Unless something truly dreadful happens at LuthorCorp tomorrow (and yes, I'm living dangerously just by entertaining the possibility), the worst of the week is behind me. I spent my first 40 minutes home from work emptying the fridge and scrubbing the shelves with boiling water and grease-cutting soap, all the while assuming the working-in-tight-spaces position I have come to call Fridge Pilates. Now the fridge is clean, and I am sleepy, full and happy, thanks to the new Thai restaurant in my neighborhood and the incendiary glass noodle salad I ordered for dinner. It's time to plan for the Grand Day In on Saturday, which will be spent in the company of the lovely Julie, herself a bakerina nonpareil. We are still trying to decide exactly what we'll be making, but consider the following to be a general hint:
ve
Walking the (scurvy) dog. Dear friends, I promise not to indulge in this rank and craven commercialism on a regular basis, honestly. I promise that PTMYB will not devolve into a hollow, content-free shell of its former self, kept alive only to shill for Bakerina Kitchens. It's just that I've received so much nice email from people asking me how goes the jam racket. I have to say that I'm stunned by what an excellent first weekend I had. Within hours of going live, I had sold all of the damson butter and nearly all of the jellies. I even made a significant dent into the apple butter, although there is still plenty of that left. As I have tortured told poor 'mouse repeatedly, it is still amazing to me that people actually want to pay money for something I made. This might seem like an odd point of view for someone who spent two years writing a business plan for a bakery, but there you go.
It occurs to me that one cannot live on light apple butter alone, and I should start thinking about something new to put up on the site. This is a tough time of year for canning. Rhubarb arrives at the greenmarket in May, and I will be counting the minutes until it gets here. Until then, there are the last of the storage apples for both dark and light apple butter. Citrus fruit are still plentiful at the fruit and vegetable stores in my neighborhood -- hello, marmalade! -- and I have one dried-fruit jam in my repertoire, a truly luscious dried apricot jam enriched with brandy and studded with hazelnuts. I have also been asked if I will consider selling the cardamom-lime cake. Why, yes, I will. Consider, that is. 
Badly timed existentialism. Leave it to me to miss the window of opportunity on the New York Times article. At about the same time I was posting pictures of Arkansas flora and bemoaning yet another case of writer's block, the New York City Department of Health was busy issuing cease-and-desist orders to restaurants who cook with sous-vide equipment. I am of two minds about this. I do hope that this is not a knee-jerk, boneheaded, fear-of-germs measure, the same kind that leads to things like widespread use of non-dairy creamers, and the death of raw-milk cheese. On the other hand, I have, erm, opinions on sous-vide, and it's hard for me to not feel a teeny, tiny, infinitesimal amount of schadenfreude at the news.
Which side are you on, boys, which side are you on? It should be a cause for celebration. For over ten years, ever since my two favorite sources for spices in New York closed up shop (those would be Pete's Spice & Everything Nice on the Lower East Side, and Paprikas Weiss on the Upper East Side), I have been mail-ordering spices from Penzeys Spices in Wisconsin. To say that I love Penzeys is a vast understatement. The spices are always snapping fresh. Their custom spice blends are unique, nuanced and properly thought out. The people who sell their goods, both the mail-order staff and the staff at their retail locations around the country, are friendly, chatty and deeply knowledgeable about the merchandise. Every catalogue features an essay by the owner, Bill Penzey, a man who clearly loves his job, loves spices, loves world travel and the lessons learned while conducting business; his letters are like a crash course in social studies and world economics. The closest Penzeys retail outlet to me is in Norwalk, Connecticut, not a terribly far piece, but a bitch to get to if you don't own a car. Thus, the news that Penzeys has agreed to open a retail shop at Grand Central Market, after an aggressive courtship by the MTA, should be the happiest news I've heard in a good long time.
