The other day, while shopping for dried figs and pink, plum-soaked sesame seeds at the East Village spice store SOS Chefs, I asked the baker and cookbook author Bryan Ford where in the city he’d go for a baguette or a croissant. “I wouldn’t!” Ford, who is thirty-six, barrel-chested, and bearded, with a propensity for four-letter words, said, laughing. “That’s just not what I crave.” Born in the Bronx and raised in New Orleans, Ford specializes in breads that can be harder to find in New York: sourdough pan de coco (soft, sweet dinner rolls made with coconut milk, a staple in his parents’ native Honduras); conchas and other Mexican pan dulce; pan chapla, an anise-scented Peruvian loaf that is leavened with chicha de jora, a fermented corn beverage. I first met him in 2023, when he served me

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