We just returned from 2 weeks in Europe, the first 10 days in Italy, traveling with one of my sisters and her husband. We then spent 4 days in Paris and one in Brussels.

I've generally found it difficult to find bad food in Italy, although it's not all wonderful. I think the best meals we had were actually at the B&B at which we stayed South of Siena. Our hostess, Laura, kept saying she was "not a professional," but the best Italian cooking is, after all, "home cooking." Laura made totally amazing tarts and breads, with butter she churned herself, for breakfast each morning, and one special dinner. The dinner included ribollita and pasta with a tomato sauce, both of which were extraordinary.

As an aside, I would recommend this B&B/Agratourismo, Il Canto del Sole, to anyone wanting to stay near Siena. The setting is beautiful, in the Sienese hill country. Our hosts, Laura and Luciano were incredibly warm and helpful. Laura's cooking was simply fabulous. The evening she cooked dinner for us, Luciano learned it was my sister's birthday and presented us with a bottle of champagne with our dinner.

The bread we had in restaurants in Italy was boring with the one exception of a very rustic sourdough that I'm pretty sure was baked in house in the wood fired oven they used for pizzas. 

Paris was an entirely different story. We had some excellent food, and the generally quality of the bread was quite good. I was able to visit 3 of the boulangeries I most wanted to visit - Phillip Gosselin (across the street from our hotel!), Eric Kayser (in Gallerie Lafayette) and Poilane on Rue Cherche Midi. 

We did not know one of Gosselin's boulangeries would be so close, but I was delighted. His is the "pain a l'ancienne" on which Reinhart based his very popular formula. We had Gosselin's "Baguette Tradition" a couple of times. It is a very rustic, thick-crusted baguette with an open, chewy crumb and a delicious flavor.

Gosselin Baguette Tradition

Gosselin Baguette Tradition crumb

Poilâne Miches

Poilâne miche crust

Poilâne miche crumb

We made a special trip to Rue Cherche Midi, arriving at Poilane at about 3 pm on a Friday afternoon. The miches were still warm from the ovens. The aroma of the little shop almost brought tears to my eyes it was so wonderful. The shop was empty of other customers to my surprise. I guess it was just a bit too early for picking up bread after work, but the breads were waiting for the evening line-up. My wife and I were offered lovely little butter cookies to nibble on while we admired the breads. I bought a quarter loaf. (They sell miche by weight.)

We bought two of Eric Kayser's breads - a mini-"Baguette Monge" and a Pain au Cereal. The former was beautiful to look at but was quite ordinary in flavor. The pain au cereals was delicious. It's a pain au levain with some whole grain (wheat, rye or, perhaps spelt) and seseme, flax, millet and poppy seeds in the dough and on the crust.

Kayser demi-baguette Monge

Demi-baguette Monge crumb

Kayser Pain aux Cereals

Pain aux Cereals crumb

We ate the Kayser breads and our miche with wonderful cheeses and tomatoes from the Gallerie Lafayette food court. The Poilane miche had a very crunchy crust and a chewy crumb. The crust was very sweet. The crumb was surprisingly sour. (This was probably no more than 3 hours out of the oven.) The flavor was wonderful - quite similar to the SFBI Miche, actually.

But "man cannot live by bread alone." There is also ....

Gelato in Florence

Pecorino in Pienza

Salumi in Bologna (at A.F. Tamburini)

Tagliatelli with Ragu in Montepulciano

Wonderful wine (Vino Nobile di Montepulciano)

A little something sweet for dessert (from Ladurée in Paris)

And, most of all, good company with which to enjoy them.

Susan, Evan and Ruth enjoying a taste of Brunello in Montalcino

Happy baking and happy travels!

David

The Oregonian has a piece on the best Portland-area bakeries today.  If you don't get the print edition, check it out online.

I hope everyone is having a Merry Christmas!

-Floyd

We're back from 5 days in Fort Bragg with family. I took along 7 breads and, because of menu compatibility and dining out, I only baked once while there. I made a couple loaves of Sourdough Italian Bread which went well with baked coho salmon and grilled veggies.

We did breakfast one day at the Fort Bragg Bakery. They make very good bread and pastries, as well as pizza. They do the pizza's in a gas fired oven built with bricks salvaged from the bakery that was on the same site a couple generations ago and eventually torn down.

On the drive home, Susan and I stopped for lunch at the Costeaux Bakery in Healdsburg. Along with our bill, the waiter left us a 2 lb sourdough epi to take with us. It was outstanding with a comfort food coming home dinner of scrambled eggs and tomatoes from our garden.

On a non-bread note I just have to share, I found myself taking all but a couple photos with my new iPhone 4. It's pretty amazing, especially the macro capability.

Begonia at the Fort Bragg Botanical Gardens

Fly on Begonia petal

So, we're back home, doing laundry and re-packing for my week at SFBI.

David

I came across this video located in the Library of Congress.  It features  a bakery in 1946 along with bread baking know-how of that time. Enjoy!

http://www.archive.org/details/gov.archives.arc.24402

First of all, I'd like to say this:

Now that thats out of the way:

I've been taught that thats a textbook example of the improved mix. There's three mixes; the short mix, the improved mix, and the intensive mix. When you pull a window, the short mix tears easily, the improved mix has characteristic "veins" that run through it, and the intensive mix looks very even and opaque. This is how you can judge the crumb of your finished bread before you even divide the dough.

