WELCOME TO THE SAC(K)!

Hello and welcome to THE SAC(K), Kate’s Bread members site. My name is Kate and I will be your hostess with the mostest here in The Sac(k), as we are so lovingly calling this hyper creative landing zone for all of my ridiculous food related downloads. With any creative project I hope to offer you even the smallest form of inspiration in your day to day lives all dressed up in the delicious art of food. Baking bread has defined much of my life. It seems that it has been my most trusted companion through the many ups and downs. It has also been my subject as a creative and I have found great joy in bread as my muse. The stories in my life have only become more intriguing, curious, hilarious, and beautiful with bread as my craft and the connections with community and new friends has been worth every baker’s sleepless night and early morning. I hope to give to you all in a new way now…..a food journal as my mind and heart understand it. Essays, photos, video, recipes, interviews, music, adventures and more to come. Thank you for your beautiful support. And here we go!

FEEDING THE VILLAGE

ACCOUNTS OF A SMALL TOWN SUPPER CLUB

MARCH 29, 2023

I warmed up the three old hotdogs in the pot of sauerkraut on the stove.  At nine thirty, after the dish pile and dish rag laundry, I put the dogs in a bowl with ketchup, gabbed a fork.  A full day dinner event and I just don’t eat.  Food is all around, but time alludes me and the rush to pull it off is cornerstone in my mind.  We always make just enough and never too much which means we don’t eat, even if time allowed.  So I eat the hotdogs from the stove pot late after everyone is gone….then have a shower.  Toweling off I feel the edges of my face.  When you are tired everything moves slowly so you feel the bones and notice as the towel moves from cheek down neck to the shoulder.  I settle there and think how nice the water runs and the towel dries but my hair still smells of smoke.  Half clean is better then completely run down and dirty so it will suffice and I can crawl into bed.

The oven sank into the DG….decomposed granite in the driveway.  Cade is good.  My dad said a man is only worth as much as his four wheel drive truck.  Cade has a good truck.  It can haul the ridiculous weight of our pizza oven on wheels….in and out of mud all day long.  Our sojourn into the Embers Only Pizza project has been christened by months of rain so between the mud and the flat tires on the trailer moving things about has been a challenge to say the least.  I don’t do any of it.  It’s all Cade.  So the oven hitch sank into the DG and we borrowed a car jack….on pieces of slate stone and wood Cade jacked the oven up and whipped it around into place.

I watched for a second and went back to making pastry cream….batches and batches for the profiterole dessert with market strawberries.  Strawberries a hearty price at the farmer’s market but they’re the kind that slice red and not white….ripe and sweet, the early bird berries.

The choux pastry needing a good hot kick in the oven before dropping temp and letting them brown up.  It’s pronounced “shoe”……the pastry, and puffs up hollow inside for fillings.  The go-to for cream puffs.  One might think it’s named for the slipper like shape of the respected eclair but “choux” in French means cabbage. The pastry gets its name because the little balls of choux paste puff up and look like little cabbages all in a row.  I find great happiness in these bizarre food facts….the naming of our classics.  They are stories ages old that still apply in most kitchens.  Some crazy old cook probably came up with it.

Set up, food prepped and people show up.  I wonder who will sit at the private table in the bushes by the rock.  The germans did.  We gave them an additional crate for more table space.  It had a way about it that felt special.  I felt okay when I realized they came prepared in down coats and scarves.  They would be warm enough.

I wonder who will get the one odd plate at the head of the table by the wood pile.  It is oval and painted with a bird….fancy feathers and all.  A woman who ate pizza from a very old oven of mine when I was in my early twenties sat at the bird plate.  The early days of pizza parties for garden shareholders.  Some people stay around and witness your life and see your struggles and your changes.  Sometimes we forget they are all around us.

I wonder if the collard greens bunched up in the old duck soup tureen won’t wilt.  They look like old estate elegance set against the old bakeshop in the woods.  That’s what Anna Thomas used to call my shop. The Bakery In the Woods.  She would come up with friends and glean the frangipane and almonds from the sheet trays after I scooped the almond croissants into a box.  And here the shop still sits wood soaked amongst the saturated Eucalyptus trees in mud and flood waters.  The board and bat build, two tone in color after the bear took off the siding.  He went after the one tiny jar of honey sitting smack in the middle of my dough table.  Typical bear.  Now we have locks on things, like the windows and the trashcans.  But honestly, if he wanted the honey he would find a way to get it.  Who are we to think we have any control over a creature like that.

