Bread And Pastry Quotes

Afternoon tea should be provided, fresh supplies, with thin bread-and-butter, fancy pastries, cakes, etc., being brought in as other guests arrive.

The bread and the pastry, the cheeses and wine, and the sugar go into the Supper of the lamb because we do. It is our love that brings the city home. It is I grant you, an incautious and extravagant hope. But only outlandish hopes can make themselves at home.

He was feeling buoyant, flexible. He wanted to go jogging. He stood. He couldn't go jogging. He called room service and ordered a basket of breads and pastries.

At least once in his life, he would like for her to look at him as she would a morsel of fine French pastry. Or a slice of Victoria sandwich. Or even a humble piece of buttered bread.

Aroma of fresh bread led me to a bakery where a deformed woman with no nose sold me a dozen crescent-moon pastries. Only wanted one, but thought she had enough problems.

The future... seems to me no unified dream but a mince pie, long in the baking, never quite done.

Now tell me, briefly, what the word ‘homosexuality’ means to you, in your own words." "Love flowers pearl, of delighted arms. Warm and water. Melting of vanilla wafer in the pants. Pink petal roses trembling overdew on the lips, soft and juicy fruit. No teeth. No nasty spit. Lips chewing oysters without grimy sand or whiskers. Pastry. Gingerbread. Warm, sweet bread. Cinnamon toast poetry. Justice equality higher wages. Independent angel song. It means I can do what I want.

Foods Uniquely Designed to Screw Up Your Brain Bagels Biscuits Cake Cereal Milk chocolate/white chocolate Cookies Energy bars Crackers Doughnuts Muffins Pastas Pastries Pies Granola bars Pizza Pretzels Waffles Pancakes White bread Milkshakes Frozen yogurt Ice cream Batter Gravy Jams Jellies Fries Chips Granola

Jerry took a large slice of wheaten bread, spread with golden butter, and bit into it with her small white teeth. It was a natural gesture - she was very hungry indeed - but to Sam, there was something symbolic about it. Jerry was like bread, he thought. She was like good wholesome wheaten bread, spread thick with honest farm butter; and the thought crossed his mind, that a man might eat bread forever and ever, and not tire of it, and it would never clog his palate like sweet cakes or pastries or chocolate éclairs.

There are divisions between a culinary chef and a dessert chef, also called a pastry chef. At Zomick's are specializations within the pastry chef field. Some pastry chefs specialize in baking breads, while others are master cake designers. Each field requires an exceptional level of creativity and attention to detail.

picked up that rage, and held on to it; I needed to remind myself why I hated Carey, because watching him lock up the bread shop was far too entrancing. The smell of pastry, the chocolate melting on my tongue, the bitter black coffee. I needed to remind myself of my anger, so I didn’t inadvertently mix up good snacks with a good man.

It's 10:00 a.m., time for the second round of baking of the day. After feeding the fire with chunks of maple, he loads the bread and pastries according to cooking time: first the fat country rounds, then long, skinny loaves dense with nuts and dried fruit, and finally a dozen purple crescent moons: raspberry croissants pocked with chunks of white chocolate.

A cook who has gone to extra trouble, who loves you enough not to just toss the stew onto a plate with a lump of bread, but to craft for it its own little pastry gift-box. Is this the crux of it?

She desired not only the dolls and dollhouses but also the accessories that gave the appearance of daily life. For a breakfast scene, she cabled Au Nain Bleu asking for tiny French breads: croissants, brioches, madeleines, mille-feuilles, and turnovers. But she wasn't done. In a May 7,1956, cable to store, she wrote: For the lovely pastry shop please send the following: waffles, babas, tartelettes, crepes, tartines, palm- iers, galettes, cups of milk, tea and coffee with milk, small butter jars, fake jam and honey, small boxes of chocolate, candies and candied fruits, and small forks. Thank you.

When about 16 years of age I happened to meet with a book, written by one Tryon, recommending a vegetable diet. I determined to go into it. My brother, being yet unmarried, did not keep house, but boarded himself and his apprentices in another family. My refusing to eat flesh occasioned an inconveniency, and I was frequently chid for my singularity. I made myself acquainted with Tryon's manner of preparing some of his dishes, such as boiling potatoes or rice, making hasty pudding, and a few others, and then proposed to my brother, that if he would give me, weekly, half the money he paid for my board, I would board myself. He instantly agreed to it, and I presently found that I could save half what he paid me. This was an additional fund for buying books. But I had another advantage in it. My brother and the rest going from the printing-house to their meals, I remained there alone, and, despatching presently my light repast, which often was no more than a bisket or a slice of bread, a handful of raisins or a tart from the pastry-cook's, and a glass of water, had the rest of the time till their return for study, in which I made the greater progress, from that greater clearness of head and quicker apprehension which usually attend temperance in eating and drinking.

There’s never been, she says, a wedding like it. The pastries, the roasts, the tortes, the honey cakes, the strudels, the breads, the jams and the jellies—all for her wedding! Now the wedding is over and Brokheh owns a fur stole and a noodle sieve.

One of the things I love most about Paris is the breakfast pastry also called viennoiserie. As you might have guessed, I have a small bread problem, okay, bread and cheese problem, all right, it’s really a bread, cheese, and wine problem. Heck, I should probably just move to Paris.

Ready for dessert?” Darius held the plate of tarts out to her. Nicole quickly swallowed the bread she’d just popped into her mouth and dabbed her lips with her napkin. “Yes. Thank you.” She reached for a strawberry one from the pastry plate, smiling shyly. He smiled back, and Nicole savored the ease that had built between them. “Wonderful,” he said, selecting a blackberry tart for himself. “Then perhaps you are also ready to tell me about the trouble you’re running away from.” Nicole’s gaze flew to his, the peace of the moment obliterated as effectively as a hunter’s shot blasting through a morning meadow.

And noted all the things he wished to fix up for the feast I think we’ll have a pastry, yes, of peas and onions, sage and cress I think we’ll have an egg soufflé or tartlet at the least I think we’ll have a roast of squash, full of flavor, nothing posh I think we’ll have a soup of greens with warm and toasty bread A meal of oats to warm the heart, I think would make a lovely start And jugs of wine with berries spiced the prefect shade of red

You choose to work». «For us!» «No, Tatiana, for you». «Well, who do you work for? Don’t you work for you?» «No,» said Alexander. «I work for you. I work so that I can build you a house that will please you. I work very hard so you don’t have to, because your life has been hard enough. I work so you can get pregnant; so you can cook and putter and pick Anthony up from school and drive him to baseball and chess club and guitar lessons and let him have a rock band in our new garage with Serge and Mary, and grow desert flowers in our backyard. I work so you can buy yourself whatever you want, all your stiletto heels and clingy clothes and pastry mixers. So you can have Tupperware parties and bake cakes and wear white gloves to lunch with your friends. So you can make bread every day for your family. So you will have nothing to do but cook and make love to your husband. I work so you can have an ice cream life.

It has now been many months, at the present writing, since I have had a nourishing meal, but I shall soon have one—a modest, private affair, all to myself. I have selected a few dishes, and made out a little bill of fare, which will go home in the steamer that precedes me, and be hot when I arrive—as follows: Radishes. Baked apples, with cream Fried oysters; stewed oysters. Frogs. American coffee, with real cream. American butter. Fried chicken, Southern style. Porter-house steak. Saratoga potatoes. Broiled chicken, American style. Hot biscuits, Southern style. Hot wheat-bread, Southern style. Hot buckwheat cakes. American toast. Clear maple syrup. Virginia bacon, broiled. Blue points, on the half shell. Cherry-stone clams. San Francisco mussels, steamed. Oyster soup. Clam Soup. Philadelphia Terapin soup. Oysters roasted in shell-Northern style. Soft-shell crabs. Connecticut shad. Baltimore perch. Brook trout, from Sierra Nevadas. Lake trout, from Tahoe. Sheep-head and croakers, from New Orleans. Black bass from the Mississippi. American roast beef. Roast turkey, Thanksgiving style. Cranberry sauce. Celery. Roast wild turkey. Woodcock. Canvas-back-duck, from Baltimore. Prairie liens, from Illinois. Missouri partridges, broiled. 'Possum. Coon. Boston bacon and beans. Bacon and greens, Southern style. Hominy. Boiled onions. Turnips. Pumpkin. Squash. Asparagus. Butter beans. Sweet potatoes. Lettuce. Succotash. String beans. Mashed potatoes. Catsup. Boiled potatoes, in their skins. New potatoes, minus the skins. Early rose potatoes, roasted in the ashes, Southern style, served hot. Sliced tomatoes, with sugar or vinegar. Stewed tomatoes. Green corn, cut from the ear and served with butter and pepper. Green corn, on the ear. Hot corn-pone, with chitlings, Southern style. Hot hoe-cake, Southern style. Hot egg-bread, Southern style. Hot light-bread, Southern style. Buttermilk. Iced sweet milk. Apple dumplings, with real cream. Apple pie. Apple fritters. Apple puffs, Southern style. Peach cobbler, Southern style Peach pie. American mince pie. Pumpkin pie. Squash pie. All sorts of American pastry. Fresh American fruits of all sorts, including strawberries which are not to be doled out as if they were jewelry, but in a more liberal way. Ice-water—not prepared in the ineffectual goblet, but in the sincere and capable refrigerator.

