Tuesday, December 17, 2019

When the post-industrial revolution makes us all superfluous, bread will still exist, hopefully long-fermented, hopefully with an open crumb and tangy flavor and discernible crust.  Bread now, bread always.

Best of 2019

Bartender: Eric Tullis, Criterion 



NSB Bake Photo: Alex Ruch


Instagram Account: Chioke Nassor

Draft List: Hutchins Garage

Ambitious Entrepreneur: Mike Lee

Gym: Top Notch Performance

Dive Bar Bathroom: Accordion Club

Hip Hop/R&B Single: Easy (Remix); Drogba (Joanna)

Guest Verse: Kendrick Lamar, "Hair Down" by SiR

New Opening: Larema Coffee, Rocky Mount

Empty Bakery as Zendo, Alive with Yeast: https://www.instagram.com/p/BtlTwEggx4n/

New NSB Product: Ninth Street Bakery Roasted Coffee Beans

New Eyesore: One City Center 

NSB Photo Shoot: Will Warasila

Local Book: Road Sides, Emily Wallace

Bookseller: Land Arnold, Letters

New NSB Merch: Joe Sink Mugs

Song: Almost Free, Molly Sarle 

Candy: Kings Red and White

Up and Coming Artist: Brent Faiyaz 

Instagram Post: https://www.instagram.com/p/B3KteZRnB1F/, Kelsey Dawson

Local Beer: Hopfly

Tacos: Taquizas Martha, Durham Green Flea Market


Traditional Culinary Techniques: Oaxaca, Mexico

Local Twitter: durham mom

Insurrectionist Satirical Twitter: Major the Bull

Style: Russell Dudley, Top Notch Performance

Show: Sylvan Esso WITH Tour, DPAC


Book I Read This Year: The Bluest Eye, Toni Morrison 

Albums: Karaoke Angel, Molly Sarle; Titanic Rising, Weyes Blood

Dresser:  Siobhan Scully, Wax Poetics

Local Recommendation Compendium: nsb little black book

Foodie Bucket List Destination: Franklin's BBQ, Austin

Grocery: Li Ming Global Mart

Restaurant: Tower Indian Restaurant, Morrisville

Bakery Pandora Station: Lauryn Hill



New Art at NSB: Phil Blank's Peas

and. . . 

Worst Attack on Durham Latinx Community: ICE Raids

In Memoriam: 

Friday, December 6, 2019

little black book

Take a look at the little bi-fold guide we put together for visitors to Durham and Triangle.  Available only in-store at the cashier station.  Here is the front and back cover:


Sunday, December 1, 2019

lil farm strikes again


franklin bbq pilgrimage


early drinking in line is not only forgiven, but encouraged.  we got in line at 730am and were served at 1130am. we were about 20th from the front out of 300.


Pit tour!





bakery acrostic affirmations

will warasila


joe sink

You may have noticed we are now carrying custom mugs by Joe Sink of White Cross, NC (near Carrboro). He's super talented and shows up at the Hunt Street Farmer's Market to sell on Saturdays. He made a glazed cassarole dish for me that is my favorite purchased item of the year.  He also donated a large decorative vase to the Bakery that had a hairline crack in it that sits on the bar.  


throwback

Holiday Staff Meeting 2018, with guest Russell Dudley of Top Notch Performance

Friday, November 29, 2019

Love my bookkeeper Sarah M. In addition to keeping the house straight, she leaves a little shrine arrangement of my tsochkes before she leaves (antique salt and pepper shakers and some sea glass). What a gem.

Monday, November 25, 2019

pie inflation

I feel like the overly expensive pie might be anti-pie? This is a post from last year but their 9'' Thanksgiving pies from this year are $48.

Tartine Manufactory and Tartine Bakery

Pies available at the Manufactory: Pumpkin, apple, butterscotch cream tart ($50 each). At the bakery: Pumpkin, apple ($50 each), banana cream tart ($54).

From: https://www.sfchronicle.com/food/article/Ultimate-Guide-The-best-Bay-Area-bakeries-for-13375523.php

Wednesday, October 23, 2019

"Can i make a bagel i connect with?"

