Gems in a Jar

Most San Franciscans interested in food find their way to the Saturday-morning Ferry Plaza Farmers' Market. That means the market is very crowded—so crowded that by 10:30 it can be impossible to move from the organic mizuna to the tasting trays of plumcots and Suncrest peaches. Most people arrive with maneuvering strategies.

Mine is to go to the Downtown Bakery booth for a doughnut muffin, a pastry that combines the virtues of its named components, and then fight my way around the oval of the market to eat it with an indecent number of tasting spoonfuls of June Taylor's jams and fruit preserves. I buy preserves wherever I travel, and at home I generally have several kinds open at a time, the levels lowering through the week like an ebbing tide. The Bay Area, with its natural abundance and appreciation of good food, has given rise to two great artisan ...