Salt can take a while to dissolve in foods that are low in water, so add it to bread dough early. Leave it out of Italian pasta dough altogether, allowing the salted water to do the work of seasoning as it cooks. Add it early to ramen and udon doughs to strengthen its gluten, as this will result in the desired chewiness. Add salt later to batters and doughs for cakes, pancakes, and delicate pastries to keep them tender, but make sure to whisk these mixes thoroughly so that the salt is evenly distributed before cooking.

Pastry-making, as every amateur baker fears, is as much about technique as ingredients. The rationale behind the well-known advice to keep the hands, implements and kitchen cool while making pastry, to use minimal water and to handle it lightly is obvious, now that we understand the process. Cool handling lengthens the time that the fat in the dough stays solid; using minimum amount of water reduces the gluten content and also allows the dough to be crisper; minimal handling also reduces the gluten, so we do not knead pastry dough as we do bread.

I meant to run down every road and up to every house if necessary. Movement conjured appetite, specific and sharp. For carne asada fries sweating in Styrofoam. For Australian fairy bread doused in sprinkles so plastic they'd outlast the coral reefs. For jian bing and soy milk and man tou strung each morning down Beijing's hutongs, where vendors were rumored to whiten their dough with lead paint, not fatal in such quantities, but sweet, addictive, you could cultivate a dangerous passion. Every artist needs a muse, the pastry chef had said, and it occurred to me that the muse might be myself.

The Indian lamb curry centered the meal as the main entree, surrounded with fragrant flat breads. Partridge compote steamed next to a fried savory forcemeat pastry made of garlic, parsley, tarragon, chives and beef suet enclosed in a buttery crust. The appetizer included oysters cut from their shell, sautéed, and then returned to be arranged in a bath of butter and dill. The footman reappeared, and while he set a second place, Farah counted the admittedly obscene amount of desserts. Perhaps they should have left out the cocoa sponge cake, or the little cream-and-fruit stuffed cornucopias with chocolate sauce. She absolutely couldn't have chosen between the almond cakes with the sherry reduction or the coriander Shrewsbury puffs or... the treacle and the vanilla creme brûlée.

We passed one couple who were practically horizontal over the pier railing. They didn’t stop. I bit my lip as we passed, trying to ignore the ache flowering in my lower belly. It had been humming there all night. “Remember when that was us?” Eric was watching the same couple with…was that longing in his gray eyes? He chewed absently on his lower lip for a minute and squeezed my hand a little harder. “A bit, yeah,” I said. “We had a little more style, though. You were never one for PDA, to start.” “I had you in that alley in Allston once. Behind the bakery, remember?” “Had me? What am I, a pastry?” The right side of his full mouth tugged up in a smirk. “What do you want me to say? I pounded you like bread dough?” “I believe the term is ‘fucked,’ sir,” I proclaimed. “It was a shag fest.

At the kneading trough in the bakehouse, he and Philip pummeled maslin dough until the dull-skinned clods stretched and sprang. A scowling Vanian showed them how to make the airy-light manchet bread that the upper servants ate, then the pastes for meat-coffins and pie crusts. They baked flaking florentine rounds and set them with peaches in snow-cream or neats' tongues in jelly. They stood over the ovens to watch cat's tongue biscuits, waiting for the moment before they browned. John mixed the paste for dariole-cases, working the mixture with his fingertips, then filled them with sack creams and studded them with roasted pistachio nuts. In the fish house across the servants' yard, the two boys scaled and cleaned the yellow-green carp from the Heron Boy's ponds, unpacked barrels of herrings and hauled sides of yellow salt-fish onto the benches and beat them with the knotted end of a rope.

The sauce. Memories flooded into her brain. It was zabaione. She had a sudden vision of herself, that first night in Tomasso's apartment, licking sauce from her fingers. Coffee. The next taste was coffee. Memories of Gennaro's espresso, and mornings in bed with a cup of cappuccino... but what was this? Bread soaked in sweet wine. And nuts--- a thin layer of hazelnut paste---and then fresh white peaches, sweet as sex itself, and then a layer of black chocolate so strong and bitter she almost stopped dead. There was more sweetness beyond it, though, a layer of pastry flavored with blackberries, and, right at the center, a single tiny fig. She put down the spoon, amazed. It was all gone. She had eaten it without being aware of eating, her mind in a reverie. "Did you like it?" She looked up. Somehow she wasn't surprised. "What was it?" she asked. "It doesn't have a name," Bruno said. "It's just... it's just the food of love.

The next day, Angelina was tending a fresh pot of red gravy on the stove. She was going to make Veal Parmigiana for dinner, to be accompanied by pasta, fresh bread, and salad. She left the sauce on low and went to put the finishing touches on the pie she had planned. Earlier, she had made 'a vol-au-vent'- the word means "windblown" in French- a pastry that was as light and feathery as a summer breeze, that Angelina had adapted to serve as a fluffy, delicately crispy pie crust. The crust had cooled and formed a burnished auburn crown around the rim of the pie plate. She took a bowl of custardy creme anglaise out of the refrigerator and began loading it into a pie-filling gadget that looked like a big plastic syringe. With it, she then injected copious amounts of the glossy creme into the interior of the pie without disturbing the perfect, golden-crusty dome. That done, she heated the chocolate and cream on the stove top to create a chocolate ganache, which she would use as icing on the pie, just to take it completely over the top.

working from the center of the dough out, gently roll it back and forth until it stretches to 15 inches long. Place the loaves, seam-side down, on the kitchen towel dusted with flour and cover with plastic wrap or a damp kitchen towel. Let the loaves rise at room temperature for the final time, until they have doubled in size, about 35—45 minutes. Meanwhile, preheat the oven to 475°F. Carefully place the loaves on a baking sheet. Brush them with water using a pastry brush. With a sharp razor blade and swift motions, make 4 or 5 diagonal slashes along the length of each baguette. To do this successfully, do not drag the entire edge of the blade through the dough—use just the tip. Just before you are ready to slide the baking sheet into the oven, spray the inside of the oven with water using a spray bottle or plant mister and close the door immediately. This will create steam, which promotes a good crust. Put the bread in the oven and spray the walls of the oven two more times within the first minute of baking. Bake for 15—20 minutes or until the bread makes a hollow sound when you knock on the bottom of it with your knuckles. Transfer the bread to a rack and allow it to cool before slicing (or tearing apiece off).

With the heady scent of yeast in the air, it quickly becomes clear that Langer's hasn't changed at all. The black-and-white-checked linoleum floor, the tin ceiling, the heavy brass cash register, all still here. The curved-front glass cases with their wood counter, filled with the same offerings: the butter cookies of various shapes and toppings, four kinds of rugelach, mandel bread, black-and-white cookies, and brilliant-yellow smiley face cookies. Cupcakes, chocolate or vanilla, with either chocolate or vanilla frosting piled on thick. Brownies, with or without nuts. Cheesecake squares. Coconut macaroons. Four kinds of Danish. The foil loaf pans of the bread pudding made from the day-old challahs. And on the glass shelves behind the counter, the breads. Challahs, round with raisins and braided either plain or with sesame. Rye, with and without caraway seeds. Onion kuchen, sort of strange almost-pizza-like bread that my dad loves, and the smaller, puffier onion rolls that I prefer. Cloverleaf rolls. Babkas. The wood-topped cafe tables with their white chairs, still filled with the little gossipy ladies from the neighborhood, who come in for their mandel bread and rugelach, for their Friday challah and Sunday babka, and take a moment to share a Danish or apple dumpling and brag about grandchildren.

