Recently in Bread Category

Great news for those of us who are sorely missing Payard on the Upper East Side.... Francois Payard will be opening Payard Bakery at 116 West Houston Street.  It is scheduled to open in the late Summer.  Here is a rendering:



It will offer take-out and a casual dining room.  I used to stop by the Upper East Side bistro/restaurant to buy macaroons once in a while... oh, I miss those!!!  They are so good it will be worth a trip downtown!
 

Starting this Saturday, fresh Montreal bagels from St-Viateur Bagel will be available at Mile End Deli in Brooklyn. They've carried Montreal bagels for a while, but normally they come via courier. What's new is that they are actually driving up to Montreal to pick up the bagels and driving right back so they'll be as fresh as possible! You can reserve some by pre-ordering online, here.

Image Source: New York Times

Montreal-style bagels are thinner than ours and as I recall seemed to have a bit more sugar in the dough. It's been years though since I've had one. I used to go to Montreal a lot since I went to school in Burlington, VT...

I found a City Room blog post from the New York Times that compares the bagels, read full post here. This is what they say about the St. Viateur bagels "They are hand-rolled and baked in wood-burning ovens, something that current New York City regulations would no longer allow. The process gives them a crisp and smoky crust on the outside. The bakers slip tidy lines of bagels in and out on long wooden slats, before flipping them into a bin. Their recipe was slightly different, using malt flour, and they are boiled in water with honey. And since they are skinnier, the hole is more pronounced."

I had another wonderful brunch at Parc in Philadelphia over the weekend.  Wow, I love that place!  I actually think it's just as good as Balthazar (food wise), and certainly looks as good (aesthetics)... but you can actually get a table!  So it's even better.

One of my favorite things at Parc is their amazing homemade bread.  The bread basket they serve includes slices of their baguette, round wheat loaf and cranberry walnut bread. All of them are fabulous - - just the way good bread should be: crispy crust and a tender chewy inside.

If you ask they will bring you some jams, which is nice to go with the breads for brunch. They bring a raspberry and a marmalade.  I was curious to know if they had a special source for the jams because they also tasted so good.  Turns out, the raspberry is Bonne Maman and the marmalade is Polaner!  Pretty standard - - I guess they just taste so good because the bread is so good.

There was a great article in the New York Times on Sunday, "A Town Fights to Save an Osais of Baguettes" by Dan Barry.

It's a charming story about a French couple who moved to a small town in New Hampshire and opened "Le Rendez-Vous" a French bakery.  It opened in 2001 and was embraced  by the community.  Recently the State Dept. denied the renewal of the E-2 investor visa of one of the owners because the business was determined to be "marginal" and not meet the need of having a significant economic impact in the U.S.  And the bakery would have to close.  Of course, town residents were up in arms at the thought of losing their baguettes (and friends) and petitioned, wrote letters, etc. etc.  And it worked!  The decision was reversed.

Nice to see that sometimes things do work out for the best.  As a fellow baguette fanatic, I would definitely have done the same.