Bread

"All sorrows are less with bread."

Miguel de Cervantes

A veggie diet

"Vegetables are a must on a diet. I suggest carrot cake, zucchini bread and pumpkin pie."

Jim Davis

Making bread

"No yoga exercise, no meditation in a chapel filled with music will rid you of your blues better than the humble task of making your own bread."

M.F.K. Fisher

Good "Bread"

"This obsession with good bread turned into a little hobby of mine. As I was traveling, it became sport to search out the best possible bread in every city I visited. 

"I made sure to eat my breakfast in the cafes that offered the best bread. I learned that cafes that offer excellent bread tend to have the best of everything else. A restaurant or cafe that is not investing in good bread is without a doubt cutting corners on quality elsewhere. 

"Bread is the first food a restaurant serves to a customer. Why would any restaurant ever want to spoil the experience by offering anything less than the best in the first bite?"

Malin Elmlid in "The Bread Exchange: Tales and Recipes from a Journey of Baking and Bartering"

To start

It is a decent way to start the day.

Bagels on the brain

One minute I am reading about bagels in Britain, reminiscing, for example, about Brick Lane Beigel Bake in London.

"Anyone who has visited an authentic bagel shop will know the steamy, burnished aroma of bagels made in small batches... Freshness is the core philosophy in this place, and the ovens are on the go continually. Under the glossy crust, the dough is dense yet tender, slightly sweet with a beery yeastiness..."

The next minute I am toasting a bagel for breakfast and slathering it with cream cheese. It doesn't take a whole lot of convincing. I am easy like that.

Craving carbs

Nor can we resist good bread.

Dining at Ruth's

The second oldest restaurant in Utah - we haven't a clue as to the first - Ruth's Diner in Emigration Canyon is housed in an old-school trolley car. We like the vibe and the decor.

With baked macaroni and cheese, a grilled portobello mushroom sandwich, and a classic chocolate malt pudding, we also like the menu.

Sweet Madeleines

I am not certain how it is pronounced, but the kouing aman from Les Madeleines patisserie and cafe in Salt Lake City is interesting. The French pastry is crispy and buttery, sticky and sugary.

Baskets of berries

A visit to the farmers' market yields an armload of strawberries, three baskets full. They should keep me happy for the week. I eat them sliced with yogurt and granola for breakfast. I snack on them during the day.

My sister gets baskets of berries at the supermarket, too. As does my brother. The packages are BOGO, they say. Each wanted to surprise the other with an extra. They are twins. We go from none in the house to much too much.

With the surplus, I make strawberry bread using a recipe from Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazine. It reminds me of the pastries my friends and I had in the college cafeteria, goodness that got us through groggy mornings in Providence. It takes me back.

Strawberry Bread
adapted from Martha Stewart's Everyday Food magazine

5 Tbsp. plus 1 tsp. unsalted butter, room temperature, plus more for pan
1 pint strawberries, rinse, hulled, quartered and mashed with a fork
1 3/4 cups all-purpose flour
1 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. ground cinnamon
1/4 tsp. baking powder
1/4 tsp. salt
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs

Preheat the oven to 350 degrees F. Butter an 8-inch by 4-inch loaf pan.

In a small saucepan, bring strawberries to a boil over medium heat. Cook, stirring, 1 minute. Set aside.

Whisk together flour, baking soda, ground cinnamon, baking powder and salt in a medium bowl. Set aside.

With an electric mixer, cream the butter, sugar and eggs until light and fluffy. Add the flour mixture alternately with 1/3 cup of water, beginning and ending with flour. Fold in the reserved strawberries.

Scrape batter into the prepared pan, smoothing the top. Bake until a toothpick inserted in the center of the bread comes out clean, about 45 to 50 minutes. Cool 10 minutes in the pan. Run a knife around the edges; invert the loaf onto a rack. Cool completely. Makes 8 servings.

The big feed

In the end, two days (on and off) of cooking. Twenty minutes of eating, not counting dessert. Three hours of cleaning.

At the White House, incidentally, Pres. Barack Obama and First Lady Michelle Obama host dinner for friends, family and staff members. The menu includes roast turkey, honey-baked ham and (this is the best part) six kinds of pie:

Turkey
Honey-Baked Ham

Cornbread Stuffing
Oyster Stuffing

Greens
Macaroni and Cheese
Sweet Potatoes
Mashed Potatoes
Green Bean Casserole

Banana Cream Pie
Pumpkin Pie
Apple Pie
Sweet Potato Pie
Huckleberry Pie
Cherry Pie

BBQ buns

We can take the girl out of Chinatown, but we can not take Chinatown out of the girl.