Everyone, and I mean everyone, should be asking these questions.

Wednesday, October 16, 2019

Cookbook Review: Saltie

Image result for saltie cookbook

Saltie was a sandwich shop in Brooklyn that operated from 2009-2017. Like the second wave celebrity chefs of that era, Saltie trafficked in homespun recipes and elevated comfort food. Having never eaten there, I must say that I feel the cookbook encapsulates a place and time in American gastronomy that I look back on fondly. I was food-obsessed, and the Food Network and other media outlets had taken the pleasures of taste and democratized them and made them accessible. Now with Instagram, I am overwrought with images of fancified food, satiated beyond reasonable capacity, but back then, there was a real hunger for copycat recipes and home cooking. I made ramen. I was obsessed with pie. I fried donuts. I pickled. I was obsessed with chocolate chip cookies. I ate porchetta. All things that were delicious, but also novel. Now, we are anesthetized to new foods. Nothing surprises the palate anymore. Perhaps the best a restaurant can do is to make some food very balanced, very fresh, and very consistent (which is rare). But for that singular moment (which really lasted about as long as Saltie was alive), an egg salad sandwich with pickle from Saltie (which my gourmand friend Dave says was overrated) sounded and looked transcendent and revelatory. I can't say that I have cooked anything from the Saltie cookbook by Caroline Fidanza et al., but I like to leave it out like a stone or a talisman, conjuring nostalgia and inspiring me to continue to make honest food that looks beautiful and has authentic flavors. Now in a time when overpriced hipster sandwiches feel passé and bourgeois, I see Saltie as a marker of both the beginning and ending of an American "gourmet" food movement. There will continue to be hipster pizza pies (Pooleside Pies just opened), and bagel shops where you can get a dozen (not a baker's dozen) for $19, but beyond the fatigue of the palate and a deficit of original ideas, there will always be Saltie and the search for the perfect sandwich.

Sunday, October 13, 2019

rest in peace toni morrison

That evening the women brought bowls of pot liquor from black-eyed peas, from mustards, from cabbage, from kale, from collards, from turnips, from beets, from green beans. Even the juice from a boiling hog jowl.

Two evenings later Aunt Jimmy had gained much strength.


-from The Bluest Eye

Sunday, September 8, 2019

Housing Stock, Human Stock

Mecklenburg County subdivision-aerial 2010
Charlotte

I was flying over Charlotte in route to RDU and it struck me that much of Charlotte is planned like an overgrown Brier Creek, with single family subdivisions organized by Toll Brothers for miles and miles. Generic, without authentic aesthetics, these homes draw dwellers that want the privacy and comfort of a family home within a short driving distance to Target or Chili's. They are unbothered by the contradictions of living in an artificial community.

In Durham, the chorus of disenchanted voices has increased in the past two years as cranes perpetually hover over development sites, erecting faceless, homogeneous apartment complexes that have come to represent gentrification writ large.  Click on the link below to see:

https://downtowndurham.com/development-map/

These developments come from a master diagram by builders who are not based in Durham, and have no investment in the community. Their contribution to the housing stock is one motivated simply by capitalism; a formula (repeatable drawings) allows them to maximize their profit. Aesthetically, they are bland at best, behemoth eyesores at worst. The speed at which developers can erect these structures reminds me of the vast strip-malling of America in the 1980's that hollowed out local business communities and made ghost towns of downtown business streets. Like mountaintop removal for coal mining, generic apartment development shears a community of its character and vitality. City Council is quick to decry the perils of gentrification and the host of governance limitations imposed by an authoritarian State on regulating development, but my personal opinion is that we could be doing more to limit the influx of these developments or at least have more community input on their impact to the urban landscape.

The reason why I care is not only for my own well-being, but I believe that the human stock of a city mirrors that of its housing stock. If the housing stock is generic, without character, transitory, and essentially cheap on aesthetics, we will be drawing new Durhamites that are either blind to or actually find solace and comfort in those characteristics. I walked into the new Oak House recently on Main Street and it felt like setting foot in a Starbucks in a larger city with white well-groomed people on laptops and devices. One of the great worries I have is that developers see Durham as a reasonably blank slate onto which could be grafted the next Raleigh, or Charlotte. Two of possibly the most stutifyingly boring cities I've ever visited.

