Mark Furstenberg

It's going to be a good collaboration, I think.

My objective has been to have a neighborhood bakery, rooted in the neighborhood and rooted in baked goods.  I didn't have that downtown at The BreadLine; that was a restaurant.  It upset me that I hadn't been able to create a neighborhood bakery in the city and now I think we are on the way to having done that.

The addition of Frank Ruta's cooking, it seems to me, moves us one step further.  There is no restaurant nearby.  We are in a neighborhood that responded so much to Bread Furst and wants a restaurant.  Frank's restaurant was a mile down the street.  It seems so natural.

It's true:  We have two sizes, one kilo and a half-kilo and the one kilo costs $12.  I don't know what price Whole Foods charges for its challah.  I don't know its size and I don't know how or from what it is made.  I do know how ours is made and from what and think our price is fine.

Retail is wonderful.  People who like what we do can buy what we do.  I hope they will.  People who don't like what we do don't have to buy it.  Although Whole Foods is not, as far as I know, renowned for its low prices, your correspondent may have found there something that satisfies him, the price.

In this forum, I read that Mark Furstenberg was working on a cookbook, and believe that he mentioned that it would be complete by the Fall 2005. After performing searches on: Google, Barnes and Noble, etc... I have not found any mention of his book and wanted to post a question asking if anyone had any updates?

It's kind of you to remember and inquire. I am working on a book, not exactly a cookbook although it does have recipes. I hope that I will finish it in 2006. If I said that I would finish it in 2005, I was quite unrealistic. However, my son's book about George Washington will be published by Penguin in 2006.

Chef,

Interesting issue regarding pizza dough...... Posted this on the general forum but thought I would ask you too. Thanks.

Either the dough got too hot or there was too much yeast in the dough. Don't forget that dough behaves differently when it is hot and cold. You could have saved the dough when you saw it getting out of control first by folding it several times to deflate it and then chilling it as fast as you could, folding once more during the chilling process.

I recall reading that before opening Marvelous Market, you spent some time working with Nancy Silverton at La Brea Bakery. I lived in L.A. and was a devoted LBB customer back then. Could you reflect on that experience as it may continue to influence you? Compared to the breads she used to make, the supermarket product now bearing the La Brea Bakery name is dreck. If a multi-national corporation offers millions for your brand, though...

No, Nancy decided to expand her brand before she sold her company. She built a large, large bakery to make par-baked products and distribute them widely.

I spent a fair amount of time at La Brea. I asked to be permitted to do an internship there because I admired her bread so much. My own taste in bread has changed somewhat, however, and I prefer slightly less assertive, less sour, thinner crusted breads than Nancy was then making. I see bread not as the centerpiece, but as an accompaniment that makes a good difference in people's eating experiences.

Chef, what lessons did you draw from your experience with Marvelous Market and how are you applying those to BreadLine?

Lessons from Marvelous Market: I don't like multi-unit and do it poorly. I dislike walking into a place I own and not recognizing my own foods and breads. I have to be close to production because I want everything always to be perfect. (It's not.) So I have resisted expanding The BreadLine.

Second, I don't want to make too many things because too many things cannot be made well. Marvelous Market when I was there had 12 doughs. The BreadLine, on a regular basis, makes six.

Third, I like changing foods because customers like that; all of us get bored when foods aren't changed. That's impossible in a multi-unit environment but possible in a single place.

I'm going to ask this question even though I suspect you despise it:

Which Breadline creation would inspire you to walk 45 minutes in 100 degree weather without sunscreen, given that tomatoes are not yet in season?

edited to add:

oh!  And please explain the cucumber & fruit water?  I'd never, ever, tried to balance a full cup of water with a tipsy lid while biking through downtown traffic until I got addicted to that stuff.  What inspired it?

I would not walk 45 minutes in 100 degrees to go to The BreadLine or any other restaurant on earth.

As for the water, it was inspired by a water someone prepared at Greystone, the west coast culinary school I go to frequently. It was Mai Pham who owns a fabulous restaurant in Sacramento called Lemon Grass.

Why?

Small business is very hard. Small business is not very profitable. But small business enriches communities in a country where retail is increasingly homogonized. Carr America rented The BreadLine's space to me when I was in personal bankruptcy because of my reckless expansion of Marvelous Market. The Carrs, father and son, and their president John Donovan wanted an interesting retail in a space they could have rented to any chain. That's unusual; that's remarkable.