My brother came in red faced and eyes watering.  I asked him to run fires for the ambiance and entertaining.  Also to warm the place up but the wood was too wet.  We smoked the joint and the wind picked up.  A calamity of sorts.  Maybe we should name our oven Calamity….after Jane the wild west sharp shooting woman…spitting out pizzas in a cloud of smoke!  Brilliant name!  The smoke was not so brilliant but we managed and for all the fuss behind the scenes I’d say we pulled it off.  With pizza you can pull most things off.  People forget their problems and just wait for the next slice.

I joke that we offer adventure dinners.  Only the strongest survive.  Get your gear and take a seat…..hope you brought your beanie…maybe a pocket knife too.  I caught the neighbor and the farmer eating out of the old salad bowls by the dish sink.  Clenching a pizza crust in one hand and cleaning the salad bottom bits with the other, no forks required.  Other guests wanted to help clear the tables.  They said it felt like home so that was the most reasonable thing to do.  It was not reasonable and I told them to sit down.  They had bought tickets for goodness sake, but I smiled at the idea.  You pay us, we feed you, you clean up.  It’s funny and I  thoroughly appreciated the gesture.  But no really, we are here to take of you so sit down and let me give you a cream puff.  Want a cup of coffee?

These dinners make me happy.  This is our small community……eating, making friends and telling stories.

My trainer from the gym left with a couple new clients and a tutorial on how to make an emoji avatar of himself.  He now sends encouraging pep talks to his clients via a little animated head with glasses, a goatee and a beanie cap.

From the oven I hear Ms Laura La Rue telling stories around the fire pit.  Stories of town and it’s folk.  Comic relief from a pregnant woman on her second cream puff.

Pete, our local weather man, scans the flooding under the trees with a devilish smile because really he’s just a storm chaser with a passion for drinking down storm water from his rain gauge….perhaps it gives him super powers.  We plan our back hills bread baking adventure while pulling pizzas from the oven.    

Cade just keeps making pizza  after pizza, dancing around the little girls playing waitress at his feet.  He’s still smiling, maybe not for long, but we take what we can get. 

Chazzy waltzing in farm stylish chic, we give him dinner in exchange for the beautiful garden mixed green bounty in our salad bowls.  He clears tables when the guests leave, consolidates the left overs for Saturday late night snacks. Maybe grabs the last sip of wine and a bottle of sparkle on the way out the door.

And dear Frances, my super star on the line, entertaining guests and picking up the slack.   She pockets a tip here and there for the future of her horse projects.  Early lessons in where the money comes from when sometimes, to those sweet young eyes, it looks like money grows like apples on trees.

Night is done when the guests have gone….tables cleared, fires out, dishes washed and I am in bed three plain hotdogs and a warm shower later.  My friend used to joke in the bakeshop “We’ re feeding the village!”  And yes, yes we are.

SPRING HAS SPRUNG INTO CAKE……A CHOCOLATE WAFER ICEBOX CAKE TO BE EXACT

March 22, 2023

April showers bring May flowers is but a fairytale in this neck of the woods.  This year however has been spectacularly peculiar. The rain just hasn’t stopped.  We have walked into spring a saturated world of green grass and mud…..tiny rivers running through it all that just keep flowing….waterfalls cascading off normally arid hill sides…it is a sight to be seen……and flowers so pretty to boot!

My daughter was born in the spring….two days after the equinox…a spring baby.  Her birthday cakes are usually some sort of disaster I cover in flowers.  She is a picky eater so the day she discovered she liked the chocolate wafer cake I felt like I had hit the jackpot.  Finally a cake she would eat!

This cake, also called the classic icebox cake, was a yearly cake my grandmother would make my father for his birthday.  Tradition was a yellow store bought box of chocolate wafers layered together with whip cream and chilled overnight in the fridge.  The shape was often a sort of log looking cake without too much character or with a small amount of ambition, you could make it into a full circular ring.  My mother continued making this cake for my father every year that I can remember.  The tradition has now passed down to my daughter.  Fitting as both my daughter and my father are named Frances/Francis and born Aries in the springtime.

