how to deal with rejection, which is as much a part of baking as it is everything in life

from our instagram story

Old World German Baking

Old World German Baking

why natural sourdough?

https://www.bonappetit.com/story/sourdough-starter-love-letter

#spirit of 2019

Zak the Baker: https://www.instagram.com/p/BsImUAoHy5q/

Tech Bros and Crumb Shots

https://www.eater.com/2018/11/19/18099127/bread-silicon-valley-sourdough-tech-bros-tartine-chad-robertson

Note that Ed Espe Brown and Tassajara Bread, inspirations for Ninth Street Bakery prior to 1981, are noted in this article as grandaddys of the artisan bread movement long before Tartine and Chad Robertson.

Via KEB

Sean Brock on Addiction and Healing

Sean Brock on Addiction and Healing

Best of 2018

Local Instagram Story: Kelsey Dawson

Local Twitter:  https://twitter.com/MoogfestPartyz

Sandwich Shop: Ko Kyu Na'mean

Public Sculpture: Gay Scissors on Foster

Downtown Style: Sarah Thornton

Local Tweet: Major the Bull

Historic NSB FB post: https://www.facebook.com/Ninthstbakery/posts/10160676209085183

Farmer Styles: Gordon and Vera, 10 Mothers Farm

Vegetable Art: Phil Blank, https://www.instagram.com/p/BoZ8mrxnWVw/

Hardest Working Restaurateur: Oren Weiss, Soom Soom Pita Pockets

Value: Pupuseria Anita

Anticipated Opening: The Basement Kitchen at Accordion Club

Cookie Homage:  https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/03/magazine/chocolate-chip-cookie-cranberry-paris.html

Action Bronson Video: https://youtu.be/-pMk7-BevBc

Pizza-making Nerdery: https://youtu.be/TyvM2fb9kdM?t=10m3s

Insta Foodie Pic: https://www.instagram.com/p/Be0w6Ymnkg8/

Bartender: Kelsey Dawson (Ponysaurus, Accordion Club)

Brunch: The Happy Meal at Accordion Club (Hatch Breakfast Burrito, Shot of Tequila, Pickleback, Shitty Plastic Toy, Pony High Life, Sundays only)

Pop-up Dinner: Little Rocket Man

Local Baking Instagram: http://instagram.com/mere_berry

Beer: Edward, Hill Farmstead

Donut: Cruller, Jack Tar Diner

Album: Jassbusters, Connan Mockasin

Song: Big Shot, Kendrick Lamar

NSB Charitable Action: Sending relief to Duplin County via Just Florence

Soup: Posole, Guanajuato

Beards: Finn Katz; Joel Guerreo

Local Beer: Hopfly Anniversary IPA

Beigel Bake, Brick Lane

Bagel Masters

The inspiration for Myer's Bagels, Myer Lewkowicz in 1991

https://www.burlingtonfreepress.com/story/life/2018/11/19/lloyd-squires-myers-bagels-burlington/1977013002/

Pan Forte

Cookie 101

https://sweets.seriouseats.com/2013/12/the-food-lab-the-best-chocolate-chip-cookies.html

Via KEB

Squirrel Hill, PA

Our thoughts and prayers go out to the families and communities affected by the Tree of Life Synagogue tragedy. Props to all who attended the vigil Sunday in CCB plaza - while I never thought I would have to recite Mourners Kaddish with Major the Bull, I prayed for the day when we can ban assault weapons in the US and put a dent in these psychotic shootings that leave communities ripped apart. 

Please contribute by being as politically active as you feel comfortable and opposing legislators that work against gun regulation.

Bread is an intensive surface

"The Earth is a body without organs. This body without organs is permeated by unformed, unstable matters, by flows in all directions, by free intensities or nomadic singularities, by mad or transitory particles"

Rhizome: http://planetarities.web.unc.edu/files/2015/01/deleuze-guattari-selections-thousand-plateaus.pdf

http://deleuze.enacademic.com/84/intensity

J Gold, Belated Obit

J Gold, the food critic who democratized the nation's palate, RIP. If you haven't seen City of Gold, this is a must-watch for any self-proclaimed foodie. In many ways I think of him in my travels to try every mediocre restaurant in Durham, tingling with those very mixed up feelings of futility, anthropology, discovery, banality, and a requisite amount of anticipatory excitement. May we all be as obsessed with something as Gold was with the cultural landscape of gastronomy.

https://www.nytimes.com/2018/07/21/obituaries/jonathan-gold-dead-los-angeles-food-critic.html

MTN Venice Ramen

https://www.instagram.com/p/BmzRtCcFE0l/?utm_source=ig_share_sheet&igshid=aorsz6xtsx8z

little rocket man closes / a tribute to toast

one of my favorite menus from the now-closed little rocket man.

https://www.instagram.com/p/BnWUP90AJ5A/?taken-by=littlerocketmandurham

the initial ideas for the menu were:

Carolina Jammer - ricotta, jam, herbs
Avo - Avocado, masala, almonds
Pan con Tomate - Cherry Tomatoes, olive oil, flake salt
Scuttlebutt - hard boiled egg, pimenton aioli, pickles, herb mix
(tribute to saltie)
Mama's Boy - Butter, Cinnamon, Sugar

use unsliced bricohe, unsliced country loaf

Pandora of the Moment: Childish Gambino

To Be a Baker

Chad Robertson

To Be a Baker

what does it take?

a personality type.
a calm neurotic

like chad robertson

tall and rangey

to be a baker

waking before daybreak, working physically hard before daybreak,
it's a push to the last loaf,
here you stand before the oven, to stand underground and bake bagels,
carry the flour back centuries to
your ancestors, with
poppy seed, sesame, and flax.  

It’s a blue planet,
Powered by calories derived from bread,
The technological revolutions,
In our Modernity,
There was bread,
Religious warfare,
And the bread as ritual.

An evolution,
Of bread and of society,
From bourgeosie to poverty,
In every neighborhood and shtetl.

Underground Man

"Er ligt in der erd un bakt beygl."
"He lies underground and and bakes bagels"
- Old Yiddish saying to describe a person depressed.

Task Switching

Baking is a controlled task switching exercise.  I might have three doughs to mix, one rack in the oven, three employees forming loaves, and a meeting about to walk in in an hour.  There is a necessary schizoid property to this that goes beyond your everyday short order cook kind of multi-tasking.  It is a sensation of juggling that ends up feeling like a runner's high.  Ernest Hemingway always liked to finish the day by leaving his last sentence unfinished.  To conceive of work as a flow, where one might drop in like a wave, is a means to be enmeshed in the world, and to achieve an immanence impossible in ordinary life.  The moment you tie up your apron like it was an obi, you enter into a world where you might as well be tapping a spiderweb with a tuning fork, and waiting for the resonance, set a whole series of events into motion.