What most property owners want to do is rent to tenants who can pay very high prices, ask very little allowence from the landlord in the construction of the space, and are utterly dependable about paying rent. (At one point in The BreadLine's history, our landlord allowed me to go $48,000 in arrears; they stuck with it "to see what was going to happen.")

Starbucks, Corner Bakery (Brinker Corp.), and banks are utterly dependable. They have deep pockets and don't have to be profitable at every location. They are ideal from the perspective of landlords. That's why banks are popping up everywhere in the downtown. It's a bad thing for Washingtonians.

You've been the driving force behind one of the major shifts in D.C. foodways over the past decade and a half: Thanks to you, we've now got good bread throughout the city.  My Saturday mornings start with a slice of bread and butter from the Breadline stand at my local farmer's market, where I buy a loaf for the week (we freeze half and gobble the rest.) 

What other changes have you seen over the years?  Who else has been working to inject good food into the bloodlines of this city?

You see many of them at your farmers' market -- local growers, cheesemakers, butchers, the craft side of our business. McLeod Creamery in Marshall, Va, for example. A fomer government worker, Stan Feder, who is about to start sausage-making here. This is important and is going to be more and more prominent, I hope.

In fine dining, Jean Louis Palladin inspired and befriended many of us and for a long time was the name brand in Washington. His role has been taken by Michel Richard who now inspires many chefs of the city. At the same, a lot of youngish chefs have been able to open restaurants and are certainly making a big difference here.

Phyllis Richman made a big contribution for more than 20 years by imposing her standards on the restaurant community.

And the ethnic restaurants of the city's suburbs; Washington has been quite hospitable to this development.

Mark,

I was stunned to read of your consulting work.  I think it's wonderful, but so many chefs have run into quality problems when they started expanding their operations--you, clearly, haven't, as Breadline is still far beyond the top of the game.  How on earth do you do it?

I am chronically unhappy about what we do at The BreadLine. I look at the bread, the tuna salad, the greens, everything and am dissatisfied. I keep wanting to change things -- and in truth, I think change is the biggest casualty of my consultation to others. I had a program for next week and then I was asked to fly to California to speak to chefs from the Brinker Corporation, owner of Chili's, Corner Bakery, Maggianos, Macaroni Grill, et al, about nutrition. How can I give up the possibility of having a slight impact on the quality of the food offered by a company with such power?

So I have to shelve my dissatisfactions with The BreadLine until later.

I certainly understand that  and really appreciate the time and thought you've given my question.  Thank you.

Yes, but I must confess that I am a notorious starter abuser...  I only bake with my starter once a week at most and tend to leave it ignored in the refrigerator in the interim.  So the sponge step is more of a feeding for my starter than anything else.

A bit too slack to fold, but a stir might work. I've never tried that.  Thank you.  This is the step I have been thinking of tweaking to improve my summer version.  I suspect that it is simply too long of a ferment with the higher ambient temperatures.  I am making a batch today and cutting it down to 2.5 hours, so we'll see...

Thank you very much for your insights!

And couple more questions, if I may...

What brand of flour do you prefer to use?  And do you find a noticeable difference between different brands of flour?

Yes, there are great differences among flours. I think that King Arthur is the best flour that is widely available in small quantities.

Mark,

As Breadline becomes more-and-more surrounded by establishments such as Potbelly Sandwich Works, Subway, etc., do you ever feel like you're swimming upstream, perhaps fighting a losing battle against The Borg?

How does a relatively small proprietary business go about fending off these heavily-subsidized corporate loss-leaders in the tussle for prime real estate?

Also, what are your favorite things at Breadline, perhaps the things you're most proud of, as well as the things you'd recommend to a first-time visitor?

Can you go into any detail about the upcoming book?

Thank you!

Don

Enough already, Don. First, on the subject of chains, it's difficult but not impossible. Potbelly, Corner Bakery, Cosi, Quiznos, Starbucks, and a new place that has chain aspirations are all within a block of us. They have lots of advantages that we don't have; we have the advantage of flexibility and creativity. No doubt they affect our business; but it's not impossible.

I am far more fearful, if the truth be known, about the banks that are gobbling up prime locations everywhere in downtown.

My favorite things at The BreadLine: Whatever we are doing that is new and/or seasonal -- and most of all, the bread itself.

As for the book, let's wait, if you don't mind, for three more months.

Chef,

   Thank you for your tuna sandwich.  It is a work of art.  I never knew that tuna could taste that good.  (Please don't tell my mother!)  What is your favorite sandwich?

Sincerely,

   A reformed tuna hater

A BLT when tomatoes are in season. Thank you.

