A Baker's Life

Whole grains ready for milling.

Last year, I think my obsession with learning about the real work of baking hit a new high or low depending on how you feel about early morning waking.  For one month, every Wednesday, at 4:15 a.m., the alarm on my phone routed me out of bed where I drove to SEED Bakery in Pasadena to help and watch Joseph Abrakjian, master baker at work. The following is a snapshot of my experience and Seed's evolution from new business to community treasure.

I learned the old fashioned way, doing the same task over and over again-nothing fancy- just hard labor, scraping cold dough out of tubs, cutting and weighing it for the bake  and sometimes trying bread shaping. My experience was at the tail end of the process which began 24 hours prior with the leavening being made-flour, water, and time.  It thickens and ferments slowly and then various flours are added, each one ground out of whole heritage grains-rye, whole wheat, spelt and white depending on the finished bread. 

Joseph’s practice as a master bread baker reminds me of a confident artist maintaining a discipline, but forever learning and experimenting.  He knows how to create a stronger and more flavorful dough–patience as the first requirement, a slow fermentation, not over mixing, and adding salt to the mix after another waiting time called “the autolyse.”  He knows that each dough has a different character depending on the type of flour. Some are robust and can take my tentative shaping while others are truly fussy–the pastry, baguette and ciabatta dough. 

Joseph’s practice as a master bread baker reminds me of a confident artist-maintaining a discipline, but forever learning and experimenting.

From about 5 tp 7 in the morning–it is quiet concentration.  Restaurant chefs come to order bread in the early morning and supplies are delivered.  He manages to keep a number of processes in order, dough that is about to be baked, pastry cream to be made, shaping, and holding.   At times the bread does not come out of the oven until 8:30 while customers begin to sneak in around 7:45 before opening time.  Pastries are baked to hold the demand back for bread and for the breakfast crowd.  And then the bread shows up-olive, walnut wheat, spelt, baguettes, rustic country, ciabatta.  

Ingredients are sourced with care from the za'atar seasoning his dad brought here from Lebanon to organic eggs, vegetables, fruits and ethically raised meat. The food is gorgeous, fresh and generous.  The customers are returning,  are becoming regulars while the word spreads and a community is forming.  

Joseph Abrakjian and Pam Watanabe of SEED Bakery, Photography by Ann Cutting 

Joseph’s calling is clear–make beautiful food, help others appreciate it.  But the commitment is something I did not realize until I made my own 3-hour weekly promise to come and help and learn.

Seed is experiencing growing pains–more success than they expected–and a need for good counter people and baking support.  I realize that the world of a high quality, small business is like the beautiful and fragile bowl of many, promising non-profits I have worked with–something that needs to be held with care.  Grow while maintaining quality–don’t grow so quickly that the work becomes punishing, stay in the moment while planning the next step, don’t lose sight of the vision/joy.  

I realize that the world of a high quality, small business is like the beautiful and fragile bowl of many, promising non-profits I have worked with–something that needs to be held with care.

Joseph's beautiful bread, straight out of the oven.

Bread baking tools--Bannetons for proofing and dough scraper

Postscript, May 2017 

Seed is flourishing, having recently expanded into the retail space next door. Joseph and Pam now employ 9  people including a second bread baker, a pastry chef and 2 cooks.  Joseph still arrives at 3:00 a.m. as the demand  for bread and pastries continues unabated and his commitment to quality holds.  But now the bread comes out well before the customers arrive. 

DIY

 If you are interested in learning more about bread baking,  Los Angeles provides a treasure trove of resources.  Novice and advanced bakers are welcomed by Los Angeles Bread Bakers, an active Meet Up group organized by Eric Knutzen.  Their introductory classes are fun, inexpensive and a great way to enter the world of healthy, delicious bread baking.  They also sell excellent quality organic flour in bulk at extremely reasonable prices and at times offer specialized workshops for advanced bakers.  The Institute of Domestic Technology, Joseph Shuldiner's brain child, often runs Food Crafting 101, which includes bread baking among its "basics."  King's Roost, a retail store in Silver Lake,  sells milling and bread making equipment and offers classes on a regular basis.  