This year I have upped the anti and decided to scratch the store bought wafers and make them at home.  Yesterday my sister told me she can’t find the chocolate wafer cookies in the markets in her neck of the woods down under so to all of those that don’t have the convenience of super market wafer sweeps this recipe might be a game changer.  Now you too can experience the chilled moist black and white miracle that is the springtime IceBox Cake!

Construction of the cake is the same and the fundamental truly fabulous character of the cake stays intact…..the overnight chill for a chocolate cookie wafer that soaks in the moisture of the sugar whipped cream and sets into a soft delicious chocolate cake by the morning.

My search for a chocolate wafer recipe led me to a version by Zoe Francois’, also know as Zoe Bakes.  I doubled the recipe because that’s what I do…..I make big batches, but you can easily run this recipe I am posting by half for one loaf sized cake instead of two.  I also accidentally doubled the butter but they tasted so good I’m sticking to it!  It all turned out fine!

PART 3

FLOWER FORAGING AND CAKE DESIGN

AND A MIXED BERRY GALETTE FOR DESSERT

EMBERS ONLY PIZZA CLUB DINNER: A RECAP AND A RECIPE TO BOOT

MARCH 14, 2023

Our first dinner was a success…or at least what I consider a success which is simply not a failure. Ember’s Only Pizza Club opened up it’s dinner club season with a bang on a chilly March evening in the quaint eucalyptus lined outpost of Casitas Springs CA. We set up across from the Springs of Life Church and below Johnny Cash’s California home…..a casitas springs tourist gem lined with Cyprus trees along a somewhat treacherous looking hillside. The Australian Native Plants Nursery of Ms. Jo O’Connell welcomed our dinner club with open arms…tables, fire pits and a bounty of exotic plants to zous up the area for a simple spread of food and friends on a most auspicious, calm and dry winter evening. It has been hard to find time in between the storms to run our pizza oven but to our luck this event went on without a hitch….not a breeze a blowin or a raindrop a fallin! A simple meal of oven roasted mushroom and herbs on lavash crackers, butter and garlic cheese spread on bread, garden salads and a delicious arugula pizza with garlic Chile oil, fresh mozzarella and parmesan cheese. And a mixed berry galette for dessert!

NOW FOR A TWO PART RECIPE:

HOW TO MAKE A GALETTE

PART TWO: THE GALETTE

INGREDIENTS: GALETTE DOUGH…….SEASONAL FRUITS…..SUGAR…..BUTTER……EGG YOLK……HEAVY WHIPPING CREAM

EGG WASH: 1 EGG YOLK TO 1 TABLESPOON HEAVY WHIPPING CREAM AND WHISK………BULK UP AS NEEDED

OVEN WARMED TO 400 DEGREES F…….BAKE GALETTES UNTIL BROWNED EDGES AND THE FRUIT IS BUBBLING AND SO SO JUICY

SERVE YOUR LOVELY GALETTE WITH VANILLA ICE CREAM OR A VANILLA WHIPPED CREAM

HOSPITABLE SAVAGE: A VISIT TO GUSTO BREAD

March 7, 2023

I drove the grade again through Oxnard and over towards Thousand Oaks on my way to Los Angeles.  Saturday morning early, I wore my polkadot dress and layered jackets because the weather has been so cold.  The empty lot next to the factory outlet stores read more like an Irish field electric green and blanketed with goats, clearing the cover of overgrowth.  Natural mowers not aware that their decadent winter grazing was a job.  The contrast to the “let’s make a deal” concrete mall adjacent made me crack a smile.  The basin, before the freeway climb of the winding grade, looked stoic as the clouds nestled over green hills and broke just so as the sun’s rays beamed through. If not for the row of outhouses and makeshift water stations along the agricultural  beds it could have been a timeless view, but the cars climbed steadily and the congestion made a mockery of that early morning nostalgic mood.

I was heading into the city to visit Gusto Bread, a bakery in Long Beach.  I don’t leave Ojai much but my community of bakers is extensive via the insta phone application and a desire to visit many of these fabulously talented people has forever been in the back of my mind.