It should be happy news, and yet I can't help but wonder. My other great source for spices -- and for leatherwood honey, and for Lyle's Golden Syrup and peach chutney and French hot chocolate mix and burnt sugar essence -- was the beauteous Adriana's Caravan, which, after several rent-increase adventures around the city, found a home at Grand Central Terminal Market. Adriana's has been at the market since its opening in 1998, so I was stunned to learn that the MTA, the owner of the market space, advised Adriana's that their lease would not be renewed, and that they would have to vacate by the end of February. I have no doubt that Adriana's will do well wherever they end up; there are building owners and business improvement districts who would give their arms to have such a business in their neighborhood, and no matter where they end up, I will continue to give them my business. On my last trip to the market, the space that used to be Adriana's had been taken over by Zaro's Bread Basket, their small stand suddenly much, much larger, and I thought, so that's the deal, Zaro's wanted to expand. Then I received a postcard from Penzey's announcing the upcoming opening of the brand-new Grand Central Terminal Market, and a dreadful feeling closed around me. If both Adriana's and Penzeys are telling the truth -- and I have no reason to doubt that they are -- it sounds like the MTA lobbied hard for Penzeys, got them, and then yanked the rug out from under Adriana's. There is a part of me that feels I should stay away from Penzeys in deference to Adriana's, and another part of me that wants to shop at Penzeys as much as possible, to help them succeed in my hometown. Either way, I feel guilty and confused. When a 30-year-old French patisserie suddenly loses its lease because Ann Taylor wants to double the square footage on its store next door, and the property owner wants Ann Taylor's big fat rent check, it's easy to know with whom to be angry, or frustrated. In this case, though, where does the anger go? Who is the heavy in this situation? Is there even a heavy to be had, or am I making much out of what is really very little?
On any other Sunday, it would be a perfect day for baking. The weather is overcast, dark grey clouds hanging low over the Hell Gate Bridge. We have a full complement of flour, butter, sugar, dried fruit and chocolate, and if I run out of eggs, I can buy more at the small-but-delightful health food store less than 50 feet from my apartment. We have the last of last weekend's minestrone at hand for lunch, so stopping mid-bake to run out to a lunch emporium is not necessary. I still have a shortlist of breads from the new Dan Lepard book to visit, as well as a shortlist of old favorites from Mollie Katzen's Sunlight Cafe to revisit. In short, if ever there were a day for getting off of the lumpy uncomfortable chair and standing facing the stove, today would be that day.
Today is not shaping up to be that day, however, thanks to last night's dinner. Not that I am complaining about that dinner by any means: it was a grand dinner, spent in the company of Lloyd, my parents, and my brother and sister-in-law, held at this sweet little dreamboat restaurant, the sort of small, family-run French restaurant that used to be a fixture of the theatre district, and is now a vanishing breed. We had gone to dinner following a matinee of a show we had waited to see for ten long months, and we were giddy on the particular thrill that comes from watching a few dozen actors, singers and dancers do their job really well, and have a grand time doing it. We went to dinner, we shared two bottles of St. Emillion among five of us, I ate celeri remoulade as a starter, sweetbreads meunieres as an entree, cherries Jubilee over vanilla ice cream for dessert, and a tiny snifter of Mandarine Napoleon as a digestive. It was a beauty of a meal, but I knew that there would be a price to pay for eating high on the food chain. The good news is that I awoke headache-free; the bad news is that I could practically feel the saturation in my blood. It is hard to feel the pure thrill of creaming butter and sugar together, or of slowly incorporating whole-milk yogurt into yeasted bread dough, when both your vital organs and your conscience dictate a year-long diet of brown rice, black kale and industrial-strength kimchee.
I am meeting my conscience at the halfway point by eating plenty of pickles, particularly these pickles. Pickles might seem an odd thing with which to settle the stomach, but for me, they seem to cut right through the vague doughiness I'm feeling. They may not be a tonic for my blood, but they certainly are for my palate. Already I feel a bit snappier, thinking more clearly, making better plans for the rest of the day. I'm no longer moaning "sweetbreads and ice cream? what the hell were you thinking?" Instead, I'm thinking positively. It could have been worse. We could have ended the day with Krispy Kreme bread pudding.