Monday, August 12, 2019

frank ferrell

great photo of the founder of Ninth Street Bakery, Frank Ferrell.  He turned 71 this past year!

Sunday, June 23, 2019

They Gon Love Me For My Ambition

So what’s next for Lee? He says he has six more concepts to open in the Triangle, and then, once he builds the financial backing, he hopes to launch a worldwide franchise—the first global food chain that is 100 percent nonprofit.

“Before I die, I want to see it bigger than McDonald’s,” Lee says, “producing billions of dollars a year and helping wherever is needed, like our local school systems.”

https://indyweek.com/food-and-drink/news/chef-michael-lee-durham-korean-street-food-restaurant/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=co3xJRIuc6o

Monday, June 3, 2019

Thursday, May 30, 2019

RIP Wimpy's

https://www.newsobserver.com/living/article230706389.html

Be a Conduit for the Ingredient II

On October 26 2016, I made an enigmatic post with a title only, "Be a Conduit for the Ingredient".   Nearly three years later, I think I am ready to expand on that.

"The common, recurring image of our present moment: a person sitting in a parked car, with the engine and the air conditioning running, using a smartphone, drinking a soda and/or eating fast food."


This was the first line written and read aloud in August 2017 by Adam Sobsey (link) in reference to everything he did not want our pop-up supper project (it was the anti-pop-up in many ways), Manifest, to be.  In the modern consumerist model of gastronomy, everything is disposable.  As a longtime bartender at Nana's of Durham, Adam saw the magnitude of food waste, not just in the uneaten things from diners' plates, but the peelings, scraps, and tops that were discarded, the plastic packaging, the cardboard, the gasoline used by the vendor trucks, etc.  At its best, each ingredient speaks with the clarity of a bell through the dish.  At its worst, it is a muddle of a McDonald's cheeseburger that is engineered by a massive agribusiness system to deliver sugar, salt, and hormones, not to mention a post-meal stomachache.

Like the economy of the aphorism in the post title, a carrot has a spiritual life that we can either evoke or deaden through food preparation.  When I think of respect for the ingredient, I think of Alice Water's rediscovery of the majesty of the garden salad in the 1970's.  Lettuces and greens have a fragility and tenderness, not to mention bitterness, that is alive in a way very few people get to eat or appreciate.  Like a spiritual medium, we can all become mediums for what an ingredient is saying if we slow down, listen, extend our palates, and finally, taste.

Trust the Chef

Our landlord is Self-Help Credit Union, and our rental point of contact is a gentleman who has been with Self-Help for years named Malcolm.  He knew Frank, the ex-owner, and has seen all the changes to the Bakery since I took over ownership.  Early on in my tenure, he told me that I didn't need to do a lot of things well, I just needed to do one thing very well every day.  His model was a small cafe in Greensboro, NC where the daily special was called, "Trust the Chef".  I can appreciate that.  As a result, soon after speaking with Malcolm, we instituted two weekly sandwich specials that rotated (now we usually run four).  This way, there is some weekly variety, but enough of a condensed menu such that the customer knows that the ingredients are turning over quickly and the items are not staling or expiring in a steam pan for days.  This ethos also animated the cooking of the Michelin-starred Parisian restaurant, Spring, where American Daniel Rose came to prominence in a small 18-seat restaurant that used an affordable prix fixe menu that changed daily with the green market offerings.  Listen to his work patterns and philiosophy here.  Later, as Adam Sobsey and I developed the 10 Commandments of Manifest, our pop-up supper, prix fixe was central to both food cost control and also affordability for the guests (our ticket price was never greater than $25).