Over the next two hours, we sampled from cheese plates, charcuterie platters, salads, roasted vegetables, tarts, and two risottos. I knew we were nowhere near done, but I was glad I'd worn a stretchy, forgiving dress. Next came the pastas, spring vegetables tossed with prawns and cavatappi, a beautiful macaroni and cheese, and a lasagna with duck ragù. It didn't end there---Chloé began to bring out the meats---a beautiful pork loin in a hazelnut cream sauce, a charming piece of bone-in chicken breast coated in cornflakes, a peppery filet mignon, and a generous slice of meat loaf with a tangy glaze. My favorite was the duck in marionberry sauce---the skin had been rubbed with an intoxicating blend of spices, the meat finished with a sweet, tangy sauce. It tasted like summer and Oregon all at once. We planned to open in mid-August, so the duck with fresh berries would be a perfect item for the opening menu. While I took measured bites from most of the plates, I kept the duck near and continued to enjoy the complex flavors offered by the spices and berry. Next came the desserts, which Clementine brought out herself. She presented miniatures of her pastry offerings---a two-bite strawberry shortcake with rose liqueur-spiked whipped cream, a peach-and-brown-sugar bread pudding served on the end of a spoon, a dark chocolate torte with a hint of cinnamon, and a trio of melon ball-sized scoops of gelato.

A depachika is like nothing else. It is the endless bounty of a hawker's bazaar, but with Japanese civility. It is Japanese food and foreign food, sweet and savory. The best depachika have more than a hundred specialized stands and cannot be understood on a single visit. I felt as though I had a handle on Life Supermarket the first time I shopped there, but I never felt entirely comfortable in a depachika. They are the food equivalent of Borges's "The Library of Babel": if it's edible, someone is probably selling it, but how do you find it? How do you resist the cakes and spices and Chinese delis and bento boxes you'll pass on the way? At the Isetan depachika, in Shinjuku, French pastry god Pierre Hermé sells his signature cakes and macarons. Not to be outdone, Franco-Japanese pastry god Sadaharu Aoki sells his own nearby. Tokyo is the best place in the world to eat French pastry. The quality and selection are as good as or better than in Paris, and the snootiness factor is zero. I wandered by a collection of things on sticks: yakitori at one stand, kushiage at another. Kushiage are panko-breaded and fried foods on sticks. At any depachika, you can buy kushiage either golden and cooked, or pale and raw to fry at home. Neither option is terribly appetizing: the fried stuff is losing crispness by the second, and who wants to deep-fry in a poorly ventilated Tokyo apartment in the summer? But the overall effect of the display is mesmerizing: look at all the different foods they've put on sticks! Pork, peppers, mushrooms, squash, taro, and two dozen other little cubes.

But this isn't standard Japanese picnic fare: not a grain of rice or a pickled plum in sight. Instead, they fill the varnished wooden tables with thick slices of crusty bread, wedges of weeping cheese, batons of hard salamis, and slices of cured ham. To drink, bottles of local white wine, covered in condensation, and high-alcohol microbews rich in hops and local iconography. From the coastline we begin our slow, dramatic ascent into the mountains of Hokkaido. The colors bleed from broccoli to banana to butternut to beet as we climb, inching ever closer to the heart of autumn. My neighbors, an increasingly jovial group of thirtysomethings with a few words of English to spare, pass me a glass of wine and a plate of cheese, and I begin to feel the fog dissipate. We stop at a small train station in the foothills outside of Ginzan, and my entire car suddenly empties. A husband-and-wife team has set up a small stand on the train platform, selling warm apple hand pies made with layers of flaky pastry and apples from their orchard just outside of town. I buy one, take a bite, then immediately buy there more. Back on the train, young uniformed women flood the cars with samples of Hokkaido ice cream. The group behind me breaks out in song, a ballad, I'm later told, dedicated to the beauty of the season. Everywhere we go, from the golden fields of empty cornstalks to the dense forest thickets to the rushing rivers that carve up this land like the fat of a Wagyu steak, groups of camouflaged photographers lie in wait, tripods and shutter releases ready, hoping to capture the perfect photo of the SL Niseko steaming its way through the hills of Hokkaido.

But every once in a great while, the pull of her heritage would hit her, and Grand-mere would cook something real. I could never figure out what it was that triggered her, but I would come home from school to a glorious aroma. An Apfel-strudel, with paper-thin pastry wrapped around chunks of apples and nuts and raisins. The thick smoked pork chops called Kasseler ribs, braised in apple cider and served with caraway-laced sauerkraut. A rich baked dish with sausages, duck, and white beans. And hoppel poppel. A traditional German recipe handed down from her mother. I haven't even thought of it in years. But when my mom left, it was the only thing I could think to do for Joe, who was confused and heartbroken, and it was my best way to try to get something in him that didn't come in a cardboard container. I never got to learn at her knee the way many granddaughters learn to cook; she never shared the few recipes that were part of my ancestry. But hoppel poppel is fly by the seat of your pants, it doesn't need a recipe; it's a mess, just like me. It's just what the soul needs. I grab an onion, and chop half of it. I cut up the cold cooked potatoes into chunks. I pull one of my giant hot dogs out, and cut it into thick coins. Grand-mere used ham, but Joe loved it with hot dogs, and I do too. Plus I don't have ham. I whisk six eggs in a bowl, and put some butter on to melt. The onions and potatoes go in, and while they are cooking, I grate a pile of Swiss cheese, nicking my knuckle, but catching myself before I bleed into my breakfast. By the time I get a Band-Aid on it, the onions have begun to burn a little, but I don't care. I dump in the hot dogs and hear them sizzle, turning down the heat so that I don't continue to char the onions. When the hot dogs are spitting and getting a little browned, I add the eggs and stir up the whole mess like a scramble. When the eggs are pretty much set, I sprinkle the cheese over the top and take it off the heat, letting the cheese melt while I pop three slices of bread in the toaster. When the toast is done, I butter it, and eat the whole mess on the counter, using the crispy buttered toast to scoop chunk of egg, potato, and hot dog into my mouth, strings of cheese hanging down my chin. Even with the burnt onions, and having overcooked the eggs to rubbery bits, it is exactly what I need.

STRAWBERRY SHORTBREAD BAR COOKIES Preheat oven to 350 degrees F., rack in the middle position.   Hannah’s 1st Note: These are really easy and fast to make. Almost everyone loves them, including Baby Bethie, and they’re not even chocolate! 3 cups all purpose flour (pack it down in the cup when you measure it) ¾ cup powdered (confectioner’s) sugar (don’t sift un- less it’s got big lumps) 1 and ½ cups salted butter, softened (3 sticks, 12 ounces, ¾ pound) 1 can (21 ounces) strawberry pie filling (I used Comstock)*** *** - If you can’t find strawberry pie filling, you can use another berry filling, like raspberry, or blueberry. You can also use pie fillings of larger fruits like peach, apple, or whatever. If you do that, cut the fruit pieces into smaller pieces so that each bar cookie will have some. I just put my apple or peach pie filling in the food processor with the steel blade and zoop it up just short of being pureed. I’m not sure about using lemon pie filling. I haven’t tried that yet. FIRST STEP: Mix the flour and the powdered sugar together in a medium-sized bowl. Cut in the softened butter with a two knives or a pastry cutter until the resulting mixture resembles bread crumbs or coarse corn meal. (You can also do this in a food processor using cold butter cut into chunks that you layer between the powdered sugar and flour mixture and process with the steel blade, using an on-and-off pulsing motion.) Spread HALF of this mixture (approximately 3 cups will be fine) into a greased (or sprayed with Pam or another nonstick cooking spray) 9-inch by 13-inch pan. (That’s a standard size rectangular cake pan.) Bake at 350 degrees F. for 12 to 15 minutes, or until the edges are just beginning to turn golden brown. Remove the pan to a wire rack or a cold burner on the stove, but DON’T TURN OFF THE OVEN! Let the crust cool for 5 minutes. SECOND STEP: Spread the pie filling over the top of the crust you just baked. Sprinkle the crust with the other half of the crust mixture you saved. Try to do this as evenly as possible. Don’t worry about little gaps in the topping. It will spread out and fill in a bit as it bakes. Gently press the top crust down with the flat blade of a metal spatula. Bake the cookie bars at 350 degrees F. for another 30 to 35 minutes, or until the top is lightly golden. Turn off the oven and remove the pan to a wire rack or a cold burner to cool completely. When the bars are completely cool, cover the pan with foil and refrigerate them until you’re ready to cut them. (Chilling them makes them easier to cut.) When you’re ready to serve them, cut the Strawberry Shortbread Bar Cookies into brownie-sized pieces, arrange them on a pretty platter, and if you like, sprinkle the top with extra powdered sugar.

