THE BREAD BIKE
Our August First Bakery Bread Bike has quickly become the hit in the neighborhoods of Burlington, VT. We fill our custom Worksman Cycles bike with organic bread, and cruise around the city, selling it to neighbors and friends.
The Bread Bike is out Monday-Thursday, from 5-7pm. Look for your neighborhood here!
Baguettes are sensitive loaves. They're best eaten the day they're baked, and are truly best when they're at they're freshest. When we arranged our bake schedule, we decided to put our baguettes at the very end of the baker's to-do list, and to have them leave the oven around 10am. Why so late? Most people enjoy a baguette with dinner, and if you're getting one from the local grocery store or co-op that brings in bread from commercial bakeries, that bread had to get out of the oven and onto a truck early in the morning (or even in the middle of the night in some cases.) Every hour counts in the life of a baguette!
August First baguettes are made with organic flour from Meunerie Milanaise, in Quebec's Eastern Townships, water, yeast, and salt. We've gained quite a cult following with them, and often hear exclamations like, "This is the best baguette I've had since I lived in Paris!" We bake them 7 days a week, and have them ready on the counter around 10am. We also offer them as a bread option for all of our lunch sandwiches.
It's rhubarb season in Vermont. Our friend Dave, who has a great garden plot in the Tommy Thompson Gardens in Burlington's Intervale hooked us up with some delicious, homegrown rhubarb from his personal farmette. Our bakers came up with this lovely little tart, loaded with tender, semi-tart rhubarb, whole toasted almonds, and a sweet sweet crumb topping. Perfection.
(photo courtesy of our friend Dave)
We like the idea of getting fresh, local rhubarb directly from home gardeners, and found a few more folks like Dave who are happy to barter 'barb with us! So for the next few weeks, stop by and enjoy a local rhubarb crumb tart.
Our bakers bake the most amazing organic, European-style breads ever. No kidding. We often hear that our baguettes are the best people have had since they were in Paris. All of our breads are organic, and really, really good. Just ask Felix, one of our first fans!
We've got 7Grain, baguettes and Country French Sourdough baking daily, and other fabulous breads rotating throughout the week. The best Challah in Burlington every Friday. And amazing Cranberry Pecan, only on Saturdays.
In order to make your life simpler, we've devised this great little handy bread schedule that you can print, keep in your pocket, wallet, hang on your fridge, or pin to your child's hat.
Friday, April 16th is National Foursquare Day!
We're teaming up with Deep Dish Creative , Rich Nadworny and Burlington businesses to have fun this Friday with the Smartphone app Foursquare. Foursquare is a play-along social app that tracks when you've visited places. Players leave "tips" for each other (not reviews), and compete for badges and fun bragging rights --- the person who visits the place the most becomes the "Mayor."
On Friday, we're hosting Foursquare for Kids and will donate $4 to the King Street Center for every FourSquare check-in at the bakery on that day.
Donations are calculated by players checking in -- one donation check-in per 4Sq. player visit.
The King St. Center is an amazing community resource that provides preschool & afterschool programs, activities for kids, mentoring, and support for adults and families. They're our neighbors, our friends, and we're so very happy that we can help to support them.
Here's a screen shot of August First's Foursquare page:
The sap is flowing hard and fast here in Northern Vermont, and bacon...well, bacon is always in season. So why not pair the two up? We're baking up Maple Bacon Scones to celebrate syrup season, and frankly, because we all love bacon and maple syrup! The syrup comes from Vermont's own Talcott Family Farm in Swanton, VT, and the bacon is smoked by our favorite meatsters, VT Smoke & Cure.
These bakery gems are like, as our Chef Brian said, "a little pancake breakfast all in one bite!" Salty, sweet, toasty too. We're making them daily until the trees run dry, which, according to our sources, should be for some time, as this has been quite a good year for VT Maple Syrup.
Here at the bakery we use a great home-zipped ingredient that we think you could find a lot of great uses for as well. We call it Lemon Buzz. The process for preparing it is quite simple.
Just quarter fresh lemons, remove the seeds, and pulse in a food processor until fine. We use lemon buzz in our Lemon Ginger Scones and in our Salmon Salad. It provides a delicious, fresh lemon flavor and uses all of the lemon.
We'd love to hear your ideas for other uses as well. I'm thinking summer --- vodka, lemon buzz and ice in a blender?
We make our Chai from scratch, here at the bakery. There are a lot of concentrates out there, but we found that we like the taste of freshly brewed Assam tea, and the way the spices give a bright spark to every sip. We buy our ingredients from The Himalayan Market in Burlington's Old North End. Ongyel Sherpa, (on the left) one of the owners, was kind enough to share his technique with us.
Ingredients
4 cups water
1/8 cup loose Assam tea
2 teaspoons Tea Masala spice mix (found at Nepalese markets)
3/4 t. ground cardamom
1/4 t. ground black pepper
3/4 t. ground ginger
1/4 c. sugar (optional, or use honey to taste)
Whole milk
Bring water to boil. Add loose tea, reduce heat to medium-low, add spice mix, cardamom, pepper and ginger. Simmer gently for 20 minutes, uncovered. Turn off heat, let cool for 5 minutes. Pour through mesh strainer. Stir in sweetener, if using. Store as concentrate in refrigerator for up to 5 days.
To serve: Use ratio of 1:1 concentrate to milk/soymilk. Use your favorite heating method (stovetop, microwave). At the bakery, we use the espresso machine's foaming wand, which produces a nice latte.
There's magic in this loaf of bread. Stollen is a traditional holiday bread from Germany, loaded with dried fruit and nuts. I know what you're thinking... fruitcake? No no no. This is organic bread, lightly sweetened, filled with Myers Dark Rum-soaked apricots, currants, cranberries, toasted almonds. Then dusted with powdered sugar for that extra "mmmm!" It's a great morning bread, and also a tasty nighttime snack, too!
We're now taking orders for Stollen. We're baking very limited quanities! Order at the bakery, or call 540-0060. Available every day from now until Dec. 24th. We'll be open on December 24th from 7:30-11am. Happy Holidays!
Over the past few months we've put together some really gorgeous sandwich and pastry platters for people here in Burlington, VT and surrounding areas. We've now created a catering menu, so we can provide you with delicious August First treats for your special events! Feel free to call if you have any questions. 802-540-0060, ask for Jodi.
