Tuesday, July 06, 2004


bubbling fountains

"a three-tiered fountain continuously cycles melted chocolate, allowing guests to dip into its stream with fruit, pretzels, marshmallows. . ."

and so we document the summer's hottest new wedding trend, which i suppose is chocolate fondue writ large.

and today is just commodity day here at bccy. chocophiles are concerned about the possible impact of fungal disease in south american cacao fields affecting the price and availability of better quality chocolate.

meanwhile, coffee lovers have been watching commercial coffee prices briefly rise after 4 long years of the world-price depression known as the "coffee crisis," which has inflicted much poverty and misery on coffee farmers and workers.

fears of bad weather in brazil appear to be abating, and so prices have begun to decline. it's still too early to say whether we're seeing a trend or a blip, however.

but there's one bright spot: specialty coffee lovers can rejoice in recent records for great-tasting coffees at auction!

and finally, i'm calling for recipes: i'm interested in 2 types of dutch breads rarely seen outside of the netherlands. and i want good recipes, please, suitable for artisan baking, based on authentic dutch-grandma-type family secrets.

no commercial or americanized yucky heavy ugliness will do, if you don't mind!

one is a light bread, often eaten for breakfast, called "fruit loaf" (in dutch i've see it referred to as both krentenbrood and ontbijtkoek; i'm not sure these are actually the same object), which contains a various mixture of currants, raisins, nuts. apparently it's often comprised of whole-wheat flour and buttermilk.

the other is a very unusual bread, the "frisian sugar loaf." this is baked with whole brown sugar cubes in the dough, which melt and create sweet pockets of runny syrupy stuff. it's said to be usually made of white flour and heavily flavored with cinnamon.

i'm not sure whether these are always yeast-raised doughs, or might sometimes be coffee-cake-like quick breads made with baking powder. . .

since erick schat's is closed for the summer, i gotta make my own. . .

posted by fortune | 9:35 AM | top | link to this | email this: | | | 0 comments