Brick Lane beigels

Brick Lane in the East End is filled with curry houses, none of which, I am told, is any good. 'Tis a shame really.

What we do like on the street, however, are cheap and chewy beigels from Brick Lane Beigel Bake, a testament to the historically Jewish influences in the dynamic neighborhood.

Cake love

"I could kill for cake. Here's the list: 1 carrot cake, 2 cheesecakes, 3 chocolate cakes, 3 slices of fruit bread, 9 slices of fruit cake, 2 slices of birthday cake, 2 slices of Pret a Manger pecan pie, 5 slices lemon cake, 1 apricot tart, half a ricotta tart, 5 fairy cakes (once you start you can't stop), 2 battenburg and a slice of walnut pie. Not bad, until you add it to the 32 biscotti, 8 flapjacks, 4 Jaffa cakes, 500g pan forte, 2 madeleines, 14 double choc chip cookies, 4 meringues, 12 amaretti and a fortune cookie, which I promptly spat out.

"I have separated puddings and cake for obvious reasons (put them together and I sound like Billy Bunter). Anyway: 3 chocolate banana fritters (which I didn't want but Ruth Watson made me eat), half a pannacotta with passion fruit, 2 mouthfuls of zabaglione, 1 apple crumble and custard, 4 plum crumbles and custard, 1 blueberry tart, 1 apricot tart, 1 raspberry tart, 1 lemon tart, 1 fig tart, 1 gooseberry tart, 6 mince pies, 1 prune tart, 1 plum pie, 5 portions of trifle and a summer pudding. On the ice cream front I managed to get by with only 2 tubs of vanilla ice, 2 of orange sorbet, 1 portion of rose, 2 of pear, and 500ml of mango. Oh, and I almost forgot, 2kg of chocolate ice cream."

Nigel Slater, in the article "Last Year I Ate...," anthologized in Bonnie Marranca's "A Slice of Life: Contemporary Writers on Food."

Is it any wonder I love him?

Where to go, what to eat

On a spur-of-the-moment trip to Sonoma County to see lavender gardens at Matanzas Creek Winery, a sister and I drop by Wild Flour in the small town of Freestone, just outside of Sebastopol.

A good friend mentioned the bakery once. He liked their breads, he said, but had to pay a pretty penny for them. He wouldn't let any go to waste. I have been curious about the shop since.

My sister and I share but still can not finish a large sticky bun. It measures at least 8 inches across and, honestly, tastes quite good. Nice and sticky, the way I like it. I will have to try the scones and breads as well sometime soon.

I can feel travel priorities shifting. My sister is contemplating a trip to Carmel and Monterey, hoping to take advantage of the long summer days. I tell her I am interested only if we can make a detour to the Big Sur Bakery & Restaurant off Highway 1. I have been reading about it lately.

She thinks about where to go. I think about what to eat.

The knead to succeed

The first time I made focaccia, the dough did not rise at all. It sat bored and bewildered, a lazy blob in a mixing bowl atop the counter. I tossed it reluctantly into the compost bin outside.

Weeks earlier, my brother had brought an olive-and-onion focaccia to the house. He had gotten it at the store. Soft, fresh and flavorful, the bread had gone remarkably well with our supper: pasta with sausage and peppers. It had been splendid.

Inspired by its apparent simplicity and versatility, I decided to re-create that loaf in my kitchen. Though I am not a bread baker, I have learned to follow directions fairly efficiently. I like to believe I understood enough about cooking and ingredients that complemented one another to prove somewhat adept.

With a recipe culled from a few different sources, I set to work. Alas... I checked the date on the yeast packet; it had been almost a decade old, presumably when I last attempted bread.


The second time I made focaccia, with a new package of Fleischmann's, the dough rose only slightly. Had the water been warm enough? I wondered. Had it generated a sort of fizz when it hit the yeast? I was stumped.

I carried on nevertheless, ambitiously stretching the dough across a baking sheet before drizzling olive oil and scattering herbs. I dimpled the surface artistically with my fingers, pressing in handfuls of sliced olives and sautéed onions. Warm from the oven, the focaccia tasted fine, if not entirely fluffy.


According to Marcella Hazan, focaccia is most closely linked to Liguria, the Italian Riviera along the country's northwestern Mediterranean coast. In some towns, she notes in "Essentials of Classic Italian Cooking," focaccia is known as "pizza Genoese, Genoese-style pizza."

