Friday Bread Basket 5/12/23
Sun's out buns out
Welcome to the Wordloaf Friday Bread Basket, a weekly roundup of links and items relating to bread, baking, and grain. The above (sweet potato) buns were from the mahlab workshop I taught last night at Curio Spice, which was lots of fun. (Gonna send this recipe out to paid subscribers soon.)
There is power in a union
I loved this story from Ashley Rodriguez at Boss Barista on how the workers at the Wisconsin coffee shop and bakery Madison Sourdough have formed a union, despite (alas) resistance from ownership:
Organizing workers at Madison Sourdough believe a union is good for everyone—not just employees. “There are some outside observers worried about how this might affect the business. But a union can be good for a business, especially in a place like Madison, because people will show up and support the workers,” says Schlenker. “It’s about working with management to ensure everybody is happy and that the business is successful. It’s a two-way street.”
“One of the talking points I see is, ‘Oh, there goes Madison Sourdough,’ like the union represents the beginning of the end,” says Young. “That is entirely antithetical to what we’re doing here. Madison Sourdough is not just management’s livelihood. It is—quite literally—all of our livelihoods. The last thing we want to do is see Madison Sourdough suffer, and we won’t vote for a contract that will hurt the business. We’re only here to ensure that we’re taken care of while this business succeeds and to help the business succeed so we can succeed.”
Sometimes the journey towards unionization can feel like an opposition of forces, especially when you look at organizing as a zero-sum game: either the union wins, or management does. But the workers at Madison Sourdough are telling a different tale, one where rising tides lift all boats. Unionizing is less about picking sides, or analyzing whether or not people deserve or need a union.
“A big part of our push to unionize is about positivity and solidarity,” says Schlenker. “It’s not about trying to get back at the owner for something they did. It’s not about trying to punish people working in management. We just want a seat at the table to ensure we are treated fairly as we build our careers here.”
Go Madison Sourdough!
Friday Bread Course
Rachel Sugar recently wrote a piece for the New York Times on how the bread basket has been elevated to main-course status in many restaurants:
“It’s almost like a bread revival,” Mr. Werrell said of the bread service explosion. “Around 2021, 2022, I really saw people reinvesting in bread courses.” And, he suggests, there’s a clear reason it’s happening now: Americans, fresh off the pandemic-era sourdough craze, have discovered a newfound appreciation for bread.
During the lockdowns of 2020, amateur bakers obsessed over their hydration levels; Instagram became a slide show of comparative boules. And while the mass passion (or mania) for home baking may have waned, our collective connoisseurship has not.
“I absolutely believe that people are more appreciative of bread because of the pandemic,” said Joy Razo, the pastry chef at Dauphine’s.
The nouveau bread basket is, in some sense, an ideal match for these times. It is intensely communal, an antidote to months or years spent apart. There was a time when sharing food felt dangerous; now, though, it’s all-hands-in. “We didn’t want to have something that you had to cut,” Ms. Short said. “We want it to be almost visceral, where it’s like, ‘OK, we’re all just gonna rip.’”
Like family, but with more cheese
Order your pies here.
The butter battle
The Wall Street Journal’s Kristina Peterson profiled the state of the debate on whether you should be refrigerating your butter or not:
“Enough is enough,” said Ms. Mertzel, who lives in the Northridge neighborhood of Los Angeles. “I want to eliminate confusion about putting butter on the counter.”
Ms. Mertzel said she came to her epiphany one morning about 14 years ago. She had forgotten to put away the butter the night before and at breakfast discovered how easy it was to spread. “My life changed in so many ways at that moment,” she said.
She has since written a children’s book, “Change Your Life for the Butter,” and developed a line of countertop holders with flip-top lids that keep clear of the softened butter inside. Traditional butter dishes, she said, “are a train wreck. The lid gets all gross.”
Food-safety scientists say butter usually doesn’t require constant cold. Butter made from pasteurized cream is safe to store at room temperature for a stretch because of its high fat content and low moisture, among other reasons. Salted butter tends to stay fresh longer.
As someone who has used a butter bell for a long time, I come down on the side of it being fine to keep it out at room temperature, but my advice is to only do this with as much butter as you’d actually go through in a week or so, because it can start to turn rancid, especially during the warmer months.
That’s it for this week’s bread basket. I hope you all have a peaceful weekend, see you on Monday.
—Andrew
The “toad in the hole” what!🤦🏻♀️🫣
Thank you for sharing my story, Andrew! This was really special to write!