Bouchon's Altieri Says New York Needs Good Bread

Friday night's Sweet dessert-fest wouldn't have been complete without Thomas Keller's Bouchon Bakery. Pastry chef Alessandra Altieri was repping the newest outpost at Rockefeller Center, and we asked her what to expect from the bakery this fall. She told us four words that made us salivate: Pear hazelnut caramel cake.

As for herself, she's excited to try out Dominique Ansel's bakery opening downtown in mid-October. "The city is starting to become filled with pastry, which is really exciting because there really wasn't much competition before," she said. "It's nice to have good competition."

Still, Altieri finds that the city lacks good bread. "I have to say our bread baker at Per Se is phenomenal, it's some of the best bread I've ever had, but it's really hard to find good bread in New York. I would say good bread in the U.S. is what we're looking for, it's a pretty dying breed."

So where is good bread? "A lot of people in California say that the bread in California is supposed to be pretty phenomenal, but Paris, definitely. Where it all started."