For those wishing to enter the pinnacle of bread making, a number of artisan bread baking pioneers have shared their secrets.  The bible for these committed souls appears to be Tartine Bread by Chad Robertson.  Almost every serious bread baker I know owns a flour dusted copy.   

As I am a believer in the adage that the perfect can be the enemy of the good, my go to recipe for bread baking is the Twenty-One Hour Boule. The recipe's ease has made it a standard part of my food making repertoire and this beautiful, fragrant boule embodies the idea of nourishment in all of its glory.  Give it a try and please share any of your favorite bread baking experiences here.  

Preschool Gourmet

My four-year old grandchild, Alex, provides a font of observations for me. I watch Alex play, but as a food aficionado, I watch with deeper interest his developing taste. There are innumerable articles and books about children at play; but little about children eating.  One of the more memorable exceptions is the Margaret Mead film, Four Families, in which the anthropologist documented how parents from India, Canada, France and Japan fed their babies.  For some reason, the French mother's style continues to resonate with me 30 years later.   Despite my skepticism about Ms. Mead's habit of extrapolating whole cultural norms from an individual example-  I remember thinking-that this mother's form of feeding nourishes more than the body. Meal time was a moment of connection--sharing the mashed potatoes with her little boy and his older brother while laughing and playing.   Eating, even at his early age, held the potential for delight  and communion rather than being a hurried chore.

Above: Scenes from Four Families,  a documentary by Margaret Mead.

Beginning at two, Alex would eat almost everything.  Rather than editing his food repertoire, he has emerged as an adventurous 'try - er."  He loves fresh fruit, especially the spring bounty of strawberries. His emerging vocabulary is most proficient in describing a growing list of favorite foods: oranges, apples, strawberries, biscuits, chocolate cookies, cake, scrambled eggs and most recently the rather pungent homemade pickles I make. I have never dumbed down his food. He eats what we do.  His latest description is “hot” when something has a bit too much spice. My garlicky vinaigrette is “hot.”

When he likes something, it is obvious. He eats with complete concentration, often pronouncing the food as “yummy.”  If he loves something, it joins an ongoing series of eclectic food requests: pork bun from our favorite dim sum restaurant and most recently home made gefilte fish. (Really!) 

The shared meal elevates eating from a mechanical process of fueling the body to a ritual of family and community, from the mere animal biology to an act of culture.

Michael Pollan, In Defense of Food: An Eater's Manifesto

Older brother Anthony set the tone for eating with enjoyment. Breakfast with grandpa; home-made sausages in the foreground. 

Chinatown plates by Steve Wong. 

He also knows that eating means sitting down and “conversing” while he speaks. His love of food means asking for more (often before he is done) and learning to respond with a thank you when served.

I realize in watching him that great experiences with food are similar to great experiences in general. We learn when something is deeply felt. And the learning within a sensory rich environment is multi-faceted. He is socializing, he is tasting, he is creating preferences, he is waiting, he is expressing his desires and he is enjoying himself.

When I cook, I invite him into the kitchen. He has learned that the stove surface is another kind of hot. He has whisked meringues for me, stirred a sauce, shaped a meat ball and torn lettuce leaves. He now knows that food does not magically appear.  It is the end of a process added to by his participation.  When he sees the table set, he scrambles onto his seat proclaiming loudly, “let's eat!” 

His twelve year old brother Anthony is becoming a proficient cook, so much so, that I invite him into the kitchen as a sous chef whenever possible.  He is a more than competent right hand guy when making jam and marmalade with me and is now the breakfast cook whenever he sleeps over.  No one has the patience to make scrambled eggs the way he does, slowly on low heat after first melting a generous amount of butter in the pan.  He grates some parmesan cheese on top as a finishing touch.  

Today, for your eating pleasure are three of Alex's favorites:  Orange Almond Cake, a custardy dessert made with whole cooked oranges, almond flour and a generous number of eggs along with his big brother Anthony's Scrambled Eggs with Parmesan Cheese.  To round out these eggy delights is the bright and seasonal home made Strawberry Jam, surprisingly easy and a great recipe to share with budding cooks and gourmets.    