(Well...no, we couldn't. I know there are people out there who love this dessert, and I hate to rag on something that people truly love, and I really hate to behave like a foodie snob in any way, but I never, ever, ever want to eat this. Now, I know there are at least three people who read this site, friends IRL, who love the idea of playing a prank on the fancy-pants culinary school graduate. Dear ones, I will play along with you on anything else, the scarier, the better. I will even eat cans of frosting for your amusement. But if you ever make this dish and try to pass it off as an heirloom family recipe, I will know. And then I will make pointed comments about what a lovely kitchen you have, and wouldn't be a shame if something were to happen to it? Seriously, if I even smell it, my heart will explode, and not with delight, either. Just don't, is all I'm saying.)
Of course, I talk a good game about austerity, and about resisting the call of the oven, but even as I drink my mess o'veggies from the industrial juicer at the health food store and contemplate a week of clear-broth lunches, even as I know that I have a full week of box factory toils and jam shipments (can I take a moment to mention that the reaction to Bakerina Kitchens has been surprising and gratifying?) and egg research and travel planning and sock-knitting (yes, the bug bit hard; thank you for not laughing), even then, the siren call of the stove is never far away. Sandwich bread, of course, is never far away; it's easy to put together, tastes better if it's been left to sit in the fridge for two days, and forms the backbone of at least half a dozen weeknight dinners, as well as breakfast and lunch. I'm also thinking it might be time to wake up the rye sourdough, after picking up a loaf of dark sour rye bread from a tiny Eastern European bakery in the East Village. It's the sort of bakery at which I love to shop, the sort that has been family-run for generations, that carries vanishing beauties like raisin pumpernickel bread, corn rye and poppyseed strudel, and that embed themselves into the neighborhood so deeply that to lose them is to lose something deep and sweet and powerful. Thus it was a hard thing for me to admit that the bread, while certainly a nice enough loaf of bread, was not all that dark, nor was it all that sour, and that it felt suspiciously fluffy for a rye bread. I know that not all sourdough-leavened loaves are supposed to taste sour; in fact, many French bakers consider an overly sour crumb to be the mark of a flawed loaf of bread. But I have studied breadbaking with a baker who cut his teeth in German bakeries, and there is a tradition of a sour crumb in certain rye loaves. And I also know that it's not uncommon to mix wheat and rye flours in rye bread: while rye flour does contain gluten-forming proteins, it also contains gums called pentosans, which inhibit the bonding of the gluten-forming proteins into the strong bubbly structure that we recognize in wheat breads. Rye dough is dense stuff, and not everyone appreciates the texture of whole rye. I don't consider it a crime to add wheat flour to rye bread, but when a rye loaf feels fluffy, I start to wonder.
Then again, maybe it's me. Maybe I ate it too close to when it came out of the oven. Rye bread needs time to settle, time for the interior to lose its gumminess, and for the flavors to mellow and meld. I put down the pickles and cut a slice, no butter this time. I can smell the rye scent radiating off the loaf, and I can taste it in the crumb, as well as a mere hint of sour. I can also taste sugar, of a kind not attributable to the caramelization of naturally-occurring sugars in the dough. And it is definitely soft, the sort of softness you would expect from a fat-enriched dough. But it does taste good. If I were trying to introduce lifelong Wonder Bread eaters to rye, I might start them on this one, to ease them gently into the inimitable flavor and texture of a good European rye. For myself, though, I crave a little more chew and a lot more bite. I will dig out my notes from bread camp in Vermont, and I will find exactly what I am looking for.
Dear friends,
After weeks of not-so-subtle hints, writing, rewriting, testing ,re-testing, re-re-testing, and never failing to marvel at the patience of the fellow helping me with all of this (that would be Keith, the master of the house and keeper of the key at some of the finest spots on the 'sphere), I am pleased to announce that the wait is over.
Bakerina Kitchens is open for business. Come on in, have a look around, feel free to ask questions.
How many times in the life of one blog can I say "it's not blogbandonment, I'm just not feeling well?" Let's try it one more time. Dear friends, it's not blogbandonment. I'm just not feeling my normal spry and writerly self. This will pass, it always does.
