CHOOSE CAREFULLY:

Mr. Young scoffs at the word artisanal -- "everyone's an artisan now," he said -- but it is a fair description of the baking process at Balthazar and several other bakeries in New Jersey that make crisp baguettes, hearty multigrain loaves and sourdough ryes in a similar hands-on fashion, if on a smaller scale.

The Witherspoon Bread Company in Princeton is one such bakery. Carlo Momo opened the 990-square-foot shop in 1998 to supply bread to the other restaurants that he owns with his brother Raoul as part of the Princeton-based Terra Momo Restaurant Group. The bakery is in the process of changing its name to the Terra Momo Bread Company to make the connection to the restaurants -- including Eno Terra in Kingston -- more apparent, Carlo Momo said.

He keeps an eye on the trashcans in the restaurants to make sure as little bread as possible is wasted. "Denis puts so much work into making this bread -- I'm always telling the servers, put out a little, let people ask for more," said Mr. Momo, 53, of Princeton.

Denis is Denis Granarolo, the head baker, recruited from Paris by Mr. Momo before Witherspoon's opening. Mr. Granarolo begins working at 2:30 a.m. and finishes at 11 a.m., by which time he has churned out racks of 24-inch round sourdoughs ($9.90), black olive batards ($3.50) and baguettes ($2.40), among other breads and pastries.

"The difference between us and another bakery is time," said Mr. Granarolo, 54, of Princeton Junction. Sometimes it takes two days before dough is deemed ready to bake.

He also chooses his flour carefully, relying on the unbleached King Arthur Flour for many breads, he said.

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