What good is cream cheese without bagels? The folks at Tomales Farmstead Creamery had the cream cheese down but couldn’t find a worthy bagel to spread it on. At least that’s the nickel explanation for their leap into the bagel business, with an ambitious new bakery-café in San Francisco. The sprawling former factory they rented was big enough for a little cheesemaking, too. So now San Franciscans have their own urban creamery whipping up cultured butter, cream cheese, quark, ricotta and ghee. Plus warm bagels. And craft beer. Hungry yet?

Daily Driver debuted in June in Dogpatch, a trendy neighborhood rapidly transitioning from light industrial to a creative hub. Open for breakfast and lunch, the bakery serves custom-built bagel sandwiches, bagel dogs, grilled-cheese bagels (who knew?) and a few items—like quark bowls, lobster rolls and kale salad—that rarely share a table with bagels.

The space is light-filled and inviting, a modern bagel manufactory, with the wood-fired ovens visible and pumping out bagels all morning. David Kreitz, an industrial designer and partner in the business, designed the interior, built the ovens and devised the bagel recipe. (Renaissance man.) His wife, Hadley, oversees the creamery production, working in a glassed-in room so patrons can watch her transform milk into butter, cream cheese and quark.

The organic milk for all this dairy goodness comes from pasture-raised Jersey cows in Marin County. Straus Family Creamery buys from the same farm, and I know how picky Albert Straus is. This milk is off-the-charts rich, yielding cream that’s averaging 70 percent fat. That is unreal. Typically, heavy cream is under 40 percent fat. Hadley says the winter butter is the color of the shop’s bagel bin.

Hadley makes cultured butter twice a week, culturing the cream for about 36 hours, until it reaches a target pH, then “curing” it in cold storage for about a week. It is practically butter already when it goes into the churn along with 2-1/2 to 3 percent Himalayan salt. In about two minutes, the deed is done, the cultured cream separated into waxy butter and watery buttermilk.

Working with a few pounds at a time, Hadley weighs out half-pound chunks and then shapes them entirely by hand—first kneading them like clay to eke out any remaining buttermilk, then slapping them rhythmically with ridged paddles into uniform slabs. “I’ve been practicing for years and years,” says Hadley, who learned the technique from a Vermont woman who kept two cows.

Hadley wasn’t aware of another commercial hand-batted American butter, but a colleague told me that some Amish farms produce it. Certainly, it is a nearly lost art, time-consuming and painstaking. It takes her three hours to paddle 80 pounds.

A half-pound of Daily Driver cultured butter is $8 at the shop. At that price, I can’t afford to cook with it, but what a treat to offer dinner guests with fresh radishes and dark bread. The quark, cream cheese, ghee and some aged cheeses are also available in the shop’s retail case.

David Jablons and Tamara Hicks, who own Tomales Farmstead Creamery, are the Kreitzes’ partners in Daily Driver. They view this multi-faceted enterprise as a way to bring the farm to the city and give urbanites a closer look at how food is made.

Turkish Poached Eggs with Quark, Herb Salad and Chili Oil

I enjoyed this dish at Daily Driver and chef Martin Siggins kindly shared the recipe.

• ½ cup Daily Driver Quark

• ½ teaspoon chile oil

• 2 eggs

• 1 tablespoon white wine vinegar

• 1 sprig of fresh dill, finely chopped

• 1 sprig of fresh mint, leaves roughly chopped

• 1 green onion, thinly sliced

• Cracked pepper and sea salt to taste

• Daily Driver bagel chips

Whisk the quark in a small bowl for about 1 minute so that it is slightly whipped. Transfer to a shallow serving bowl. Drizzle chile oil over the quark in a swirl pattern.

Crack the eggs, putting each in a separate small ramekin. Bring 2 quarts of water to a boil in a large pot over high heat. Reduce the heat to maintain a gentle simmer, then add the vinegar. Stir the water to create a vortex, then slip the eggs into the center. Poach 3-1/2 minutes, then remove the eggs with a slotted spoon to a paper towel to drain for about 30 seconds. Nestle the eggs on the quark.

Top with chopped herbs and green onion, cracked pepper and sea salt to taste. Serve immediately with bagel chips.

Serves 1