It'd be an understatement to say that I've learned a thing or two while working at the bakery, truth be told, I learned more in my interview with the owner of the bakery (an interview which was 5 hours on the bench of course,) then I did in the few weeks we spent on bread in school.

I wanted to showcase my bakery's breads and the title I wanted to give the blog was, "the soul of the bakery, its in the formulas" but the truth really doesn't reflect that. Formulas are the backbone of any bakery, but its melodies, subtleties, and nuances are what really define a bakery. We make this dough with three different kinds of levain in it. Thats a really unnecessary thing to do, and personally I have a notion that having the three different cultures all together might hinder the growth of the individual cultures since they'll be competing (a fight that the white levain will have an advantage in!). We create formulas, we calculate water temperatures, use our hands to tell us all the things about the dough that we should ever need to know, and we live bread. Or at least thats how it is meant to be. whether we actually reach (or want to reach) this lofty attitude of bread baking is debatable.

I like to think that as an artisan bakery, we bake bread as it has been made in past decades. This involves small ovens, a single mixer, couches, loading boards or peels, and hand shaping. But ultimately, how feasible and how practical is this arrangement? Bread bakers are the eccentrics in an already quite eccentric field. Moving into the culinary field is almost romanticized in our culture, yet many do it for reasons other then the love of the process. The man hours, the physicality, the odd work schedule, all of it pushes away possible bakers. On the other hand, when people need work, all of that diminishes in significance.

If we were to become a chain bakery (either privately owned or corporate) is this a business model that could be passed from store to store to store? Or are we a fad, living a fast, high octane experience that will ultimately and inevitably implode and collapse in on itself?

We definitely make good product, though there's always better; but is artisan baking a relic of the past or an unrealized future?

 Despite the high costs of labor and running an establishment based on perishable food stuffs, we continue to expand and put out good product. And the more I work and throw around thoughts about bread with my colleagues, the more ideas for my own bakery spring spontaneously into my mind.

--Chausiubao

Hello -
I'm posting here again. :) Although I still check the email notifications I get from here, I don't get to visit the site as often as I'd like. Mainly due to the fact that when I get on the computer, it's to check email and Facebook, my blog and Twitter. My mother's computer crashed and she's been having to use mine. Not to mention we are moved now, to Costa Rica, from the U.S. I am posting here a couple of questions I have about starting a home-based bakery here.

We've been told that you can't find good baked goods here, and that the ones you find taste AWFUL. We've been here about three weeks (nearly) and my father doesn't have a job yet. We are going to be baking and selling our own baked goods (i.e. breads, cakes, cookies, and the like) for an income. We are looking for a house right now, preferably we want it on some land in a more rural setting than the city, where we can garden and maybe have some chickens and a cow for milk and eggs. (Milk is kind of expensive here, as is most dairy things.) This is what we're hoping anyway. We lived on 2-1/2 acres of land in the U.S. and moving to the city has been somewhat of an adjustment for us. Not to mention we have a large family. :)

So... what I would like to know is any tips and ideas you all might have for things we could sell here. I know there are endless things to bake - breads, cookies, cakes, pies, tarts and the like. If anyone on here has started something like a home-based bakery before I would love to know what you did. We are getting a logo for our products, and the needed info for pricing and such. I would appreciate all your help, if you would be so kind as to give it. :)

Shalom!
  -Rachel

Remember the scene in Close Encounters of the Third Kind when Richard Dreyfuss obsessively worked to recreate in his living room the mountain that was imprinted in his mind by the aliens? 

For me, that "mountain" is the sourdough bread that Larraburu Brother's of San Francisco made.  Larraburu had a Gold Rush era sourdough and a gorgeous crust and crumb.  Unfortunately Larraburu went out of business in the 70s. It's taken me nearly 40 years but I'm finally making dough that reminds me of Larraburu.

I was surprised that I found no reference to Larraburu breads on Fresh Loaf because if you've had it, you likely consider it the holy grail of sourdough.  Anyway, I'd love to know if anyone on this board remembers Larraburu bread.  And I'd also be interested to know if others are similarly driven to recreate a memorable loaf from the past. 

In Italy desserts are often flavored with honey, chestnuts, pine nuts, hazelnuts and almonds. Cantucci originated in the Tuscany and it is thought that they were flavored with almonds from Prato. They can be found in every pasticceria in the Tuscany. Cantucci are mostly eaten with a glass of “Vin Santo” a sweet wine. Many restaurants serve small almond biscotti with coffee and some will have a bowl of them on the table at all times. It is probably the most well-known and popular biscotti in Italy.

Following is our family recipe for cantucci. Make a full recipe and stored in a metal container, they will last a few weeks. They can be frozen up to two months – they defrost very quickly. You will always have biscotti to serve with coffee when friends drop by.

If this link doesn't connect, go to http://turosdolci.wordpress.com

http://turosdolci.wordpress.com/2009/08/01/almond-biscotti-“cantucci”-recipe/

Does anyone know when Sutter's Bakery on 10th St. in Greenwich Village closed?  I'm thinking it was in the mid-80's, but I'd love to know for sure.  Also, I'd love to find a corn muffin like Party Cake used to have and a cheese danish like Rigo Pastry had.  Everything I try now seems to be lardy and over-sweetened.  I live in LA now but am in NYC - my culinary and spiritual home - often.

Anyone know of any great ones?