They were fed flaky pastries filled with beef and spices, a peppery stew over couscous, breads stuffed with honey and almonds.

avoid refined carbohydrates: white sugar, honey, high-fructose corn syrup, cookies, cakes, pastries, white bread, crackers, potato chips, french fries, commercial waffles, candy, donuts, and many dry breakfast cereals (juice-sweetened cereals listing whole grains as a primary ingredient are okay, but those with added sugar, evaporated cane juice, or honey are likely to raise your levels of tumor-fueling blood sugar and insulin). Instead, emphasize whole grains such as those above, as well as complex carbs such as vegetables, legumes, beans, and fresh fruit. If you crave something sweet, try dried fruit, rice syrup, barley malt, agave, kiwi sweetener, stevia, FruitSource, or maple syrup.

Is dessert okay? Maybe some kind of bread pudding with homemade ice cream---simple, but hearty and good?" We all nodded. "I'd like to do a raw fish appetizer," said Bald Joe. "Maybe a crudo with hamachi?" "And I'd like to do an entrée," Vanilla Joe said. "A beef dish. Which means our other entrée should probably be seafood." I nodded. "I can do a slow-cooked black bass." We'd done one at the Green Onion that I loved. It had a preserved tomato broth and cauliflower and a pile of nutty grains. I could do farro. That left Bald Joe and me to divide another appetizer and a dessert between us. "I can do a dessert," I offered, thinking about a deconstructed baklava, but Vanilla Joe shook his head. "No. Joe here is already doing one appetizer; we can't make him do two. He'll get overwhelmed." "I really don't mind," said Bald Joe. "As long as Sadie helps me put everything together. I'd rather do an appetizer. I'm not great at pastry." Vanilla Joe shook his head before I could speak up and say of course I would help. "Joe, I want you doing a dessert, so Sadie, you pick an appetizer." Fine. Whatever. I hashed it out with the rest of the team, decided I would make a sunchoke soup with bacon and thyme. Vanilla Joe squinted at me. "I didn't think bacon was kosher." "I don't cook kosher food," I explained patiently. I actually didn't mind; I was used to it. Kosher cooking had a long list of rules: no pork, no shellfish, no combining meat and dairy, among many others. Grandma Ruth had kept kosher, and I had total respect for everyone who did, but it wasn't me.

I stopped worrying about the precise amounts of tiny caviar pearls that went atop each pillow of cheese, and started looking around me to see what the other chefs were doing. As I knew, Vanilla Joe on my left was handing out his homemade pigs in a blanket, his hand-ground sausages wrapped in what looked like hand-rolled pastry, all served with a variety of dipping sauces he must also have made himself (including vanilla aioli, obviously). The judges were at his station now. From the big, cheesy grin on Vanilla Joe's mustached mouth and the rhapsodizing tones of Charles Weston's and Maz's voices that floated my way, they loved it. I scowled. On my other side, Kaitlyn looked to be handing out arancini balls atop a bed of crisp greens and pickled vegetables. Probably tasty, but hard to eat in one bite---the judges always took that into account. She was laughing and talking with each guest, assembling her dishes in a way that looked totally effortless; was she even sweating at all? Guests wandered by with charred meat on a skewer, alternating with ripe chunks of watermelon and tomato. In the distance I could see Kel cooking up spoon bread with what looked like mushrooms. Megan was frying dumplings, which made my mouth water thinking about the inner mixture of pork and cabbage and water chestnuts. When I saw somebody eating takoyaki balls, I assumed that was Bald Joe's work----after all, the tender balls of fried dough and octopus were a traditional Japanese street food. Somebody else had soup shooters.

Mounted on a bay horse (or, according to some accounts, a palomino) with clipped tail and ears and a plow-horse’s harness, the abbot’s representative carried a whip, a seed bag of wheat, and a basket filled with 120 rissoles. These were crescent-shaped pastries made of rye flour, stuffed with minced veal cooked in oil. A dog followed, also with clipped ears and tail, and with a rissole tied around his neck. The agent circled a stone cross at the entrance to the court three times, cracking his whip on each tour, dismounted and knelt at the lion platform, and, if each detail of equipment and performance was exactly right so far, was allowed to proceed. He then mounted the platform, kissed the lion, and deposited the rissoles plus twelve loaves of bread and three portions of wine as his homage. The Sire de Coucy took a third of the offerings, distributed the rest among the assembled bailiffs and town magistrates, and stamped the document of homage with a seal representing a mitered abbot with the feet of a goat.

she could sell in the café provisions she baked in her own time with a shelf life longer than pastries. When she thought of it there had been a rush of certainty she could do it, and a prickling of pride in having conceived a way to make money on her own. It would double at least what she was making now. Without Nicholas it might never had occurred to her. The other day he had stuck a label, which he had found in the junk drawer, on a plastic-wrapped loaf of banana bread. He wrote on the label with a marker, "From the Summer Kitchen Bakery." She had found the gesture adorable at the time and hugged him, but something about it had evidently started percolating in the recesses of her mind, and now she was lapping at the brew like someone tasting it for the first time and wondering how she had never before tasted such ambition. She was thinking of cellophane-packaged chocolate brownies and caramel blondies and orange-and-almond biscotti and pear and oat slices and butter shortbread and Belgian chocolate truffles, marmalades, chutney, relishes, and jellies beautified in jars with black-and-white gingham hats and black-and-white ribbon tied above skirted brims. She could even sell a muesli mix she had developed, full of organic cranberries and nuts and the zest of unwaxed lemons. And she wouldn't change Nicholas's label at all. A child's handwriting impressed that the goods were homemade. She would have his design printed professionally, in black and white, too, old world, like the summer kitchen itself.

Phillip had shown her where everything was stored, how to anticipate what customers would desire, and how to slip something different into the menu- something that would make them think, Hmm, that sounds interesting. She learned how to maintain an inventory of supplies, which suppliers could be relied on in a pinch, and how to monitor food costs. This last was a real lesson for Nora. She had never examined the invoices for the oils and butters, the creams, the bricks of chocolate charged automatically to her credit card. Now it was imperative that every nugget of sugar be accounted. Everything leftover could be turned into something new. A few extra leaves of fresh organic sage remained after the bakers had made enough herb loaves? Turn them into sage ice cream, to serve with twists of caramel. A few loaves came out of the oven too misshapen to sell? Break them up and make chocolate bread pudding. Soon enough she was not only costing out individual pastries, but enjoying pastry baking more for doing it. It completed the very preciseness of the art, and pushed her to be even more creative.

With a clattering of chairs, upended shell cases, benches, and ottomans, Pirate’s mob gather at the shores of the great refectory table, a southern island well across a tropic or two from chill Corydon Throsp’s mediaeval fantasies, crowded now over the swirling dark grain of its walnut uplands with banana omelets, banana sandwiches, banana casseroles, mashed bananas molded into the shape of a British lion rampant, blended with eggs into batter for French toast, squeezed out a pastry nozzle across the quivering creamy reaches of a banana blancmange to spell out the words C’est magnifique, mais ce n’est pas la guerre (attributed to a French observer during the Charge of the Light Brigade) which Pirate has appropriated as his motto . . . tall cruets of pale banana syrup to pour oozing over banana waffles, a giant glazed crock where diced bananas have been fermenting since the summer with wild honey and muscat raisins, up out of which, this winter morning, one now dips foam mugsfull of banana mead . . . banana croissants and banana kreplach, and banana oatmeal and banana jam and banana bread, and bananas flamed in ancient brandy Pirate brought back last year from a cellar in the Pyrenees also containing a clandestine radio transmitter. . . .

