The post Chocolate Chip Cookies first appeared on Gracie's Providence.

The post Chocolate Chip Cookies appeared first on Gracie's Providence.

Melissa Denmark

April 15, 2014 marks a special day for us here at Gracie’s and Ellie’s. Our friend and pastry chef, Melissa Denmark, will be honored as a Rising Star in the Coastal New England culinary scene. She is one of 32 people to receive this award from the online culinary magazine, Star Chefs.

Who are the rising stars? They are a group of culinary professionals who represent the forefront of American cuisine. Creativity, ambition, presentation and, most important, delicious food or drink, is the hallmark of a StarChefs’ Rising Star.

Here is what they have to say about Melissa:

“For Melissa Denmark, pastry wasn’t so much a career choice, as it was a biological imperative from a young age—baking is in her bones. Now, as a bonafide pastry chef at Gracie’s in Providence, she leaves no resource untapped in a constant search for flavor, product, and ideas. Ambitious and focused, she takes broad concepts like romance or common ingredients, like the bay leaf, and conceives singular composed dishes. But all Denmark’s desserts share a common bond: they have it all.

 

No matter the technique or profile she’s highlighting, every plate is sweet, salty, sour, bitter, smooth, spongy, crunchy, creamy. Even Denmark’s “sweet” has subtle variation: savory-sweet, tart-sweet, rich-sweet. And if her work at Gracie’s—a restaurant synonymous with Providence—wasn’t enough, she has spearheaded the bread and pastry program at Ellie’s Bakery, making Denmark’s food an imperative in Providence.”

White Yam Custard, Brown Butter Shortbread, Pomegranate, Crème Fraîche Ice Cream, and Sorrel

The winners of the Rising Star award have strong, compelling culinary philosophies, and are committed to building a culinary community by sharing their knowledge with fellow professionals. They are the future of American cuisine.

We are thrilled, honored, and grateful to have Melissa working with us. Congratulations Melissa! You deserve it!

The post Chef Melissa Denmark Shines as a Rising Star first appeared on Gracie's Providence.

The post Chef Melissa Denmark Shines as a Rising Star appeared first on Gracie's Providence.

“How can a nation be called great if its bread tastes like kleenex? – Julia Child 

Photo by Jason Wessel

The story of bread and baking becomes complicated around the time of the Industrial Revolution. Advances in technology led to changes in production methods of bread, and even in farming and cultivation of wheat. Social changes abounded, as well; more people were engaged in factory and production work leaving less time for baking and cooking at home.

Gradual changes in farming and agricultural technology paved the way for more commercial production of food items. In the early 1900’s, large tractors began to work alongside horses on expansive farms of the Great Plains. By the mid-1950’s, tractors outnumbered horses, and modern irrigation systems helped mitigate the effects of drought. These advances in technology and efficiency allowed fewer farms to produce more goods. While the benefits and drawbacks of this change could be debated, there is little question that these changes allowed for more commercial production of food in a prosperous, post-war nation that was primed for convenience.

On the production side of the equation, the older method of stone grinding wheat was replaced with much faster steel rollers. These steel rollers were more consistent, and could produce much finer flour that was compatible with mechanized bread production. There were new machines that could knead, weigh, and shape loaves of bread, then slice and package them. Joseph Lee of Boston developed and patented one of the first mechanized bread making machines in the early 1900’s.

Rohwedder’s Bread Slicing Machine – photo by The Smithsonian Institute

In 1928, Otto Frederick Rohwedder finalized production of a bread-slicing and packaging machine. He sold the first slicer to the Chillicothe Baking Company in Missouri, which sold Kleen Maid Sliced Bread. A massive marketing campaign by competitor Wonder Bread a few years later, and the mass production of toasters, ensured Rohwedder’s success with his invention. Rohwedder sold the rights to his invention to the Micro-Westco Company during the Great Depression; however, they hired him as a vice-president and sales manager. The “father of sliced bread” created an iconic American food that is still widely sold today.

Nearly 100 years after Joseph Lee’s invention, the one-loaf bread maker became a household appliance, and sliced bread can be found on shelves at grocery stores or gas station convenience centers. Americans today consume approximately 200 pounds per person of grains and cereals each year, as compared to 150 pounds in the 1950’s. Flower Foods, which owns both Wonder and Sunbeam breads, had sales of 3.1billion dollars in 2012, and according to the American Institute of Baking, Wonder and Sunbeam sold over 150million loaves of bread that year.