And for your reading pleasure two of my favorite poems about food. 

This Is Just To Say

William Carlos Williams

I have eaten
the plums
that were in
the icebox

and which
you were probably
saving
for breakfast

Forgive me
they were delicious
so sweet
and so cold

A Newborn Girl at Passover  

Nan Cohen

Consider one apricot in a basket of them.

It is very much like all the other apricots--

an individual already, skin and seed.

Now think of this day.  One you will probably forget.

The next breath you take, a long drink of air.

Holiday or not, it doesn't matter.

A child is born and doesn't know what day it is.

The particular joy in my heart she cannot imagine.

The taste of apricots is in store for her.

Alex, now 4, still enjoys mealtime.  Fruit salad with fresh mint he helped prepare. 

Family History Part II

Date Pie and the Question of Ephemera

e·phem·er·a      əˈfem(ə)rə/ , noun

1. things that exist or are used or enjoyed for only a short time.

   • items of collectible memorabilia, typically written or printed ones, that were originally expected to have only short-term usefulness or popularity.

Mecca, Thermal, La Quinta, Thousand Palms.  Date farms and shops have dotted the desert highways in and around the Coachella Valley since the early 1920's, the towns' names indicating the extremes of this environment (survival, beauty, intense heat, and its particular crop - date palms).  I particularly love the name La Quinta - meaning "The Fifth" - the fifth what?  By some accounts, it used to mean a stop along the way after a long journey.  So, these dates, these towns, became intermittent oases of welcome and nourishment in what had been a huge, largely uninhabitable stretch of the Coachella Valley. 

Dates too are a staple of various Middle Eastern countries whose climates echo our own deserts' intensity. These  sweet nuggets have found their way into multiple home cooks' repertoires including my stepmom Margie's Date Pie. Her recipe stands out to me as one that was far removed from the extremes of its origin.  Instead, it was a well loved Thanksgiving alternative to pumpkin pie.  Less sweet, more dense in texture, with an incredibly complex set of flavors as nearly all of its essence is extracted from this sturdy little miracle fruit.  It became one of the most anticipated winter desserts, usually served after a family camping trip to Joshua Tree.  

Now the question of ephemera. Patric Kuh, restaurant critic for Los Angeles Magazine, described drawing inspiration for his recent publication, Finding the Flavors We Lost, from the Huntington Library's recently acquired  Anne Cranston American Regional and Charitable Cookbook Collection. (Yes there is such a collection-4,400 items.  Be still my beating heart!). While the various ingredients, tastes, food making techniques have changed- the Jello mold dulled by  sour cream or marshmallow fluff and speckled with canned fruit as a comical example-the Cranston collection holds more tenacious truths. In a recent lecture at the Huntington, Kuh described Ms. Cranston's capacity to find value in rapidly written directions on the backs of bank statements, envelopes, and scribbled-over pages of books, as "a testament to what we don't throw away."  And so, are these many scraps and formerly loved flavors ephemera, or part of a long and sometimes delicious cultural history? 

" I think of recipes in a different way...they are signs of curiosity, sales tools, ways of belonging, a means of organization...great historical markers..."

 Patric Kuh

I so prefer the poetry of his definition. Although the individual card, envelope, and plastic comb bound book, often are considered ephemera, their impact on the meaning of these larger ideas of culture remain. For your poetic and eating enjoyment, alongside the Date Pie Recipe, aka way of belonging, sales tool, and historical marker, I include the Ma'amoul Cookie, aka great historical marker, a way of belonging and for me a sign of curiosity-a Lebanese date filled dessert eaten at Ramadan through Eid, and at Easter.  Time to try something new, Easter (April 16) and Ramadan (May 26-June 25) are upon us! 

Recipe for Ma'amoul and its creator, Ashkgyn

Do you have a food making or eating experience that goes well beyond a series of directions? 

