Wait a minute! Last I knew it was Christmas and here we are two weeks from Pączki day. You know what that means however, this Saturday, February 6th is Pączki Practice Day! It gives us a chance to hone our skills and get ready for the big day, Because we are practicing, we offer our Pączki at half price, $.75 because you will be helping us get it right. Besides that, it’s a fun tradition.
Read MoreAfter a long and difficult hiatus, I'm pretty much back. I haven't been able to write because, as many of you know, my husband Ken, died in September of cancer. The bakery will surely miss his research, his creativity in making soups (he left lots of recipes), his labor-saving gadgets and equipment repairs, and his willingness to pitch in wherever he was needed. I will miss so much more.
Read MoreSometime today the first of the heritage tomatoes will arrive! These are Pat Smith's Kirklin Farms heritage tomatoes. Thus begins the 2020 BLT season. After a difficult, lonely, and unpredictable several months, we can all have something very special and comfortingly familiar.
Read MoreFor once the email will be short and sweet. With the turmoil of the last few weeks on top of the pandemic, I have been too sad and depressed to write anything. But there are things you need to know, so write I will.
Read MoreWe still have Curb Side Pickup and Take Out, and soon, Dine-In on a restricted basis as well! After all, bread is the staff of life and after 42 years of ups and downs, we know that Sarkozy Bakery will survive and continue to be a proud member of this beautiful Kalamazoo community.
Read MoreI haven't been able to write recently, things have been too chaotic, not to mention, depressing. And then Spring presented us with the most gorgeous blossom season I have ever seen. The blossoms are clinging to the twig and pushing above the un-mown grass, holding on while new blossoms join them. There are trees that I've never noticed before that are astonishingly beautiful. Branches laden with the blossoms aching to be seen. As if they want to comfort us. And then I remember that many people are in lockdown, many are sick and many have died. Hard as the blossoms try, lots of people will miss their beauty this year. The dreary cold Spring has brought this extraordinary beauty. Let's hope that the sad and difficult virus watch will bring us to some new understanding and surprising beauty.
Read MoreSpring is still struggling to stand up to winter. Magnolia trees with drooping brown frozen flowers are evidence of the struggle and on April 18th I saw a snowman on my way to work - only about 4 feet tall, but there it was - the perfect symbol of the upside down world we live in these days. Ramps are fighting the good fight and may be big enough for a good harvest next week. Ken harvested a few in our woods and he made ramp pasta for the two of us. He planted them about seven years ago just so he could do that. What a treat! What a guy!
Read MoreToday’s motto: Neither a victim nor a vector be.
Things are changing pretty fast here and we are trying to keep up. Today we significantly ramped up our procedures in the store. Don't be frightened when you walk into the bakery and see us all decked out in our Halloween outfits.
Read MoreI have always said that it is impossible to be a cocky bread baker because the bread will humble you. In the past few weeks, the bread has nearly brought us to our knees and broken our hearts. Seriously, some days we wanted to cry. But this week, we seem to be making progress in producing the bread the way we want it.
Read MoreFirst off, we have quite a few tomatoes, so your BLT fix awaits! When a BLT is just right, juice will run down your hand on to the plate (and maybe on to your shirt), the bacon will shatter salt-sweet, and the tomato will bloom inside your mouth. Pat Smith of Kirklin Farms is, at this time, able to pick enough to take care of us. How long they last depends on the weather.
Read MoreAnd it is ending on a sad note. As of now, there aren’t any truly fabulous tomatoes. There are some pretty good ones, but the weather has taken its toll. Let’s hope that this is not the new normal. Recapping Pat Smith’s (of Kirklin Farms) experience, the spring was so wet she couldn’t get into the field to transplant the tomatoes she had started and they stayed in the greenhouse and became pot bound and leggy.
Read MoreIt's here, all the great food of summer. I have heard reports of really good corn this year so get cracking! Get out there and get some either directly from a farm or farmers market. Forget about grocery store corn (unless that's the only choice in which case it is better than none) Of course the Kalamazoo Farmers Market has a great selection of corn and all the other myriad of fruits and vegetables of this time of year. Eat it or cook it the day you buy it, when it is creamy and tender.
Read MoreGuess what? I saw my first two Heritage tomatoes from Kirkland Farms last Saturday. So we know that very soon we will be serving BLTs. We only serve BLTs when we have beautiful, fabulous, tasty tomatoes. So from sometime next week until shortly after the first frost you will be able to get the magic combination of Sarkozy Oatmeal Bread, Pat Smith Heritage Tomatoes, and Carlson Farms Bacon.
Read MoreThis heat is going to stay for a while so we are serving cold soups at lunch time starting with everyone’s old standby, Gaspacho. My theory is that when the tomato arrived in Andalusia, it was added to their traditional bread soup consisting of bread, olive oil, garlic and water. Everyone who tasted it said “We’ve been waiting hundreds of years for this!” and it became an instant hit. Anything that good, spread quickly around the world or at least to Michigan.
Read MoreLook what I found at the Farmers Market! It is a Lion’s Mane mushroom grown by Dan Owens of Bankson Lake Farm. While Dan has a farm in Lawton, these were grown in the basement of his home on Oakland Drive. The large one is a two pound beauty!
Read MoreNow that strawberries are coming in, that makes it Biscuit Season! If you bought an already baked biscuit from us (which we wouldn’t let you do), by the time you carried them home, they would be STALE. Perfect biscuits need to be eaten as soon after they come out of the oven as you can get them on your fork!
Read MoreHere’s something new - and sort of old - and new. We are making ciabatta again! We stopped making it quite a while ago because when we moved to the new store, we just couldn’t it right. It would have huge holes in the center. We still get some of that, but we think we have solved that problem ……….. most of the time. Ciabatta is a new bread incarnation, created by an Italian Baker, Arnando Cavallari, in 1962. Introduced to the United States in 1987, it has quickly spread around the world. Cavallari developed it to have a bread for sandwiches to replace imported French baguettes. Being such a recent development, look for lots of variations as bakers around the world adapt it to their cuisines.
Read MoreJust as the glorious end of the late summer produce fades, a new treat comes on the scene. New crop hazelnuts. Our hazelnuts are always really good because of the way our supplier handles them. They come from Freddy Guys Hazelnuts in Oregon’s Willamette Valley. This orchard is owned by Barb and Fritz Foulke and they store the nuts in the shell. They shell and roast them twice a week.
Read MoreFall gets me crazy. So much to taste, so much to process, and so much beauty lost between our fingers as we try to save the bounty. We can't save much of it no matter how frantically we try, but surely it will come again. Oh if only we could feel confident that it would. In the mean time, it makes us feel so right with the world to put food up, even if it is only one batch of freezer jam.
Read MoreIt is the amazing abundance time of year. When the last of the Summer Sunshine spills onto your kitchen counter as ripening tomatoes, the last of the summer squash, the first of the winter squash, and corn demanding to be eaten now, the egg plant and peppers competing in their astonishing beauty contest. Watermelon intrudes with it’s sweet remembrance of hot, unbearable days. All of them demanding your attention. Too much of everything, you freeze instead of can, you can only eat peaches outside or over the kitchen sink because their juice runs down your arms as you suck their wonderfulness out of the skin. The bounty retains it’s magic leaving the stain of tomato seeds on the front of all of your shirts.
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