Kosher bakeries near Salinas, CA

Pars Kosher Market & Deli

The shortest drive from Salinas on this list, about an hour north on Highway 101. Pars is a Persian-Jewish grocery under Sunrise Kosher supervision rather than a bakery, but its storefront sign lists baked goods alongside meat and poultry, it carries breads year-round, and it puts out honey cakes and round challah through the High Holidays. There is a deli counter and a small cafe inside, so you can eat there too. If you are only willing to make one drive out of Monterey County, this is the one.

Izzy's Brooklyn Bagels

The one place here you can walk into and buy fresh kosher baked goods over a counter. Izzy's is a fixture on California Avenue in Palo Alto, supervised by the Vaad Hakashrus of Northern California, selling bagels by the piece, the baker's dozen and in bulk, alongside spreads, wild lox, wraps and deli salads. It is a kosher dairy establishment, so it is not where you shop for a meat meal, and the rugelach are cholov yisroel. Note the short day: the doors close at 3pm, earlier on holidays.

Krembo Baked Goods

Krembo bills itself as the only fully parve kosher bakery in Northern California, which is the whole point if you want dessert after a meat meal. It bakes out of the Chabad center in San Mateo, using a dairy-free butter blend and a menu its pastry chef spent ten years testing. The range is unusually wide for a small operation: challah, babka, rugelach, mandelbrot, parve celebration cakes and cupcakes, plus a gluten-free line that includes challah. You order through the online shop and collect in San Mateo.

Aroma's Hamati Bakery

A wholesale pita bakery in San Bruno, certified by Sunrise Kosher, that supplies stores and restaurants rather than selling to the public. It is worth knowing about anyway, because its bread is often what you are buying when a Bay Area kosher market sells fresh pita: thick and thin white pita, whole wheat, torpedo pita, sesame rings and za'atar bread. The website is a bare product catalogue with three phone numbers and no photographs of the bakery, so ordering means calling.

Grand Bakery

Oakland's kosher bakery since 1959, when Ernie and Anne Hollander opened it as The New Yorker Bakery; it nearly disappeared in 2017 when its owner retired, and Sam Tobis took it over to keep it going with the same bakers. Everything it makes is certified kosher parve under the Vaad of Northern California, which is what makes it useful to a household keeping kosher: challah, honey cake, hamantaschen, macaroons, almond logs, Russian tea cookies, and hand-rolled bagels made with Authentic Bagel Company. There is no counter to visit. You find it on grocery shelves around the Bay, and their delivery goes to stores, schools and synagogues rather than to homes.

Oakland Kosher Foods

A full kosher supermarket on Lakeshore Avenue, open since 1962 and under the supervision of the Vaad Hakashrus of Northern California. It is not a bakery, but it is one of the surest places in the region to find fresh kosher baked goods on a shelf, Grand Bakery's challah among them, next to a butcher counter, a deli, prepared food and a very large kosher wine selection. Abba's Hummus runs a hummus bar and deli inside the store. Closed Saturdays, and it shuts at 3pm on Fridays.

Vital Vittles at Alta Mira Baking Company

A Berkeley bread institution since 1976, now baked by Alta Mira Baking Company, which bought the production facility in 2022 and kept the original recipes and the same roof on San Pablo Avenue. Sunrise Kosher certifies the production as Pas Yisroel, and every grain, nut, fruit and oil in the breads is certified organic, with expeller-pressed oil and no preservatives. This is everyday sliced sandwich bread rather than anything festive: Real Bread, Real Raisin, flax seed oat, 3-seed, 9-grain, 12-grain, sesame millet. It goes out wholesale, so you buy it off a grocery shelf.