Family History Part I

During the lull between the winter holidays and New Years, I used the quiet to unpack some of my  recipe collections.  The one that stopped me in my tracks was a small 3x5 scotch plaid patterned box holding my dad and stepmother's well used recipe cards.  My dad's almost illegible handwriting, a folded page of carefully typed Tuna Pancake instructions -- the food stains evidencing the popularity of this dish.  Despite sounding horrible, the pancakes (or tortillas) were quite delicious. Each recipe carried with it a memory more specific than the ingredients.  

Like a cultural anthropologist on steroids, I began to dissect these cards noticing the common use of rich, but pedestrian ingredients.  Most dishes were casseroles, stews and soups requiring simple pantry ingredients and slow cooking. The names of these dishes evoke a different time, Western Meal in One, Rumanian Cabbage Soup, Swedish Meatballs.  The reference to "foreign" foods (Rumanian and Swedish)  echo the very different demographics of Los Angeles at that time.  Based on the 1960 census, we were a county of about 6 million people of which more than 5 million were white, largely suburban, and "middle class."  Our understanding of authentic, culturally diverse eating was constrained by our inexperience, access and naiveté.  Descriptors like the "Far East" referenced a framing of our known experience as central both geographically and psychically.   

"Everybody is ethnic though nobody will call a French restaurant that. But those guys are as ethnic as anybody else.”  Jonathan Gold

These eating "adventures" were just a faint echo of the food and eating revolution that was to come.  We, lucky ones who now live in Los Angeles County, are part of 10 million. Latinos represent nearly 50%, followed by whites, and then ethnicities whose descriptions reference a growing understanding of identity, culture and community.  With this distinctiveness and connection comes a brilliant authenticity in food ingredients, sources, and evolving tastes.  

Artist plate by Steve Wong.

For your eating pleasure and dive into Los Angeles food history here is the original Tuna Pancake recipe circa 1960.  As a side by side, I include the ever brilliant home cook Mario Rodriguez' queso fundido.  While ingredients, heat level, and cultures seem to have little in common, they actually are neatly paired by the great trifecta of dairy, protein, and starch underscoring our enduring love of comfort food.  Both fill the bill beautifully.  Enjoy! 

Click here for Tuna Pancakes and Queso Fundido

Urban Foraging 101

A Joyful Welcome...

The idea of beginning a shared journal of food and community exploration can seem at this moment in time superfluous.  Even as I write - as if to echo my sentiments an email notification sounds - another alarm bell, another outrage.  

And then I remember, that the essence of health for me is a gathering of community - a celebration of something that honors our heritage, our nourishment, our connection to sensory delights, our varied experiences.  

All of these ideas land firmly in the world of cooking and breaking bread, tortillas, biscuits, naan together.   My experiences with food as entry point to connection began as a child in the Philippines sharing Fiesta day feasts with my neighbors.  The generosity, care, and delight in creating a festive meal cemented my sense of belonging despite my outsider status.  Without effort, I remember cones of spices, dried chilies, dried fish and frogs, the sounds of food hawkers competing with the visual overload.  Now, I only need to travel a few minutes away to a local Latin, Armenian, or Asian market to feel the same sense of delight and wonder.   

 I began documenting my experiences of community through food over a year ago.  I noticed that when asking a store owner, customer, or clerk about the uses of a then unknown food ingredient, they would light up and  barriers would fall away.  These conversations have led to meals created together, teachable moments for me, and yet another reminder that cooking is craft -- a form of mastery that is designed to nourish and engage us individually and communally.  

I welcome you to join me in this exploration...a form of foraging that extends beyond field and forest to my community.  

When drawn in concentric circles from my home, the foraging begins on the gorgeously food-rich Washington Boulevard in Pasadena and moves outward through Pasadena, the San Gabriel Valley, and the east side of Los Angeles.  The journey is purposely honoring of lesser traveled neighborhoods, where the smallness of a store may be easily overlooked, where a recipe has been handed down to us through the generations, and where the ingredients are truly a mystery.  I look forward to our learning together.