There are other advantages to prix fixe as well.  When a guest selects their food, their agency in that decision is often mediated by the choices they have, good or bad.  When the restaurateur selects through prix fixe, they are implicitly saying, "let me take care of you, I know what you'll like, and I will give you the best of what I found today at the market or what I dreamed about last night."  There is a modicum of hospitality at work which serves to ensconce the guest in a cocoon of intentionality on the part of the chef, much as when you arrive at a friend's house for dinner you expect to eat what he or she has to offer, without a thought to making a special request or ordering from a menu.  In fact, the idea of the modern restaurant with a menu is actually a relatively recent bourgeois invention dating back to France of the 18th century.  We must not forget this, and must furthermore trust good chefs and restaurants when they select the menu for us because behind that plate of food is in fact thought, beauty, and if we're lucky, maybe even a little art.

Monday, May 13, 2019

Good Ale, Raw Onions, and No Ladies - Old Bill

"He was a big eater. Customarily, just before locking up for the night, he would grill himself a three-pound T-bone, placing it on a coal shovel and holding it over a bed of oak coals in the back-room fireplace. He liked to fit a whole onion into the hollowed-out heel of a loaf of French bread and eat it as if it were an apple. He had an extraordinary appetite for onions, the stronger the better, and said that “Good ale, raw onions, and no ladies” was the motto of his saloon."

Joseph Mitchell, "The Old House at Home", 1940

Monday, April 29, 2019

Patties

The Jamaican patty was the original inspiration when I first started making our hand pies back in 2009.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eUPYFt52FBE

Tuesday, April 23, 2019

Tragedy in Durham 💥 The Fire This Time

On April 10th, a gas explosion destroyed a downtown block in Durham, killing two men, Kong Lee, owner of Kaffeinate, and Jay Rambeaut, utility worker, and injuring 25.  I ran to the scene as soon as I saw the smoke rising from where I stood on the patio of the Bakery.  I'm not sure why (maybe because I was at the WTC when 9/11 happened?), but I feel this urge to respond to danger when it's presented.  Also, I knew that if there was fire on that block of Duke Street, Kong or his son Raymond or customers might be trapped or hurt.  Kaffeinate had been one of our wholesale pastry customers and friends since they opened two years ago. Once there, I put on blue latex gloves and helped Erik Nystrom (manager of the blue-shirted Downtown ambassadors of Durham) move several wounded people to safer positions away from the fire and broken glass and helped one injured lady try to get in touch with her mother.  One construction worker in particular was very badly lacerated over his entire body, barely able to walk, head bandaged, crying and shaken while a civilian woman held him close to her body and rocked him for comfort and tried to stop the bleeding.  I later took some videos of the fire, which I posted to the Bakery's Instagram story.  Once paramedics arrived and took control of the injured, I pushed back behind the yellow tape and began walking back to the Bakery, thinking whoever was in Kaffeinate at the time was likely dead.  I gathered our employees together in an office and explained what had happened.  We tried to push on with the day, but it was heavy and surreal.

My videos:



The next day I posted this memoriam to Instagram story and Facebook.


Sarah Krueger from WRAL posted this photo to her Instagram story.


How do you make sense of a bizarre and seemingly random event of massive destruction?  I learned later in the day that April 10th was the 150th anniversary of Durham's founding.  That triggered for me a lot of feelings I have had for some time about the contradictions of living in a city of great wealth and education and also a city of great stratification, poverty, and neglect.  As a recovering PhD candidate, I read historical events the way a literature expert deconstructs a novel or the way a psychoanalyst decodes a mysterious dream.  In this case, watching Mayor Steve Schewel stand helpless with his bowtie and jacket on and his hands in his pockets as the block burned, the meaning was clear as to why this calamitous event might align itself with Durham's sesquicentennial.  How could it be that we live in such a wealthy and prominent city with great academies of learning yet basic human safety net issues have remained unresolved for decades, if not longer.  It is not enough to pin it on the President, or Congress, or the Capitol in Raleigh.  We have a collective responsibility to help the poor, and when we are erecting massive structures and condos, handing out building permits, and stoking the fire of consumer capitalism in Durham, it is irresponsible to not work just as hard, and dedicate as many resources to helping the most needy.  What is the use of a 150th birthday party if only certain demographics get to celebrate?

A friend who had access watched the next day as the multi-million dollar antique Porsche collection stored next to Kaffeinate rolled out, many largely unscathed.  He said something about that didn't sit right with him, that wealth should be rolled out on a red carpet like that while death, injury, and destruction was still smoldering next door.  It hit me like a shot in the chest.  What do we Durhamites prize? Money? Wealth?  Or humanity?