Hospitable Savage

A short film where bakers talk and eat tacos. Aka Arturo’s Taco Feast

BREAD AS OFFERING

February 24, 2023

I sat in the small office with the chef.  I told him “we can’t ask twelve dollars for one piece of naan.”  He stressed that it takes three days to make the naan and I nodded my head, “yes”.  I told him that of all people I understood, I bake bread, for a living not necessarily a livelihood.  I understood the hours, days, pre dawn, day break, all day time it took to mix, ferment, shape and bake bread.  The exhaustion, like water being sucked down the drain all the while spinning delirium on a mug of hot chocolate and the butt end of a burnt baguette scraped with cold butter.  I knew the repetition of shaping boule after boule of dough to line the sheets and wrap in plastic for the long slow fridge rest before the next day’s bake.  But still, I told him we can’t ask twelve dollars for one piece of naan.

The community had mentioned the hefty price for a piece of bread in the our small town.  They had mentioned treating their families to our eatery only to leave with rather empty stomachs and an eight hundred dollar hole in their pockets.  Not really what I had in mind when I signed up for the project.  Feeding the village was my intent, feeding it hardy, feeding it well.  I was aware that my bread was not the money maker.  That I could not ask much more than twelve dollars for my bread, a large batard, enough to feed a family for a week, never mind asking that for a piece of naan.  People are willing to pay nearly that much money every morning for a fancy foam art cappuccino that they swig down in seconds flat, but sustenance for a week from a loaf of good wholesome bread doesn’t warrant the same worth.  It’s mind boggling, truly.

So, I reiterated, “we can’t ask twelve dollars for a piece of naan.  Bread is our offering.  It is what brings people in our door.”

He didn’t agree.  He had a very valid point that the naan should cost that much if not more.  The labor alone is enough to set that piece of bread at maybe thirty dollars.  Add cost of supplies and the margin of making money becomes narrower and narrower to almost nothing.  But alas that is the conundrum.  You can’t make money off of bread.

My head swirled around the idea of bread as offering.  That is what bread is isn’t it?  That is what bread has always been.  Our society, our communities, our homes revolve around the ever cultural importance of food and at it’s core has always been that warm loaf of bread in the center of the table.  It is the first course offered as we sit to a table, it is the start, the side, the finish as we slop up the sauce from the plate.  It is torn, and buttered and passed around.  It is broken between family members, friends, acquaintances and strangers.  With bread we sit and commune.

The origin of the word companion derives from the Latin words “com” ( together, with) and “panis” ( bread ).  In old French “compaignon” is one who breaks bread with another.  The fundamental idea of time spent with another as a companion or friend is based on sharing bread with them.  We welcome people into our homes with loaves of bread, the smell alone elicits a welcoming, a homecoming, back to the hearth.

In some form or another bread is found all over the world.  The environment, ingredients, climate all contribute to the style of bread made.  So many variations on the theme but the theme remains the same and the fundamental practice of flour, water, yeast and salt mixed and kneaded into dough and baked on a warmed hearth remains one of our oldest and most important alchemic discoveries.  I am pretty positive we don’t go through a single day without a reference to bread….the bread winner, my bread and butter, making enough dough, the best thing since sliced bread, a bun in the oven, loafing around.  Wars have been fought over bread, bread lines as long as city blocks, bread and water in prisons, bread and wine in church, traditions of holiday breads and the simple everyday custom of making a piece of toast in the morning with a cup of coffee or sandwich for mid day lunch.  It is ever present.  It is our sustenance.

Don’t get me wrong, I believe that the bread I bake is worth fifty dollars a loaf at least!  It deserves it’s worth!  But I am also in awe of its humble place in our lives.  I am taken in by its reserve, it’s peace, it’s quiet and unrewarded beauty, its nature to give so much from so little.  Bread is the Mother Teresa of food.  And it’s bakers, a damn crazy type of people in it for the unrelentless romance of a loaf of bread fresh out of the oven.

I hope to make you all bread again one day.  But my offering to you now is a conversation around bread and food and community.  To dive deeper into this raw, basic need in our lives to make food and eat food for survival and comfort alike.  A look into where it comes from, who makes it, how to make it, how to enjoy it, and how to share it.  My thoughts are for you to take as you will.

the oatmeal molasses cottage loaf

and then make an egg salad sandwich! (recipe)

OR

ROAST YOURSELF A WHOLE BLOODY CHICKEN!

For this month’s special opening bonus, my collaborator and Fabulous Friend Fiona (FFF), has made one of her playlists for you to cook to. Often times you’ll ask me what music I’m playing in my videos and lots of the time, they’re coming from these lists.

Another perk of being in The Sac(k)! Turn it up!

Love,

Yours Truly