Most people that have gotten to know me as a baker don't really know that all my educational background is in science and that I didn't get to this point via culinary school. I went through my undergrad majoring in biology/chemistry and then continued my schooling to go into the healthcare field. When I first delved into opening this bakery, I'd often thought, "gosh, I can't believe I went through all those years and racked up those college bills to now end up doing something completely unrelated!" But more and more it's becoming evident that baking bread is ultimately an exercise in science.
Last night I was fortunate enough to attend a lecture and Q&A discussion in Chicago with Francisco Migoya, co-author of Modernist Bread, as well as get a sneak peek of the real thing before its Nov 7th release date. This five volume set of 2642 pages and weighing in at over 50 lbs is the culmination of four years of research by the folks at The Cooking Lab founded by Nathan Myhrvold, former CTO of Microsoft. An interdisciplinary team of historians, baking industry greats, and scientists including chemists, microbiologists, as well as physicists joined forces to assemble these groundbreaking, in-depth reference tomes on the subject matter. I'm so excited for this collection to join our resource library to help the C&C team continue in honing the craft and producing the best bread we can for all of you.
This week also marked the end for our short term CSB members...we wanted to give a proper send-off by baking one of our favorites, the Black Sage, for Wednesday's distribution. If you have been thinking of trying out Blind Date with a Baker, this is a good time to sign up for November shares. We have also made it possible on our website to sign up for the Winter/Spring rotation for those of you would like to secure a more long-term share. If your favorite market loaf has not yet made an appearance in your CSB bag, we will be at North End market tomorrow morning with Country White, Olive Oil Semolina, and Seven Seed Whole Wheat sourdoughs.