After the explosion, many people donated to the many fundraisers that were set up to help the victims and those affected, expressing pride for the city's resilience under the hashtag #bullcitystrong.  I supported and re-posted these fundraisers on our Facebook.  But like the critics of the billion or so dollars pledged to rebuild the Notre Dame cathedral that burned only five days later (another strange coincidence), the question raised is how could there be so much money in the world when so many are without basic services like adequate safety and security, health care, education, food, and housing.

Consumer capitalist society has generated these contradictions of wealth, they are endemic to our society, and they are not likely to go away soon.

What we need right now is leadership.  Steve Schewel is possibly the best mayor Durham has ever had if you were to write a report card on him with regards to his liberal progressive values.  But watching him watch that fire, the man who always has the answer for everything was momentarily flummoxed.  At the 150th kickoff celebration three days later on the 13th, there was a moment of silence, but little else in terms of words that might console us or rally Durham from its mourning.

Tragedy, literal burning, is as symbolic an act as they come.  James Baldwin's book "The Fire Next Time" quotes the following lyric from the gospel spiritual "Mary Don't You Weep":

"God gave Noah the rainbow sign,
No more water, the fire next time!"


He extends this to say that if we fail to resolve the issue of (racial) inequality and injustice, our fate is with that of the condemned.  We have all the tools at our disposal to make these changes.  We just need the collective will.  One would hope that this fire wakes us up.  Or a hurricane.  Or ICE agents detaining innocents.  Or queers being banned from bathrooms.  I remain hopeful and committed to this work despite our blindness. We have a responsibility to a Rawlsian justice where all boats rise in times of plenty, not just the rich and well-connected.

[I remember the last time I saw Kong Lee. It was about two weeks before the tragedy. He was dropping off a check. We talked for a minute. He was always chastising me about improvements I should be making to the pastries. When he left, he did that shy and embarrassed thing where he half-waved backing up as he sidled out the door. We had a camaraderie as two owners, two food service guys, owner-schleppers, though he he had been an entrepreneur for far longer than I had (he had owned a successful string of laundries before owning Kaffeinate with his son). That was the last time I saw him.]

Friday, March 22, 2019

Rather Unique

We just had a customer come in, and this happens all the time, that they say, "Look at all those old machines back there, I love it, and everybody hustling and working.  It's rather unique. What a great space."

Rather Unique, AZ

Wednesday, March 20, 2019

Consumer Exhaustion

Consumer exhaustion is real.  In the 1980s, television advertising seemed to aggressively interrupt programming and become a true annoyance, but now everything we do appears programmed and marketed.  The emails I get, the banners, the images in my feed, down to how everything is merchandised at the supermarket.  Consumption is an everyday desire now in a way that feels pushed upon us and insidious.  When sending out social media (we have a listserv, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook), I'm thinking consciously about contributing to this psychic clutter.  You have to play to get people interested in your products, but it is a fine balance of information with sensitivity to overloading.  There are times I really want to spend no money because I feel so overwhelmed by all the marketing, but then I also feel times where I am drawn to consumption as if it is part of a circadian rhythm.  My whole existence within consumer capitalist culture leaves me with an overall feeling of exhaustion while at the same time I'm decrying the poor to mediocre quality of the goods and services that I often have to choose from.

Uniformity and Process

Consistency is a main virtue of a baker.  Same temp, same size, same shape, same recipe, same result, day in, day out.  I was struck when visiting Biscuitville (my favorite fast food biscuit) that they put in tools or cheats to make their biscuit-making "like homemade" yet as close to idiot-proof and uniform as possible.  First, they have in big numbers "2 12" written on their flour scale, I assume to indicate that the desired weight per batch is two pounds, twelve ounces.  Secondly, they have little nubs on the end of the rolling pin (see below) so that each biscuit is rolled to the correct height (not too squashed, not too tall).  Through training, they actually get pretty good results for a fast food biscuit.  I assume there are other cheats involved, but I haven't signed up to become a biscuit-making employee there as yet.