Chef Furstenberg,

I enjoy the occasional email essays you send out.    Any plans to turn the Breadline blog into a more regular forum for your musings? 

Chris

I feel guilty all the time about not writing more frequently. The one underway is about why people don't cook anymore. As I cannot seem to manage to send more of these and as I am working on a book, I don't expect to do anything as ambitious as a blog, a form of writing that in any case seems to me awfully undisciplined.

Hello Chef-- I consider myself a competent and perhaps even slightly accomplished home cook, but baking is almost completely missing from my repertoire. I've dabbled in focaccia, played with pastry dough, and experimented with a friend's bread machine, but I need to round out my skills. I must admit, I've been somewhat intimidated by it all.

Can you think of any particular cookbooks that would help send me on my way to amateur baking greatness?

Thanks!

Peter Reinhart's book, Crust and Crumb, as is Jeffrey Hammelman's. I am working on one myself in an effort to help people who feel just as you do. If I were starting, I would make focaccia and try to perfect it and along the way use that dough for grilled pizzas and try to perfect them. Leave the Poilane loaves and baguettes for much later.

Chef Furstenberg, if you are taking technical questions regarding baking...

I'm an avid (or possibly even rabid) home baker and every summer my sourdough starts giving me fits.  I am 98% sure it is due to the higher ambient temperature in my house, but I am at a loss how to work around it with my limited home resources.

My usual winter method:

Sponge:

8 oz. 100% hydration starter

12 oz. water

16 oz. flour

Ferment at room temp. ~5 hours.

Dough:

All of sponge

8 oz. flour

1st rise ~4 hours.  Form.  Proof ~8 hours (overnight).  Bake.

Following this method in the summer results in thin-crusted, over-proofed loaves with less sour flavor than we prefer (my husband is a SF Bay Area native and is accustomed to that style of sourdough).

I have tried doing the sponge fermentation and the final proofing in the refrigerator, but neither of these variations gets me the quality of loaf I am able to produce in the winter.  I suspect the refrigerator is just too cold and retards the loaves too much.

Do you have any ideas on how to overcome a warm summer house and make great sourdough year-round? (Short of converting my extra refrigerator into a dedicated retarder or the whole house into one using the A/C!)

Also, and this is probably like asking a parent to pick his favorite child, what is your favorite type of bread?  To bake?  To eat?

Thank you!!!

Gosh, this is so complicated and without seeing what you do, I can't respond properly. I don't know why you make a sponge with your starter. If your starter is well-tended it should eliminate the need for that step. Sponges are generally made to add flavor and hydration to a dough but the starter should do that.

You can get more sourness by adding a little bit of white rye flour to your starter, very little.

The refrigerator is indeed too cold for proofing. You might use it for retarding and then pull the loaf out for three-four hours for a final proof. Or if you would prefer not to retard, put the bread in whatever room(s) in your house are air conditioned.

Your first fermentation is very long. I hope you are folding the dough at least one time during the fermentation.

My favorite type of bread to bake is the baguette because it is the one I never get right. And to eat, I most love a campagne.

Hi Mark, thanks for joining us...did Mark Bittman ever pay for the bread he ran off with during the Citronelle episode of How to Cook Everything?  The scene was great!  How long did it take to get that scene right or was it one shot and done?

That scene was quite spontaneous. Well, not exactly perhaps. Mark arrived with his producer, Charlie Pinsky and couple of camera people and Michel and we just did it. And no, Mark did not pay; but I must say he is an old, old friend.

Mark,

You come across as a big proponent of supporting the artisan, the craftsman, the individual- and family-owned restaurant.  Certainly, sighting you in a Cheesecake Factory would be equivalent to that time I walked in and saw my clergyman in the adult book store.

Oops.

Are there any friends of yours, any individuals in this area you'd care to name as being underappreciated or underpublicized, people that need our support but don't have the resources available to drum up a buzz?  How about people that work with you at Breadline that may not get the attention they deserve?

Will we be seeing your smiling face on jars of pasta sauce anytime soon?

Cheers Mark, and welcome!

Don Rockwell

Don:

I suspect there are lots of underappreciated people in our business in Wasington. Vince MacDonald who created Vincenzo's just above Dupont Circle where now his Etrusco is producing pure, simple, classically Italian food. Frank Ruta who is finally getting attention. Susan Lindeborg who has a following but doesn't get the buzz at Majestic Cafe. Lots of people -- I will think of more during the week.

As for seeing my face on a jar, not likely; I don't like that sort of thing.