Stu's new video

Here's a video that I just finished. Check it out. The video is about earth oven construction and bread baking.

photo Alan Priest

Hilarious Video

Really a wonderful professor and a hilarious video.
https://vimeo.com/9944174

Bagels

Bagels are not the easiest breads to make, but there's no reason why you can't bake them in your wood fired oven. Here's a photo of some bagels baking in my oven.

In yesterday's edition of the New York Times you can find an interesting article concerning the problem of finding a decent bagel in California.

The Most Beautiful Oven

Yes, this is the most beautiful oven I've ever seen. No brick oven can come close to this earth oven at Flatbread Co. in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. 
I had lunch there on Saturday and sat right in front of the oven and watched the bakers do their magic.

Earth Oven Workshop

Hi
The next earth oven workshop I'll be teaching will be held at The Kneading Conference in Skowhegan, Maine. July 30-31. Thursday and Friday.
All aspects of earth oven construction will be covered, and the oven we build will be auctioned off at the end of workshop.
If you have any questions, simply email ssilverstein@gmail.com

Bread Peels

Beautiful peels made by Amanda Slamm and her sister Mimosa Mack. They simply call out to you, asking to be used. The women can be found on Facebook.

Amanda by her mud oven

Bread Earth and Fire

I just learned that Bread Earth and Fire had not been available as an ebook on Lulu, but this has been corrected. If you've been waiting for the ebook edition, it now exists. 
Happy Baking
Stu

http://www.lulu.com/shop/stuart-silverstein/bread-earth-and-fire-earth-ovens-and-artisan-breads/ebook/product-22182173.html

Best Websites

Here are two websites that you should know about. The first one concerns itself with oven building and bread baking.
The second one gathers a wealth of information about bread in a historical context.
Check them out, and I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Food For The Homeless

Mason Wartman abandoned his life on Wall Street to start a pizza shop. Everything was normal until a customer gave Mason an idea that's garnered national attention.

"https://www.facebook.com/video.php?v=969921939715331"

Baguettes

Check out this video from Breadtopia.

Eric has a very pleasing manner, and his instructions are quite clear.

French Bakery

Watch this beautiful video and see a lot of breads carefully lined up in the French-style wood-fired oven. The Poilane Bakery is probably the best known bakery in France.


http://www.liveleak.com/view?i=02e_1360406787

sourdough/basil/spirituality

I really enjoyed this video 
This all seems very far from defaulting, austerity and the Euro.
Thanks to my son Aaron for sharing this with me.

Earth Oven Workshops

This spring Roy Feihel and I will be teaching two workshops in Waterville, Maine.
Through the office of Waterville Adult Ed., the workshops will be held on Saturday, May 2. Also, on Sunday, May 3. 
If you find that the workshops are filled, then I suggest you get on the waiting list and stay tuned for more workshops. Feel free to e-mail me.
Stu
s.silverstein@gmail.com

Streit's Matzos

Sadly, Streit's Matzos factory on the Lower East Side is closing. I grew up eating these flatbreads, and then I tried to make my own. Not so simple.

The Streit family announced today that it will close the doors of its 90-year-old factory this spring, at the conclusion of the Passover baking season. The announcement was made by filmmaker Michael Levine, who had been working on a documentary about the company, Streit’s Matzo and the American Dream, for the past two years.

Related

• The Making of 'Streit's: Matzo and the American Dream'

“Since 1925, the Streit’s Matzo factory has stood at 148-154 Rivington Street on New York’s Lower East Side,” he wrote in a missive he sent this morning to the publication Bowery Boogie. “Here, in four, low-slung brick tenement buildings, five generations of the Streit family, and as many generations of factory workers, devoted their lives to the art of mixing flour and water, and sending these two simple ingredients through a seventy-three foot long oven to create sheets of matzo, the unleavened bread central to the Jewish holiday of Passover.”

The four buildings that comprise Streit’s factory, which is the last family-owned matzo factory in the U.S., are now under contract to a developer.

“I personally know that this was an agonizing decision for the Streit family,” Levine said. “I watched as they turned down offer after offer, until the challenges of maintaining a manufacturing business in a drastically changing Lower East Side, as well as the pressures of increased foreign competition, left the company no alternative but to accept.

“For the Jewish community nationwide and for the descendants of immigrants of all backgrounds whose families passed through neighborhood over the course of the last century or who remain here, it is the loss of a connection to a Lower East Side that is ever more the domain of museums and memory than of daily life,” Levine said.

Streit’s Matzo produces 40 percent of the matzo sold in the U.S. The family says it hopes to find a new home for the business.

Liza Schoenfein is food editor of the Forward. Contact her at schoenfein@forward.com.

Read more: http://blogs.forward.com/the-jew-and-the-carrot/212184/streit-s-matzo-factory-to-close/#ixzz3OEpAvWHO

More Flatbreads

More remarkable flatbreads. I can't imagine stretching a dough so huge. 

Post by 105.1 FM Chicago.