The bakery is a hubris machine

The bakery is a hubris machine.  If you are feeling prideful, a batch burned or turned or spurned will catch you pants down and expose you.  Mistakes are made, racks are bumped, trays are dropped, and fingers are burned and cut.  If you are careful careful careful maybe you make it through one whole day only to hear that your employee suffered a bad bake or someone forgot the salt.  As a baker, you are never flying too high to the sun.  Those baker celebrities who seem hip and even their mistakes look blessed?  They're imaginary.  They don't bake every day.  Because if they did, they would show you all their fails, trials, and uglies.

What is it about pie

What is it about pie that makes it perfect? My theory is the contrast of textures.  Buttery flaky crust gives way to an oozy sugary sweet filling with chunks of fruit or a velvety custard or eggy chess.  It is that complementarity (or contradiction) that sets up the feeling of expectation and desire that brings us back to pie, whether hot, cold, stale, fresh, or in between.  Essentially, stratification makes for the tension of the pie plot, a textural contrast that bits of crust will clean away the food particles of filling as it washes around your mouth and in between your teeth.

Friday, March 8, 2019

Article on Artisan Baking and Philosophy

Adam Sobsey wrote a nice article in the Indyweek on Alex and Ari (we made a stencil, "Dish", as that is the name of their food issue).  Check it out!

https://indyweek.com/food-and-drink/features/dish-ninth-street-bakery-bread-program-philosophy/
photos by Bob Karp





Rosenfeld's Bagels

Benchwarmer's Bagels has recently opened in Raleigh.  This is an audacious thing.  Bagelries are more likely to be closing rather than opening these days.  Like Melissa Weller of Sadelle's, you need to have a perverse love for bread and a background in the highest echelons of baking, plus significant capitalist backing to open a bagelry in 2019.  They are just too hard to make, too hard to get consistently right, and people expect that they should be cheap despite being labor intensive (Benchwarmer's sells a dozen for $19, and they are bready).  Each bagel at a place like Benchwarmer's is hand rolled, itself a skill that takes months or years to master.  Beyond that, if any of the following criteria are not in a defined range, a "real New Yorker" will insult you (trust me, it's happened to me):

Flavor: Reasonably plain, slightly sweet, with a hint (but no more) of sour.
Texture: Tight crumb, never fluffy, overproofed, or bready.
Crust: Shiny, caramelized, some discernable "crack" upon tearing.
Size: Medium-small
Chew: Toothsome

The archetype for me for an old-school bagel will always be Rosenfeld's Bagels of Newton Center, Mass. It's not the best bagel, and not the flashiest, but as far as they come, it's pretty darn good.  Walking up to the counter, you can see the aged bagel man still using the wood boards in the oven, kettle steaming.  Like Dom DeMarco of DiFara's, he continues to bake bagels for no good reason other than that it breathes life into him through his work.  I told him I was a baker and he told me the secrets to his success:

1. Use All-Trumps Hi-Gluten Flour
2. Include 3% malt syrup by weight of the water in the boil kettle.
3. Develop the gluten (it's going to be a stiff dough, of 48-52% hydration), but don't overmix it.

Rosenfeld's


Link: https://figcitynews.com/2023/03/hole-in-one-rosenfelds-bagels-celebrating-50th-anniversary

Oaxaca and Tradition

I visited Oaxaca in November.  I was very nervous.  I had never been to Mexico before.  I don't speak Spanish. I was meeting a lady.

What I found there is hard to put into words; it has taken me some time to come up with the right words.

I found mole, of course, but more than that, I found families. I found businesses centered around families, and especially around grandmothers. Those were the distinctive ones, the ones the other businesses seemed to use as a model.

Capitalist intensity has broken the back of the family in America.  Cell phones exist in Oaxaca, but cell phone culture doesn't dominate.  Most transactions are in cash.  Families tend to live together.  The rush of daily city life somehow seems more humane and vehicle speeds are restricted by numerous speed bumps.  The people are poorer than the US, yet they seem richer and retain more of their dignity.  Zapotec and Mixtec indigenous culture still lives there through the language, music, cuisine, crafts, and spirituality of the people (e.g. Day of the Dead).

