The subtitle of the Boudin Bakery’s story should be The Virtue of Stubbornness: Founded in the thick of the Gold Rush by one of the sudden city’s many French immigrants — Isidore Boudin — the bakery carried on doing its one main thing, its distinctive sourdough bread, through the better part of two centuries. Photos of Boudin in the 1800s are widely available online via Boudin. Learn more about Oldest San Francisco, his latest book with stories of the institutions that helped make San Francisco the place it is today.