time I fall deeper in love. One feels a warmth and welcoming feeling even before opening the front door. When you step inside you get a huge hit of positive energy and the smells of natural wood, grains, coffee, and all the beautiful beasties in the air that make a quality loaf of bread - and more. Be prepared to wait in line, but not for TOO long because the service is extremely efficient, and friendly too. While you wait, peep the menu board to pick out your loaves (I can recommend all of them!) and dare yourself to stop at just a few pastries and sweets. When you visit more than once (and you will when you get a taste of this place) you notice that there are core offerings that are static, some core items that have variations like the pinwheels with different fillings, and new/rotating items that keeps things even more exciting. As you will read on their website, expect a rich, deep color on their products; this is how you know you are going to get the most shatteringly crisp layers in your laminated pastries and the most complex flavor and texture in your bread. I dare say I would prefer a Boulted croissant to any other I've had, including in Paris! Bravo to the team who dare to push the limits in flavor development by giving their items just an extra couple of minutes in the oven to go from exceptional to otherworldly. This bakery has everything I am looking for; quality ingredients, expert production, tremendous value, variety, amazing service and atmosphere, and a driving purpose behind it all that shines through in every product they put out for sale. I appreciate the way the employees treat me with kindness and respect every time I visit, no matter who is behind the counter. In addition, the employees really seem to know that they are part of an amazing team who fills an essential need to the community. Boulted Bread, I cannot thank you enough for the tremendous amount of joy you have...

I really wanted to fall in love with the food here. I bought some of everything, chocolate croissant (because who can ruin a chocolate croissant?) Pull apart pastry, a ham & cheese pastry, baguette, a raspberry pastry for the hubby, and with high expectations even a whole Nordic loaf. Oh and a flavored iced tea which was good.

Needing some protein w my breakfast I ate the ham & cheese pastry. It was chewy. Quite chewy. Within half an hour my tummy rejected it. I'm getting old, the tummy can get shocked and progress to rejection. I don't think it was a health and sanitation issue; however, that pastry best every bagel for chewiness. Call kong, they have a competitor.

By that night and several candied ginger slices I was back on my game. Enter the chocolate baguette. There was a skim of chocolate on the top flake, and a brick of hard chocolate in the bottom. It tasted very well toasted, intruding on the taste of burnt. Would I prefer a croissant with Nutella, yes, yes I would. Especially if it didn't taste burnt.

The pull apart pastry was a win. The jam kept it tender and moist.

I had some baguette with breakfast. It was hard as things often are the day after baking. The microwave trick revived it quite well. There was singeing all along the outside. More burnt essence. 🤷🏻‍♀️

I asked my hubby how his raspberry pastry was, he said it was flakey and burnt. Costco's was better. The pastry to filling was off, too little filling to compensate for the dryness

Not to be discouraged, I thin sliced the Nordic rye for a sandwich. I've had and adored the bread in Germany. I love rye bread. I was looking forward to a series of delicious sandwiches with this Nordic rye. But you know what? Up from the depths came the essence of burnt. Yep I am up for serious crusty bread. But this, this wasn't crackling crisp. I will try it again, the microwave trick with some steam.

I am so disappointed. No deeply flavorful yummy bread. If it was there, it was overwhelmed by that burned flavor.

If I get the chance, I will give it another try. It is a drive to get...

While a friend was in town visiting she decided to try this place and since we had never been before, she asked if we wanted her to pick up a few things for us too. She brought back some goodies and we ended up picnicking on a beautiful day in a nearby local park. Unfortunately we weren’t impressed. The Nordic Rye was extraordinary dry, tough and very difficult to chew. We weren’t able to eat the whole loaf in one sitting so we stored the rest in a Ziploc bag. However, a day later it was even harder and was quickly starting to resemble a weapon or a brick, and was beyond edible. We had to throw it out for fear of causing damage to our teeth. We thought of course that this was a fluke and that they must have been having an “off” day. So we returned and tried some other breads varieties and a few pastries, but once again we were faced with the same result. Dough that was more than firm, lacking in flavor, and an outer crust that was extremely hard. The frequent burning/overcooking of their product seems to be a consistent issue since despite the many 5 star reviews I now realize this isn’t the first time someone has noticed this issue. If there is one positive about Bolted Bread it is there chocolate chip cookies, which stayed together, and had an almost chewy- very delicious middle. Of course the bottom and edges were a little on the dark brown side but personally I didn’t mind because I like my cookies crunchy. All of this was for a very high price tag. Not worth it when you can go to a high end grocery store or competitive chain and find a tastier arrangement of treats. Very sad to say, don’t...