Focaccia does resemble pizza in some ways. It can have a similar texture, and often incorporates familiar toppings such as basil, garlic and mushrooms. Fortunately, however, focaccia is seldom inundated with tomato sauce or drowned in melted cheese, making it easier to handle.

Ordering focaccia in Italian bakeries can be a tricky endeavor. In Bologna, "if you're looking for focaccia, the appropriate word to use is crescentina; in Florence, Rome, and a few other parts of central Italy, it is schiacciata," Hazan writes. "If you ask for focaccia in Bologna or Venice, you will be given a very sweet panettone-like cake, studded with candied fruit and raisins."

Focaccia can be eaten as a side to the main course, the way my brother and I approached our meal that night. It can be considered an appetizer, served warm perhaps with a lovely bowl of soup.

Thick loaves can also be cut horizontally for sandwiches and filled with coppa and provolone, prosciutto and slices of mozzarella, or a mix of grilled or roasted vegetables. Or it can be eaten the way it is served in Ligurian bakeries: hot from the oven, wrapped in paper and downed on the spot.


In "Lidia's Family Table," Lidia Bastianich delivers an intriguing fig focaccia. In "How to Cook Everything: Simple Recipes for Great Food," Mark Bittman's basic focaccia is essentially a pizza dough, with different ideas for toppings.

And in his latest, "The Modern Baker," Nick Malgieri gets creative. His focaccia recipes include combinations such as tomatoes, anchovies and dried breadcrumbs; sliced onions, anchovies, black olives and green olives; and prosciutto, mozzarella and Parmigiano-Reggiano, for a ham-and-cheese-filled focaccia.


The third time I made focaccia, I added warm water to the yeast and watched it fizz. I proofed the dough in the hottest place in the house: an upstairs bedroom with strong afternoon sun, nowhere near the kitchen. The dough rose significantly and developed an elasticity with which I was satisfied. It stretched amicably and went into and out of the oven effortlessly.

Cut and plated nicely, the focaccia looked terrific, speckled with the contrasting colors of black olives, red onions and green herbs. Fluffier than the previous loaf, the bread felt soft and spongy; the toppings tasted savory and mildly sweet. I ate chunks of it meal after meal, until nary a crumb remained.

Why, I wondered, had focaccia even mattered? What was the big deal? So what if I messed up the first time, or the second. Why was it important to make bread when I could go to the store? Could I not have resisted the challenge? Maybe I was trying to impress my brother. More likely, however, I was trying to impress myself.

(The site www.culinate.com, where the photo is from, publishes a version of this food essay.)


Olive and Onion Focaccia

dough:

2 tsp. active dry yeast
1 cup warm water
2 Tbsp. sugar
3 1/2 to 4 cups flour
1 Tbsp. coarse salt
1/4 cup extra-virgin olive oil

topping:

1 Tbsp. extra-virgin olive oil
1 onion, peeled and sliced
2 cups olives, pitted and sliced
1 tsp. dried herbs (rosemary, basil, thyme or oregano) or 2 tsp. chopped fresh herbs
salt
freshly ground black pepper

To make the dough: In the bowl of a stand mixer, combine the dry yeast, warm water and sugar. Stir gently to dissolve. Wait 3 to 5 minutes for the yeast to activate; it should fizz. Attach the dough hook. With the machine on low, gradually add the flour. Dissolve the salt in 2 Tbsp. of water. Add it to the mixture as well. Pour in the olive oil.

When the dough begins to form, increase the speed to medium. Periodically scrape the dough off the hook. Mix about 10 minutes, until the dough is smooth and elastic, adding a little flour if necessary.

Turn the dough out onto a board and fold it over itself a few times. Shape it into a ball. Put it into an oiled bowl. Cover with plastic wrap or a damp cloth and let it rise in a warm spot in the house for about 45 minutes, until it has doubled in size.

To make the topping: In a medium-sized skillet over low to medium heat, caramelize the onions in olive oil.

To bake the focaccia: Lightly oil a baking sheet. When the dough is ready, turn it out. Roll and stretch it into the pan until the dough is about 1/2-inch thick. Cover with plastic wrap again. Let it rest for 15 minutes more.

Preheat the oven to 400 degrees F. Uncover the dough and dimple it with your fingers. Brush it with a little more olive oil. Top the dough with the caramelized onions, olives, herbs, salt and freshly ground black pepper.

Bake on the bottom rack for 15 to 20 minutes. Serve warm or at room temperature. Makes 1 sheet.