If I was to put it into words, it was as I imagined a throwback would be to US American society in the 60s.

I've been to poor American cities before, but most of them are post-industrial.  Oaxaca never had a true industrial period - their treasured artisan crafts (mostly made by women) have more vibrancy and international appeal than ever.  As such, the post-industrial, post-global phenomenon of the hollowed out city doesn't exist there.  And there is no reason that it would develop into an international city with its decrepit ghettos as the rural areas surrounding Oaxaca City are just too poor and cut off by mountains with no great natural resources to exploit.  And so, it remains kind of a jewel in its own right.  Walkable, affable, with delicious eats everywhere.

I left Oaxaca thinking another way is possible. How do we get back to the family, to slowing down the pace?  Is community possible, and do you have to be poor to do it? What traditions can we build today to battle against the tide of urbanization and capitalist intensity?

the comal is at the center of oaxacan culinary life

quesedilla with freshly made tortilla from masa corn nimatalized on site, with squash blossom and queso

cactus

mountain vistas

monte alban, one of the earliest city-states

fresh squeezed morning juice




insane agave

Monday, February 18, 2019

The War on Terror Comes Home

George W. Bush began the "War on Terror" in 2001 to battle Al-Qaeda as a result of 9/11.  Now, 18 years later, it has come full circle and fears of otherness have created a a war of terror on our own soil, with ICE agents detaining and imprisoning taxpaying citizens.  We have literally become the very enemy that we purported to fight when the WTC fell.  Rather than making our community safer, these pickups have broken up families and created feelings of suspicion and hatred of whites in the Latino community in Durham.  It is shameful to see our government using these tactics to support its political positions on the wall at the Southern border and on illegal immigration. Shame!

https://www.newsobserver.com/news/local/article226258145.html

Wednesday, February 13, 2019

How to Choose and Brew Coffee

We began roasting our own coffee five months ago, so I thought I would post some tips here on how to choose and brew coffee, which has a lot more variables than you might think!

HOW TO CHOOSE AND BREW COFFEE

The two biggest determinants for the quality of the coffee you drink are grind size and freshness.   Coffee that is too oxidized will taste stale in the cup.   Coffee that is not ground to specifications of your brewing system will absorb too much water or not enough, making for bitter or watery coffee, depending.   

Beyond that, the roaster determines the quality of what you drink, primarily based upon the quality of cupping (tasting) done with sample batches, the freshness of the green beans roasted (beans that were harvested over a year prior to roasting are really not worth a goddamn), and the roast level (final exit temperature from the roaster) of the bean.  There are thousands of other micro-considerations, but those are the biggies when deciding on selecting, grinding, and brewing roasted coffee.

Other questions to think about:

1. Are you crushing or grinding your beans?  Are the burrs in your burr grinder sharp and changed out on a regular basis?

2. If your roast time is greater than 14 minutes, you're probably baking rather roasting your beans, leading to a flat flavor.   
3. How much coffee (by weight) are you using per batch?

I couldn't be more pleased with how the coffee at the Bakery has come out.  We are aspiring to a light to medium roast Colombian and Guatemalan.  Growing up in Massachusetts in the 80s and 90s, I was a drinker of Dunkin' Donuts, which was very good coffee at the time - in fact the coffee was as good or better than the donuts (as Dunkin grew and franchised out of state, they cheapened the product and cut corners such that by 2003 the coffee and donuts were barely a glimmer of what they once were).  Another coffee of reference would be Zabar's House Blend, which is again, a very straightforward light to medium blend varieties of which can be found in bodegas all across New York City.  Roasting and grinding fresh, I hope you enjoy these flavors that really take me back to the memories of my youth.

Friday, January 18, 2019

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

from our instagram story

Addendum: We found out recently that Strong Arm was in fact admitted as a full-time vendor starting this Spring season, as well as East Durham Bake Shop.  Also, Phoebe Lawless will retain her market stall with the hope of returning in a future season, perhaps as a different baking business than Scratch. [3-19-19]

Sunday, January 6, 2019

#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