April 6, 2007
I love trying out new places to eat around Boston, especially places that serve sweets. A few months ago, I visited flour bakery + café in the South End section of Boston. Joanne Chang is the owner of flour and was nice enough to answer a few questions by email and share one of her special recipes. Check out her Web site and blog. And if you’re visiting Boston or live in the area, stop by one of her locations for some real treats!
Interview with Joanne Chang, owner of flour bakery + café.
[LJ] Many of our readers are not from the Boston area, so they may not be familiar with you or flour. Can you tell us a little about yourself, flour and what you have been doing recently?
[JC] I opened flour about 7 years ago because I wanted a place where I could get a homemade pastry, a great sandwich, an awesome cup of coffee in a friendly environment ... and I couldn't find a place to do that. I'd been baking for about eight years and finally decided to just open a place where I could get what I was looking for! We've been so happy with the way things are going that we just recently opened up our second location in the Fort Point Channel area of Boston.
[LJ] Have you always baked? From childhood?
[JC] I've always cooked, but not necessarily baked. But I've always loved sweets and when I started working in a professional kitchen I naturally started to gravitate towards the pastry section of the kitchen and once I started working there I was hooked.
[LJ] I love your motto: "make life sweeter ... eat dessert first!" How did you decide on it?
[JC] You never know what's going to happen between the beginning of your meal and the end! Why save the best part for last — I firmly believe in carpe diem, and that applies for desserts too.
[LJ] What is your favorite food? Favorite dessert?
[JC] My favorite food is my mom's Chinese food, hands down. I miss her meals a lot. My absolute favorite thing to eat in the world, though, is ice cream. I can't stop when I start!
[LJ] Where do you draw inspiration from for your recipes?
[JC] Restaurants, other bakeries, magazines, reading about something in a book or article. The great thing about desserts is that everyone has a favorite and everyone loves to talk about them. So I'm constantly finding inspiration from other people, both staff and customers.
[LJ] Do you have any favorite cookbooks?
[JC] My current favorite is "Tartine," a baking book that just recently came out and is filled with recipes that I can't wait to try.
[LJ] I understand that you have been working on a cookbook of your own, but you've had to put it on hold in order to focus on the expansion to your second location. Is there anything about the book that you would like to share with our readers? Publisher? Possible publication date?
[JC] All I've been doing is keeping track of recipes and testing them over the years - I don't know when I'll have time to actually get to work and write it but I really want to. I love reading cookbooks and it would be a dream to write one.
[LJ] Is there anything else you would like to share with our readers?
[JC] Come visit! flour is meant to be a place where everyone who comes in leaves a little happier than when they entered. We are all committed to making the best pastries and food in the nicest possible atmosphere that we can - we love what we do and we hope it shows!
Berry Bread Pudding
(Yield 12 pieces)We almost always have leftover bread at the bakery — some goes to staff members, some gets dropped off at a local shelter, some gets made into bread crumbs and of course some turns into bread pudding. It's always amazing to me how popular this treat is. It's made special with a topping of vanilla sugar and mixed berries.
Ingredients
10 cups day-old bread, cut into 1/2 inch cubes
3 eggs
7 egg yolks
1 2/3 cups vanilla sugar* - divided (make ahead of time)
6 cups half and half
1 cup blueberries
1 cup raspberries
Place bread in a deep 13"x9" baking dish or roasting pan.
Whisk together eggs, yolks, 1 cup of vanilla sugar*, and half and half.
Cover pan with plastic wrap and let sit overnight in the refrigerator.
The next day, preheat the oven to 300 degrees.
Unwrap the pan, sprinkle the top evenly with the blueberries and raspberries, sprinkle 2/3 vanilla sugar on top of the berries and place in oven.
Bake until just barely set, about 1 - 1 1/2 hours. You can test the doneness of the bread pudding by inserting a knife in the middle of the pan and bending it backwards a little bit to see if the custard mix has set up. If liquid fills the hole that you have made with your knife, the pudding needs more time.
Remove from oven and let rest for several hours at room temperature.
Serve warm or chilled.
*To make vanilla sugar: place a vanilla bean in 4 cups of sugar for a week. After several days the sugar will start to pick up the aroma of the vanilla. You may use a scraped vanilla bean pod that has been rinsed and left out to dry as well. Vanilla sugar may be used in place of regular sugar in any recipe in which you would like to impart a subtle vanilla flavor.
Comments
cathy (cathy) says...
Omigod. This sounds so delicious. Bread pudding is my downfall. I should curse you but, since it's Good Friday, I thank you. Sounds like a great Easter dessert.
April 6, 2007 at 11:51 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
ljohnson (ljohnson) says...
You are quite welcome! And I appreciate the lack of the curse! I'm a big bread pudding fan too. : )
April 6, 2007 at 3:09 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
rvonknorring (rvonknorring) says...
Lisa, I LOVE bread pudding and would love to try this recipe out. My problem is lack of access to "berries". What other fruits to you think would work for me? Also, what do you think about just omitting the fruit?? Flour sounds like a great place to visit! Hope I can some day!
April 7, 2007 at 4:07 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
ljohnson (ljohnson) says...
I love bread pudding too, so I was really excited when I saw this recipe. You could probably not use any fruit, but I'm not sure how that would change the consistency. And the fruit is what is neat and different about this recipe, so I would hate to eliminate it entirely. Also the more fruits we can get in our diets the better! Since berries are plentiful here in the Northeast, we tend to use them more.
It's always better to use local fruits, so you could probably try more tropical fruits - maybe bananas, papayas, mangoes, or pineapples. What are they selling fresh this week? The only thing is that these fruits are much sweeter than berries, so I would cut down on the vanilla sugar that you put on top before placing the pudding in the oven.
Depending upon how sweet the fruit is, you might not even need to add any additional sugar on top. If you serve the bread pudding with some vanilla ice cream or whipped cream, that would probably be sweet enough.
April 8, 2007 at 10:58 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
rvonknorring (rvonknorring) says...
Yummmy! I think I will try a tropical version. Thanks for the tip on reducing sugar when NOT using berries!!! I will keep my eyes peeled for berries, just in case.
April 8, 2007 at 11:42 a.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
mm56 (anonymous) says...
Good. Finally someone else is going public with the fact that they eat desserts first! I do it sometimes and try to never feel guilty about that. It is therapeutic - after all, desserts spelled backwards is "stressed." It only makes sense!
April 13, 2007 at 2:23 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
ljohnson (ljohnson) says...
Oooh! I have to use that!! How could I have never seen that before?? : )
April 13, 2007 at 6:40 p.m. ( permalink | suggest removal )
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