A matter of despair as regards bad butter is, that at the tables where it is used, it stands sentinel at the door to bar your way to every other food. You turn from your dreadful half-slice of bread, which fills your mouth with bitterness, to your beef-steak, which proves virulen with the same poison; you think to take refuge in vegetable diet, and find the butter in the string beans, and polluting the innocence of early peas; it is in the corn, in the succotash, in the squash; the beets swim in it, and the onions have it poured over them. Hungry and miserable, you think to solace yourself at the dessert; but the pastry is cursed, the cake is acrid with the same plague. You are ready to howl with despair and your misery is great upon you--especially if this is a table where you have taken board for three months with your delicate wife and four small children. Your case is dreadful and it is hopeless because of long use and habit rendered your host is incapable of discovering what is the matter. ‘Don’t like the butter, sir? I assure you I paid an extra price for it, and it’s the very best in the market. I looked over as many as a hundred tubs, and picked out this one.’ You are dumb, but not less despairing

It seems that you may eat all the eggs you want cooked any conceivable way, but you must not take them in combination with the yeast of bread and the acids of meat. You may eat all the starch you please at one meal; but you must not take it in combination with the acids of meat or albumen. You must keep the bread and potatoes and starchy things confined to one meal. Then for dinner you may have any kind of meat you want, but you must take it with vegetables that are not starchy. You must cut off the bread, beans, potatoes, any starch. You must confine the desserts to fruits and jellos and leave out the pastry. It is simple; it is easy. Merely a slightly different arrangement in combinations of the same things you have been eating all your life.

Muffins, teacakes, tea rolls, morning rolls, batch rolls, stottie cakes, wigs, birdies, huffkins, oven-bottom muffins, baps and cobs... It says something about us as a race, doesn't it? (But, frankly, I'm not sure what.) HORACE DAVIDSON, Ripon

she had once whispered to Cordelia, sprinkling a pinch of pepper over a dish. “Food can heal all manner of maladies.” Cook would stir up herby stews to soothe hurt feelings, bake honey cakes to mend broken hearts, make crinkle-crusted pies for courage and melting-cheese pastries to bolster tired souls. Her cucumber soup could cool a hot temper and her bread-and-butter pudding inspired kindness in even the grumpiest person. Her roast potatoes seemed to help with everything.

In Southern Ground (2021), Lapidus’s seminal book on southern grains, growers, and bakers, she writes, “It is through breads and pastries made with that flour that bakeries are making an economic and social impact on their communities. And it is through flavor and story that they engage their customers in reclaiming this fundamental piece of a sustainable food system.

When Ada woke up the next morning, the house was filled with unusual smells. Her aunt had prepared breakfast – or a banquet, more like it. Grilled halloumi with za’atar, baked feta with honey, sesame halva, stuffed tomatoes, green olives with fennel, bread rolls with black olive spread, fried peppers, spicy sausage, spinach börek, puff-pastry cheese straws, pomegranate molasses with tahini, hawthorn jelly, quince jam and a large pan of poached eggs with garlic yogurt were all neatly arrayed on the table.

On this particular day, the family had planned to take a walk along Lord Street, which was the main shopping boulevard in the centre of town. Della loved the buzz of the town centre and watched in awe as the horse-drawn carriages flew by with men hanging off all sides. The smell of sweet pastries and freshly baked bread from the boulangerie mixed with the stench of oil, hot dirt and horses from the street, and Della was intoxicated. She tilted her chin up towards the sun and felt its warm kisses glaze over her cheeks. After a deep breath, she overheard her mother complaining. "Where is that girl?" Della heard a few sharp footsteps heading in her direction before a firm grip took hold of her arm. "Off in fantasy land again, I see!" her mother huffed as she dragged her into Mr Lacey's shoe store. Della day-dreamed as she was forced to try on basically every pair of shoes in the shop, even ones that weren't in her size. It seemed her mother was aware of how painfully insufferable she found shoe shopping and wanted to drag it out as long as possible. After leaving the store, each with a pair of shoes they didn't like, Della and Mabel were instructed by their mother to collect everything else on the shopping list. She had bumped into a friend and made it clear that she favoured spending the day gossiping and tittle-tattling, over trudging her unruly daughters through town. She handed them a small leather purse that jingled with coins and sent them on their way. Della perked up with this request since, like her mother, she much preferred their time apart. Spending time with Mabel, on the other hand, was at the top of her list of favourite things to do. Together, the two sisters flew out of their mother's sight and headed towards the most central point in town.

The sun glared down upon the thick cobblestone walls, leaving stark, vivid shadows contrasting with the blinding bright reflections. The spiked shadows of the portcullis loomed like the twisted teeth of the long lost dragons. [...] Tantalising smells wafted from the marketplace where colourful stalls selling everything imaginable sat in a confused muddle like a group of baby birds within their nest, the walls of the castle. [...] Enticing scents wafted between the stalls as bread and other pastries were made, adding their strength to the already vivid smells of the castle. Rising above the bustle below like four eagles rising on an updraft, four towers stood stark against the sunlit sky giving an overwhelming sense of power, control, and beauty.

What do you think,’ he starts, ‘Danes call their pastries?’ He holds one up for inspection. ‘Sorry?’ ‘Well, they can’t call them “Danishes” can they?’ ‘Good point.’ In the great tradition of British repression, we ignore the potential futility and loneliness of our new existence and seize on this new topic with enthusiasm. Lego Man gets Googling and I crack open the spine of our sole guidebook in search of insight. ‘Ooh, look!’ I point, ‘apparently, they’re known as “wienerbrød” or “Vienna bread” after a strike by Danish bakers when employers hired in some Austrians, who, as it turned out, made exceedingly good cakes,’ I paraphrase. ‘Then when the pastry travelled to America—’ ‘—How?’ ‘What?’ ‘How did it travel?’ ‘I don’t know – by ship. With its own special pastry passport. Anyway, when it made it to the US, it was referred to as a “Danish” and the name stuck.

Mariko had given her notorious sweet tooth full rein. Lex stared at the table of food and could already feel the sugar eating cavities into her enamel. Banana nut bread, sesame-crusted Chinese doughnuts, almond cookies, fruit cocktail and almond custard, steamed egg cake, even honey walnut prawns. On the non-Asian side was rum cake, blueberry pecan muffins, strawberry almond rolls, and croissants.

According to Britt, Hector was spending the last few weeks before Stray opened perfecting some mad scientist's ice cream cone, cacao custard in a cup constructed out of malt or something equally odd, plus a salted, buttered popcorn ice cream. He'd created some kind of hot fried pastry with a cool Meyer lemon center, served with Thai basil cream and a sparkling drift of sugared zest. Britt had described them as otherworldly beignets.

Hector would spend a week perfecting a sesame grapefruit mousse that Britt had described as the union of grainy and puckering, but then ditch the mousse and debut a flawless napoleon of crackling pastry layered with coconut and kaffir lime custard. He'd sprinkled it with a vivid emerald powder that sent Leo's mouth alight when he tasted it, a fragrant tartness that intensified the creamy custard and the buttered shards of crust. It turned out to be sugared lime leaf powder.

During the afternoons the only thing that seems to hold my interest is baking. I go through my recipe books. Soft-centered biscuits, cakes slathered with icing, cupcakes piled up in pyramids on round plates. Pete doesn't say anything, although every morning he takes out the rubbish bags filled with stale muffins and half-eaten banana loaves. The only thoughts that seem to distract me from babies are those memories of Paris. A gray cold, tall men, black coffee, sweet pastries, Mama laughing, with her hair and scarf streaming behind her. The smell of chocolate and bread.

Making dinner for Wayne is either the easiest thing or the hardest thing on the planet, depending on how you look at it. After all, Wayne's famous Eleven are neither difficult to procure nor annoying to prepare. They are just. So. Boring. Roasted chicken Plain hamburgers Steak cooked medium Pork chops Eggs scrambled dry Potatoes, preferably fries, chips, baked, or mashed, and not with anything fancy mixed in Chili, preferably Hormel canned Green beans Carrots Corn Iceberg lettuce with ranch dressing That's it. The sum total of what Wayne will put into his maw. He doesn't even eat fricking PIZZA for chrissakes. Not including condiments, limited to ketchup and yellow mustard and Miracle Whip, and any and all forms of baked goods... when it comes to breads and pastries and desserts he has the palate of a gourmand, no loaf goes untouched, no sweet unexplored. It saves him, only slightly, from being a complete food wasteland. And he has no idea that it is strange to everyone that he will eat apple pie and apple cake and apple charlotte and apple brown Betty and apple dumplings and fritters and muffins and doughnuts and crisp and crumble and buckle, but will not eat AN APPLE.

