Friday Bread Basket 7/2/21

Before we dive into this weeks bread basket, a few announcements:

• I’ve been a little quiet on the freelance front lately, but I did have a piece drop over at King Arthur Flour on the Five Elements of Great Bagels that I think you will appreciate.

• Because of the July 4th holiday, I am taking next week off from publishing the newsletter to work on some upcoming recipes for you all. I’ll be back for next week’s Bread Basket, though, and I might just have a subscriber-exclusive recipe to share during the week.

• And finally, there is this:

Wordloaf, The Newsletter, has been nominated for an IACP award. Judging by the other people who were also nominated for awards this year (some of whom are friends and all of whom are enormously talented people), this is something of a big deal for this little endeavor. As they say, it’s an honor just to be nominated. Of course, this never would have happened without all of you here to inspire me. So thank you for all of your support and encouragement. 🙏

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Kneading Equity: Georgia Pecans

My pal Amy Halloran wanted you all to know about an online talk she’s a part of two Mondays from now, all about a new Artisan Grain Collaborative program to help support Black pecan farmers in Georgia:

On Monday, July 12th at 3pm Central, AGC is co-hosting a conversation about connecting pecans from Black farmers in Georgia to wholesale bakers in the Midwest. ‘Kneading Equity: Georgia Pecans in Midwest Bakeries’ features Shirley Sherrod and Paul Jones of New Communities and AGC Steering Committee member Rachel Bernier-Green of ‘Laine’s Bake Shop.

This conversation is rooted in our work building trust-based supply chains, and we’re excited to have the speakers share their personal and business journeys.

It’s bound to be a really interesting conversation, and it sounds like a wonderful program.

-> Kneading Equity: Georgia Pecans in Midwest Bakeries

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The Whole Grain Origins of Furikake

Had an interesting Twitter conversation about the perishability of whole grain flours the other day, in which writer Mari Uyehara shared this cool nugget of food history:

Mari Uyehara @mariuyehara

@MikeIsaac @wordloaf @maxfalkowitz on a historical note, i believe japanese started processing brown rice to white b/c it's more shelf stable. but when they started doing that it created nutritional deficiencies in general pop. which led to the creation of furikake, originally meant to be a nutritional supplement

I’m a huge fan of of furikake myself, and always keep a few different jars of it handy. If you don’t know it, it is a Japanese umami-packed seasoning blend containing (at least) dried fish or shellfish, sesame seeds, and seaweed flakes. (Commercial versions also contain MSG, which is fine by me, because it’s a wonderful, magical compound that makes everything taste better.) Mari goes deep into the history of furikake and discusses making your own in her FW piece.

-> Furikake Is Rice's Best Friend

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Pastries with Paola

Paola Velez—a wondrous pastry chef best known as one of the founders of Bakers Against Racism—has a wondrous new weekly video cooking series for Food & Wine called Pastries with Paola. And this week she shared a recipe for guava and cheese bread pudding that comes from her 101-year-old mother-in-law. It looks amazing, and is a perfect summery way to use up leftover sourdough bread.

-> This Dreamy Bread Pudding Is Studded with Guava and Cheese

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That’s it for this week’s bread basket. See you all in a week!

—Andrew