Until a few years ago, hand made bread was considered an artifact, and stone ground flour can still be difficult to find. Yet our love of bread has not diminished. Those four simple ingredients have paralleled human history, they have sustained us, been a catalyst for social change, and have been subject to our advances. Those four simple ingredients; flour, water, yeast, and salt are as much a part of the human experience as the joy of a sunset or the iconic moments in history.

Photo by Jason Wessel

The post The History of Bread Part 3 first appeared on Gracie's Providence.

The post The History of Bread Part 3 appeared first on Gracie's Providence.

There is something about the aroma of baking bread that is warm, cozy, and inviting. One of my favorite times of day is when I walk into Ellie’s early in the morning, and smell the bread rising or already in the oven. With our hands and four simple ingredients (flour, water, salt, and yeast) we can make one of the oldest and most communal foods; a food enjoyed by our ancestors, used as currency, and even sent to the tombs of Egyptian royalty.

This pure and simple and elegant food is one of the delights we share between Ellie’s and Gracie’s. In fact, it was the bread that we serve at Gracie’s that became the starting point for Ellie’s! Complimentary bread has long been a staple of Gracie’s dinner service, and now that bread is baked at Ellie’s. But what is it about bread that binds us to our community and to our humanity? How does bread trigger such a positive reaction in so many people?

Bread is our connection to our past; it is one of the oldest foods made by modern humans. Estimates vary, but most archaeologists and food historians would agree that humans have been making bread for over 10,000 years, and maybe even 30,000 years. The earliest breads were unleavened, similar to a flatbread such as a tortilla or naan. Occasionally, wild yeast would “contaminate” the bread, resulting in a fermented bread. This fermented bread eventually became the early incarnation of many modern breads.

The Egyptians mastered the process of making leavened breads and controlling the introduction of yeast approximately 7,000 years ago, and archaeological evidence suggests that Egypt had dedicated bread bakeries approximately 5,000 years ago.  It is also believed that Egyptian bakers experimented with sourdough breads by saving sections of particularly good doughs to add to the next day’s batch.

The History of Bread will continue in part 2.

The post The History of Bread first appeared on Gracie's Providence.

The post The History of Bread appeared first on Gracie's Providence.

The skill of bread baking passed quickly from Egypt to the Greek and Roman empires. The production of bread remained largely unchanged for centuries until the Industrial Revolution. The social implications of bread production and availability, however, played important roles in society throughout much of the intermediate times.

Among other social issues, a shortage of food and affordable bread is often cited as one of the catalysts of the French Revolution (1789 – 1799). The women’s march to Versailles, on October 5, 1789, was the culmination of anger and frustration over the scarceness and high prices of bread. Over 20,000 French peasants, mostly women, demanded better conditions and bread prices. King Louis XVI had little choice but to concede.

When Napoleon Bonaparte seized power in 1799, his government created specific standards for French bread, which included ingredients, weights, and baking procedures; he also took measures to stabilize grain prices. An even older law in England, the Assize of Bread and Ale, dates to 1266. This law dictated that bread weighs 400 grams, or multiples thereof. Only recently has this law been overturned.

The phrase “baker’s dozen” stems from these and similar laws. In an effort to ensure that breads met weight requirements, bakeries would regularly add an extra loaf of bread with each dozen sold. This was likely a consequence of self-preservation as much as anything. The penalties for selling underweight bread in medieval England could range from fines to prison to the pillory.

Another indication of the social importance of bread is its appearance in folk tales, rituals, and superstitions.

• Stir bread away from you for good luck.
• Eating the crust of bread will give you curly hair.
• Placing a loaf of bread upside-down on a table will bring bad luck.
• Bread and baking is a central theme in the stories and games such as the Little Red Hen, Patty Cake, and Sing a Song of Sixpence.
• Elven Lembas bread is known to maintain freshness and be nutritious, but is not known for its flavor. It is the only known food to make the trek to Mordor.
• The phrase, “It’s the best thing since sliced bread!”

Many of these songs and tales followed bread and baking into our modern world, even as bread production itself changed drastically with the switch to automated and mechanized baking facilities. The history of bread will continue in part 3 with a look at “modern” bread and bakeries.

The post The History of Bread Part 2 first appeared on Gracie's Providence.

The post The History of Bread Part 2 appeared first on Gracie's Providence.