If just one more crazy thing had happened, I'd have started mumbling about pufferfish cookies: how to align the eggs, milk and sugar pixel by pixel on the crafting table in a purrfect way to achieve a five star rating from the International Minecraftian Baker's Society, in not only consistency but form and texture, the lightness of the bread, crisp yet never crumbling, with each tiny cube of sugar and baked pufferfish spread evenly throughout the biscuits to achieve a pastry both magnificent to the eye and simply bursting with flavor. But then I wasn't sure if the International Minecraftian Baker's Society had such a refined taste as a Nether Kitten's, and soon I began to wonder if any of them would appreciate the elegance of a cookie made of equal parts sugar and fish.

It would take, he calculated, more than an hour. First a cream-filled swan and a coffee at Tonolo, then the walk to Campo San Barnaba and the store that sold the good cheese and the bread from Puglia. He had fled his office in search of peace and quiet, seeking some evidence that sanity still existed in a world of violence and crime, and his wife suggested they spend an hour eating pastry and buying a loaf of bread. He leaped at the chance.

We'll start with oysters on the half shell and homemade salt-and-pepper potato chips, just to whet the appetites. Then a wedge salad with homemade ranch dressing and crumbled peppered bacon. For the main course, a slow-roasted prime rib, twice-baked potatoes, creamed spinach, tomato pudding baked into tomato halves, and fresh popovers instead of bread. For dessert, the world's most perfect chocolate cream pie. Marcy and I went on a Sunday boondoggle to Milwaukee last year and had lunch at this terrific gastropub called Palomino, and while the whole meal was spectacular, notably the fried chicken, the chocolate cream pie was life changing for us both. Marcy used her pastry-chef wiles to get the recipe, and we both love any excuse to make it. It's serious comfort food, and I can't think of a better way to ring in the New Year.

Through the morning and into the afternoon, the customers continued to come into the bakery, buying boxes and bags of green alligator bread, leprechaun-hat cookies, shamrock-shaped coffee cakes, Irish soda bread, and hot cross buns.

A dinner party would not be satisfied with ices and rice puddings. I tried to think what Mr Roland would have done. At least an impressive gateau. I thumbed through the cookery books. Mille-feuilles cake à la chantilly. Yes, I could do that. I could always guarantee that pastry would turn out well. And oranges were abundant here. An orange cream served in orange shells? That seemed doable, too. And for a third? I thought of a bread and butter pudding, to remind them of home, but alas we had no stale bread. This was one of the disadvantages of being in someone else's kitchen. So I decided I couldn't go wrong with profiteroles- who doesn't like them?

There was a stampede to the food- panzanella with tomatoes and bread, every conceivable variety of pasta, grilled sausages, fresh fish roasted in foil, Napoleon pastries and reginatta made with creamy half-melted ice cream.

Then I opened a door of dull brown wood, and a breath of warm, fragrant air struck me. I stood on the threshold of a kitchen with red poppies painted around the rim of its walls, and wide windows whose lacy white curtains glowed with morning light. It looked as if the cooks had just vanished, for oatmeal bubbled on the stove next to a pan of sizzling sausages, mushrooms, and capers, while on the table a fresh-baked loaf of bread sat fragrant next to a little dish of olives and a pile of pastries.

SOME PASTRY TERMS Chef de pâtissier: pastry chef Gâteau: rich, elaborate sponge cake that can be molded into shapes, typically containing layers of crème, fruit, or nuts Pâtisserie(s): pastry/pastries Brioche(s): a soft, rich bread with a high egg and butter content Pain aux raisins: a flaky pastry filled with raisins and custard Chaussons aux pommes: French apple turnovers Pâte à choux: a light, buttery puff pastry dough Éclair: oblong desserts made of choux pastry filled with cream and topped with icing (often chocolate) Tarte au citron: lemon tart Macaron: a meringue-based confectionary sandwich filled with various flavored ganache, creams, or jams Croquembouche: a cone-shaped tower of confection created out of caramel-dipped, cream-filled pastry puffs and swathed in spun sugar threads, often served at French weddings or on special occasions Saint-Honoré: a dessert named for the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs Pâte feuilletée: a light, flaky puff pastry Vanilla crème pâtissière: vanilla pastry cream Hazelnut crème chiboust: a pastry cream lightened with Italian meringue Paris-brest: a wheel-shaped dessert made of pâte à choux and filled with praline cream. Created in 1910 by chef Louis Durand to commemorate the Paris-Brest, a bicycle race.

Bubbles enters with a plate overflowing with rugelach. The three of us fall silent as we indulge in the small snail-shaped pastries of tender cream-cheese-infused dough wrapped around various fillings: one with walnuts and cinnamon, one bursting with chocolate, one with a thick, sweet poppy seed paste, and one with apricot jam that has been bumped up with some chewy bits of diced dried apricots.

Except for the coconut cake (filled with Meyer lemon curd and glazed with brown sugar), most of the desserts she made for Walter were not her best or most original, but they were exemplars of their kind: portly, solid-citizen desserts, puddings of rice, bread, and noodles-sweets that the Pilgrims and other humble immigrants who had scraped together their prototypes would have bartered in a Mayflower minute for Greenie's blood-orange mousse, pear ice cream, or tiny white-chocolate eclairs. Walter had also commissioned a deep-dish apple pie, a strawberry marble cheesecake, and a layer cake he asked her to create exclusively for him. "Everybody expects one of those, you know, death-by-chocolate things on a menu like mine, but what I want is massacre by chocolate, execution by chocolate- firing squad by chocolate!" he told her. So that very night, after tucking George in bed, Greenie had returned to the kitchen where she made her living, in a basement two blocks from her home, and stayed up till morning to birth a four-layer cake so dense and muscular that even Walter, who could have benched a Shetland pony, dared not lift it with a single hand. It was the sort of dessert that appalled Greenie on principle, but it also embodied a kind of uberprosperity, a transgressive joy, flaunting the potential heft of butter, that Protean substance as wondrous and essential to a pastry chef as fire had been to early man. Walter christened the cake Apocalypse Now; Greenie held her tongue. By itself, this creation doubled the amount of cocoa she ordered from her supplier every month. After it was on his menu for a week, Walter bet her a lobster dinner that before the year was out, Gourmet would request the recipe, putting both of them on a wider culinary map.

Three square tiers of hazelnut cake filled with caramel mousse and sliced poached pears, sealed with vanilla buttercream scented with pear eau-de-vie. It's covered in a smooth expanse of ivory fondant decorated with what appear to be natural branches of pale green dogwood but are actually gum paste and chocolate, and with almost-haphazard sheer spheres of silvery blown sugar, as if a child came by with a bottle of bubbles and they landed on the cake. On the top, in lieu of the traditional bride and groom, is a bottle of Dexter's favorite Riesling in a bow tie and a small three-tier traditional wedding cake sporting a veil, both made out of marzipan. It took me the better part of the last three weeks to make this cake. Not to mention the loaves of banana bread, the cellophane bags of pine nut shortbread cookies, and the little silver boxes of champagne truffles in the gift bags. And the vanilla buttermilk panna cottas we're serving with balsamic-macerated berries as the pre-dessert before the cake. And the hand-wrapped caramels and shards of toffee and dark-chocolate-covered candied ginger slices that will be served with the coffee.

The Italians are generally sociable people. For many, a shopping expedition is traditionally a family occasion and a time to meet friends, browse through the latest fashion designs, and perhaps enjoy a meal at a restaurant. Despite the growing number of out-of-town supermarkets, many Italians still prefer to buy fresh food each day from the local market and stores. Food stores tend to open early, often at seven o’clock in the morning, and close late, perhaps at eight in the evening. However, they close for a long meal break, between about one o’clock and half past three in the afternoon. The food markets are noisy and colorful, and customers like to pick over the goods for the best quality. Fresh bread, fruit and vegetables, meat, cheese, and salami are usually on the shopping list. In most towns there are specialist food stores selling fish, smoked meats, dairy produce, or sweets and pastries.

Sophie's ability to create things in the kitchen was unlike anything I had ever seen. It was a skill that came naturally, an innate knowledge that only she possessed, with an end result that was nothing short of magnificent. In the span of half a day, the blue kitchen counter would be covered with whole vanilla cakes, the edges moist and slightly crumbling, bowls of fudge frosting accented with a splash of espresso, zucchini bread studded with pineapple and carrots and walnuts, even peanut brittle made with a combination of brown sugar and toffee. She created everything from scratch; each recipe an original, tried again and again until the proportions were perfect.

I want to have a case of breads over there- whole wheat, rye- and English muffins, and cranberry-nut, blueberry-lemon, and white chocolate raspberry muffins over there. I want a table in the middle filled with nothing but cookies- the dark-chocolate-walnut-toffee ones, coconut macaroons, peanut butter drops with the little Hershey's Kisses in the middle, and sugar cookies. And then on the left, I'm thinking pies: apple, peach, and cherry daily, and maybe chocolate cream espresso for special occasions. Plus, I want to have a wall for all different kinds of specials. Maybe a certain bread- like Irish soda bread for St. Patrick's Day, fruitcake for Christmas, or challah bread for Passover- whatever.

Beauty, I am coming. I am on my way. I have not forgotten your fragile pastries. The ridges on your leavened bread. Half-eaten pomegranate in General Sahib's fridge. Cherries so big they redden Rubiya's hands, Irem's fingers. Kashmir, you are real. You are my half-chilled soup, minced cilantro, my zaman pilaf. Bittersweet chukunder. Rista. Aab gosht. Gurdé Kaporé. Kidney and testicle curry. Kaléji. Sheermal. Lavasa. Tsot. Maythi paratha. Kabuli chana. Nargissi kebab. Tamatar muli. You are a sudden red mirchi. You give me pleasure and pain, both at once. You are my dream, my desire. My North, my brain. My pounding headache.

I began the day I was to dine at casa di Palone in the Vaticano kitchen, helping Antonio prepare the pope's meals. For noonday, we made barley soup, apples, and a little cheese and bread. For the evening meal, we prepared the same soup with bits of roasted capons, and I made a zabaglione egg dish with a little malmsey wine. I suspected the pope would not touch the custardy dessert, but I felt compelled to take a chance. The worst that might happen was that he would order me to go back to his regular menu. And at best, perhaps he would recognize the joy of food God gifted to us. Once we had finished the general preparations, Antonio helped me bake a crostata to take to the Palone house that evening. He set to work making the pastry as I cleaned the visciola cherries- fresh from the market- and coated them with sugar, cinnamon, and Neapolitan mostaccioli crumbs. I nestled the biscotti among several layers of dough that Antonio had pressed into thin sheets to line the pan. Atop the cherries, I laid another sheet of pastry cut into a rose petal pattern. Antonio brushed it with egg whites and rosewater, sugared it, and set the pie into the oven to bake. Francesco joined us just as I placed the finished crostata on the counter to cool. The cherries bubbled red through the cracks of the rose petals and the scalco gave a low whistle. "Madonna!" Antonio and I stared at him, shocked at the use of the word as a curse. Francesco laughed. "That pie is so beautiful I think even our Lord might swear." He clapped me on the shoulder. "It is good to see you cooking something besides barley soup, Gio. It's been too long since this kitchen has seen such a beautiful dessert." The fragrance was magnificent. I hoped the famiglia Palone would find the pie tasted as good as it looked.

It's barely 8:00 a.m., but my train mates waste little time in breaking out the picnic material. But this isn't standard Japanese picnic fare: not a grain of rice or a pickled plum in sight. Instead, they fill the varnished wooden tables with thick slices of crusty bread, wedges of weeping cheese, batons of hard salamis, and slices of cured ham. To drink, bottles of local white wine, covered in condensation, and high-alcohol microbews rich in hops and local iconography. From the coastline we begin our slow, dramatic ascent into the mountains of Hokkaido. The colors bleed from broccoli to banana to butternut to beet as we climb, inching ever closer to the heart of autumn. My neighbors, an increasingly jovial group of thirtysomethings with a few words of English to spare, pass me a glass of wine and a plate of cheese, and I begin to feel the fog dissipate. We stop at a small train station in the foothills outside of Ginzan, and my entire car suddenly empties. A husband-and-wife team has set up a small stand on the train platform, selling warm apple hand pies made with layers of flaky pastry and apples from their orchard just outside of town. I buy one, take a bite, then immediately buy three more. Back on the train, young uniformed women flood the cars with samples of Hokkaido ice cream. The group behind me breaks out in song, a ballad, I'm later told, dedicated to the beauty of the season. Everywhere we go, from the golden fields of empty cornstalks to the dense forest thickets to the rushing rivers that carve up this land like the fat of a Wagyu steak, groups of camouflaged photographers lie in wait, tripods and shutter releases ready, hoping to capture the perfect photo of the SL Niseko steaming its way through the hills of Hokkaido.

WES’S SIMPLE SOURDOUGH STARTER & BREAD STARTER Making a sourdough starter is the first step in opening the door to all kinds of delicious, nutritious, and traditionally baked breads and pastries. PREP: 5 minutes PROCESS: 3–5 days COOL: none 1-quart Mason jar with lid 1 five-pound bag of your favorite flour (non-white is recommended and an organic sprouted whole wheat flour gives a rustic sourdough loaf flavor) lukewarm water CREATING THE STARTER 1.​Mix ¼ cup flour and ¼ cup warm water in a Mason jar until it looks like a pancake mix. Based on your climate and altitude, you may need to add in a splash more water or flour. 2.​Cover the container loosely and allow mixture to stand overnight at room temperature. 3.​Repeat these steps and continue adding to the starter for the next four days. Between days two and three, your starter will begin to bubble. You should be able to see air pockets on the side of your Mason jar and “rivulets” or fine air bubbles on the top of your mixture by day five. If not, remove ½ cup of starter and continue the same steps for two more days. The starter should have a tangy aroma that’s not overpowering. The bubbling mixture is now ready to use for baking. MAINTAINING THE STARTER 1.​Store the starter in the refrigerator with lid. Once or twice a week remove ½ cup of starter and add ¼

I look inside. There is a large roll, a miniature pie about four inches across with a golden crust that is sprinkled with large crystals of sugar, a stack of cookies, a square of what looks like bread pudding, and a small tub. "Okay, what am I looking at?" I say. "This is the rustic roll I was telling you about last week, the one based on the classic Poilâne bread." My favorite bread of all time, with its dark, almost burnt chewy crust and the tangy, fermented chestnut-colored crumb. "Yum, very excited about that." "Us too. I think we've finally nailed it. This is what we are thinking for pie service, all individual whole pies instead of slices. This one is classic apple." "Because you still can't stand it when the servers don't get the pie slices out of the pan perfectly." "True. The cookies are cornflake snickerdoodle, Black Forest, and ginger lemon cream." "Cornflake snickerdoodle?" "Sophie's thing. She wanted a cookie that tasted like the top of a good noodle kugel." "She's fucking brilliant, that woman." "I know, right? This is a piece of the palmier bread pudding, and that is the vanilla semolina pudding.

We planned the menu together: butter lettuce salad with a shallot, lemon, and caper vinaigrette, a huge tomahawk steak to share, wild mushroom risotto, and steamed broccolini, with a pistachio soufflé for dessert. Marcy dropped off some chocolate sablé cookies and caramelized white chocolate truffles last night to add to the party, as well as a gorgeous zucchini bread with chocolate chips "for breakfast," she said, winking.

My aunt's life was now practically confined to two adjoining rooms, in one of which she would rest in the afternoon while they, aired the other. They were rooms of that country order which (just as in certain climes whole tracts of air or ocean are illuminated or scented by myriads of protozoa which we cannot see) fascinate our sense of smell with the countless odours springing from their own special virtues, wisdom, habits, a whole secret system of life, invisible, superabundant and profoundly moral, which their atmosphere holds in solution; smells natural enough indeed, and coloured by circumstances as are those of the neighbouring countryside, but already humanised, domesticated, confined, an exquisite, skilful, limpid jelly, blending all the fruits of the season which have left the orchard for the store-room, smells changing with the year, but plenishing, domestic smells, which compensate for the sharpness of hoar frost with the sweet savour of warm bread, smells lazy and punctual as a village clock, roving smells, pious smells; rejoicing in a peace which brings only an increase of anxiety, and in a prosiness which serves as a deep source of poetry to the stranger who passes through their midst without having lived amongst them. The air of those rooms was saturated with the fine bouquet of a silence so nourishing, so succulent that I could not enter them without a sort of greedy enjoyment, particularly on those first mornings, chilly still, of the Easter holidays, when I could taste it more fully, because I had just arrived then at Combray: before I went in to wish my aunt good day I would be kept waiting a little time in the outer room, where the sun, a wintry sun still, had crept in to warm itself before the fire, lighted already between its two brick sides and plastering all the room and everything in it with a smell of soot, making the room like one of those great open hearths which one finds in the country, or one of the canopied mantelpieces in old castles under which one sits hoping that in the world outside it is raining or snowing, hoping almost for a catastrophic deluge to add the romance of shelter and security to the comfort of a snug retreat; I would turn to and fro between the prayer-desk and the stamped velvet armchairs, each one always draped in its crocheted antimacassar, while the fire, baking like a pie the appetising smells with which the air of the room, was thickly clotted, which the dewy and sunny freshness of the morning had already 'raised' and started to 'set,' puffed them and glazed them and fluted them and swelled them into an invisible though not impalpable country cake, an immense puff-pastry, in which, barely waiting to savour the crustier, more delicate, more respectable, but also drier smells of the cupboard, the chest-of-drawers, and the patterned wall-paper I always returned with an unconfessed gluttony to bury myself in the nondescript, resinous, dull, indigestible, and fruity smell of the flowered quilt.

What would you do if you could snap your fingers and make it all different?" Melody didn't even hesitate. "Open my own place. French-inspired, most likely, with all those amazing pastries I fell in love with in Paris. Maybe light lunch fare. Hearty bread, the way it's supposed to be done- heirloom wheat baguettes baked bien cuit, that point just before burnt where the crust gets rich and caramelly.

Another had more kinds of flour than the whole baking aisle at the Walmart back home- she saw all-purpose flour, cake flour, bread flour, pastry flour, doppio zero flour, and something darker, probably buckwheat. Rosie wished she could run over and open the tubs, and rub the flour between her fingers. She'd never seen or felt doppio zero in real life, but knew it was supposed to be the secret to tender pasta. Next to the flour was something she wanted to explore even more- sugar. Granulated sugar, caster sugar, confectioners' sugar, pearl sugar, cane sugar, demerara, turbinado, muscovado, light and dark brown- Rosie's mind boggled at the possibilities of all the different things she could make with these sugars, how each choice would fundamentally alter the nature of whatever she baked: change the crumb structure, the color, the texture, everything.

He opened the small brown bag and held it toward her, and she could smell the butter. Notably, though, there was no grease soaking the bottom of the bag, like when Mom brought home donuts. She peered in. "I think it's a croissant. And a chocolate croissant. And some kind of roll. And some other thing I didn't know what it was." "Chausson aux pommes," Rosie said, pulling it from the bag. She was pretty sure anyway- it had the distinctive half-moon shape, and the slashes on top let her see a peek of what looked like apple filling. "What's that?" Rosie stilled as Henry shifted closer to her. He was just looking at the pastry, and she knew that, but still. He was close, and he smelled warm, and sleepy. And male. "It's kind of like an apple croissant," she said, ignoring the rapid rise of her heartbeat. "Or an apple strudel. An apple turnover, I guess." "Try it." "You should have the first bite. You got it." "I insist," Henry said, and he wouldn't take it from her. So she bit in, and the pastry flaked instantly, then yielded into sweet, soft cinnamon apples. It was so good that she had to imagine this would be the best thing she'd try today. But then Henry was grinning, chocolate smeared on his face, and he passed her the pain au chocolat, and she thought that had to be the best thing. But then the classic croissant was so perfect, each layer of lamination distinct, and then the brioche was dangerously rich, yet so light at the same time, and the éclair's filling was perfectly smooth, and the baguette made Rosie rethink what, exactly, the stuff she'd been eating for the last sixteen years was, because it couldn't possibly be bread, not like this...

She covered the bread dough with plastic wrap and put it in the sun, she pulled out her blender and added the ingredients for the pots de crème: eggs, sugar, half a cup of her morning coffee, heavy cream, and eight ounces of melted Schraffenberger chocolate. What could be easier? The food editor of the Calgary paper had sent Marguerite the chocolate in February as a gift, a thank-you- Marguerite had written this very recipe into her column for Valentine's Day and reader response had been enthusiastic. (In the recipe, Marguerite had suggested the reader use "the richest, most decadent block of chocolate available in a fifty-mile radius. Do not- and I repeat- do not use Nestlé or Hershey's!") Marguerite hit the blender's puree button and savored the noise of work. She poured the liquid chocolate into ramekins and placed them in the fridge. Porter had been wrong about the restaurant, wrong about what people would want or wouldn't want. What people wanted was for a trained chef, a real authority, to show them how to eat. Marguerite built her clientele course by course, meal by meal: the freshest, ripest seasonal ingredients, a delicate balance of rich and creamy, bold and spicy, crunchy, salty, succulent. Everything from scratch. The occasional exception was made: Marguerite's attorney, Damian Vix, was allergic to shellfish, one of the selectmen could not abide tomatoes or the spines of romaine lettuce. Vegetarian? Pregnancy cravings? Marguerite catered to many more whims than she liked to admit, and after the first few summers the customers trusted her. They stopped asking for their steaks well-done or mayonnaise on the side. They ate what she served: frog legs, rabbit and white bean stew under flaky pastry, quinoa.

The key is gluten. Gluten is a protein with long, elastic molecules which simultaneously enable the dough to be made stronger (by providing structure) and lighter (by enabling the trapping of air bubbles). A lot of gluten means a firm structure, which is ideal for bread, but bad for pastry. Too little gluten means no structure and no air-trapping, so flat bread and tough pastry. The task of the pastry-cook is to get just the right amount of gluten to make the pastry light and crumbly and flaky.

The gluten content of the final wheat dough can be manipulated by the cook in a number of ways depending on the ultimate goal, whether it be sturdy bread or flaky pastry. (...) The first trick is to use exactly the right amount of water, for it is water that activates the gluten in flour. Fat is the second trick, and it helps the texture of pastry in a number of ways. Fat coats little packets of flour, waterproofing them and limiting the amount of water that gets in (less water, so less gluten), and it keeps the gluten strands 'short'. Little smears and gobbets of fat also separate the mini layers of dough, so that they form individual flakes or crumbs, not a solid mass.

The aroma of garlic and saffron wafted through the air from a corner café. When they approached the boulangerie, Danielle detected the sweet scent of calissons d'Aix, the almond cookies she had loved as a girl. "Let's stop." In the bakery Philippe selected fresh breads, including brioche and Danielle's favorite, fougassette, a flat bread made with orange blossom water.

Every man on the Explorer had a job to do, and with so many of the systems still works in progress, and only a very small window for the recovery, the crew had virtually no downtime. But when they could steal even a few hours, life was comfortable. A crew of fifteen cooks worked in the mess hall, keeping it provisioned twenty-four hours a day. At any moment, a crew member could stop into the mess and get a good, hot meal—rib eye steaks, lamb chops, burgers, seafood, as well as an array of salads, desserts, and freshly baked bread and pastries. For men who had only a few minutes, lounges around the ship were stocked with fresh fruit, nuts, candy, coffee, tea, and soft drinks. There was even a soft-serve ice cream machine. Two native New Yorkers had arranged for the cooks to buy and hide a large supply of bagels, lox, and cream cheese that they managed to conceal in the depths of the walk-in freezer—for a few days, until someone found the stash and word got out.

The menu was full of foods that felt like home to me, but that also had a flair of originality. Brisket and matzo balls in a hearty bowl of ramen. Lox bowls with nori and crispy rice. Savory potato kugel and boureka pastries with hummus and fried artichokes with kibbeh. Knishes with kimchi and potato filling and a gochujang aioli. "This menu is so... Jewish." "So Jewish," Seth agreed. "And make sure you're saving room for dessert. The rugelach is unreal, and the rainbow cookies are---" he looked around, then lowered his voice--- "better than my mom's." One of the things I actually missed about living in New York was seeing all the fun twists people put on Jewish and Israeli food at restaurants and in delis. Nobody was doing that in Vermont. Maybe you could do that in Vermont, something whispered in my head. I was used to just pushing that voice away, but, for once, I let myself pause and consider it. Would it be that crazy to sell babka at my café? I bet people would love a thick, tender slice of the sweet bread braided with chocolate or cinnamon sugar or even something savory with their coffee. I could experiment with fun fillings, have a daily special. Or I could rotate shakshuka or sabich sandwiches on the brunch specials menu, since they both involved eggs. My regulars might see eggs poached in spicy tomato sauce and pitas stuffed with fried eggplant, eggs, and all the salad fixings as breaths of fresh air.