SethG

The neighbors will get a windfall when it goes, sure. But that stench has been there for what, 200 years? They can't claim to have been unaware when they moved in.

Many writers have decried the trend-- now decades-long-- of cities moving their downtown wholesale food markets out to the fringe. Much lamented, yet never to return, are Les Halles in Paris and Manhattan's own West Side Market, which was demolished in the Sixties to make way for the World Trade Center. (May it, too, rest in peace.) When the West Side Market was moved to Hunts Point, many of the smaller vendors there were forced out of business by the new, higher rents in the Bronx. They were also hurt by the loss of street traffic and walk-in business. In addition, the "modernization" offered in the Bronx allowed for more refrigeration of food (on the face of it a good thing), which in combination with decreased traffic led to the sale of older, less fresh food. Manhattan restauranteurs, who would often make personal trips to the West Side Market, were much less likely to travel to the Bronx, leading to much less hands-on involvement with the food being purchased for the customers. More intangible, but no less important, was the loss of a living, working part of New York's heritage. Now I know that there aren't a whole lot of walk-in retail sales going on at the Fulton Fish Market. So the analogy isn't perfect. But I would think that many of the above criticisms might well apply to the anticipated move of the fish market to Hunts Point in 2005. Yet I just did a Google search on the subject, as well as a search here on eGullet, and I can't find much of any opposition. I find "end of an era" stories, but not much else. Am I missing something, or is this thing happening with nary a peep of dissent? And WHY is there no dissent, given the way such moves in the past have been viewed by many as mistakes? I haven't researched this issue in depth, but I've just been struck by how this thing is really happening, and I sincerely want to know: why is this move good for us? (And, in addition, I wonder if we might organize an eGullet pilgrimage to the market one day at 5 a.m., before it's gone. Any interest?)

BUTTER. Once you try the good stuff you never go back.

Just want to add my thanks for a very enjoyable week.

Well, Kirsten, I feel responsible for your purchase, so if I can find some barley flour I'll make pebble bread too! I'll probably do both naan and pebble bread after the weekend, early in the week.

Hey Kirsten, we switched from Pebble Bread to Naan. See above. Although I could be convinced to try both...

Let's do naan! I'll probably try to make both kinds (same dough).

Naan's cool, I almost suggested that instead. That's two of us. Who's in for naan?

I didn't say any one of them (save Balthazar) is an outrageous choice. Far from it. Each one is a great restaurant, totally defensible. Taken as a group, however, they reflect nothing that's been going on in NYC dining in, say, the last five years, with the possible exception of Craft. This is in contrast to the UK choices, none of which I've visited but which seem to be intended to bear some relationship to developments in British dining.

Good luck to you, Mel! And please keep the reports coming.

If anyone in the UK uses this list to decide where to eat in New York, they'll be pretty ill-served. Balthazar is the only out-and-out laughable choice of the restaurants selected, but even the other selections, while great restaurants, are out of date.

Thanks, Rhea, I appreciate that! Anyone who saw a picture of that first loaf of white bread I made in January would have to say I've come a long way. I don't know what's up with Imagestation.com, but it's just as well that you can't see that white bread any more. I'm a little embarrassed about it now. I've heard no proposals for this week. How about Pebble Bread, p. 152?

I think it is generally just fat with salt, uncooked. I just spoke with a nice fellow at the estimable G. Esposito Pork Store on Court Street in Brooklyn, who told me that all fatback is salted. He also carries caul fat (yes!), so I'm going there in the morning. Is he right about the fatback? James Peterson, in Glorious French Food (the source of my recipe) says that "fatback" is the American term for unsalted pork fat. So I'm thinking I should soak and or simmer the stuff before I use it.

I'm planning to make a duck terrine, and the recipe calls for some fatback in with the meat, and also calls for it (or caul fat) to line the pan. I see salted fatback in all the local grocery stores. This is no good, right? Or can I soak the salted stuff? Thanks.

I think that's celeriac (celery root).

I don't want to go off-topic, but since you asked, here's a little rant/review: I posted a sort of minireview of the book here, which was kind of negative, and then I decided I was being ungenerous. The book has lots of good info about the bread-making process (and particularly good tutorials on shaping loaves), and I've liked the breads I've made from the book (particularly the spoonbread), so why not buy it? But I've learned a lot more about bread in the last couple months, and I find a few of Beranbaum's habits very irritating. Most of her breads call for a sponge (pre-ferment), and her method is to include all of the water for the recipe in the sponge. She says this very wet sponge encourages fast yeast development, which enables the user to use the sponge in as little as one to four hours. She claims this as an innovation. Well, this is just stupid. The point of a sponge is to let bacterial development occur slowly, creating flavor. Her one-hour sponge ain't gonna create much flavor, no matter how fast the yeast multiplies. Beranbaum knows this, so she recommends that you make the sponge a day ahead and refrigerate it. That's all well and good, but then where's the innovation? She also likes to make her sponge, then cover it with a "blanket" of the rest of the flour in the dough. This is a traditional technique from someplace, and I don't want to knock it, but Beranbaum says she uses it because when the layer of flour cracks and the sponge bubbles through you know that the sponge is proceeding well. Of course, once the sponge breaks through the blanket it is no longer shielded from the air, so she has you cover the whole thing with plastic wrap. This completely redundant technique is a waste of time. You don't need the flour blanket to cover the sponge if you're using plastic wrap too. And you can easily tell if your yeast is multiplying without the flour blanket: it will bubble! Really her technique is likely to give the user inconsistent results. If you do things her way, you never know how much of your flour ends up incorporated into the sponge. It will likely be different every time. What's the point of that? Apart from these technical points, I keep flipping through the book looking for breads I want to make, and there just aren't that many. Most of the ones I find appealing are covered well elsewhere. I think her book is really too complicated for the casual baker, and will disappoint the baker (like me) who wants to get serious. So that's why I regret the purchase. I've liked everything I've tried from her Pie & Pastry book, though. Yesterday I made the poblano/roasted red pepper tart. Yum.

That looks like a wonderful bread shop! I've gained some new slashing ideas from your pictures. I love the way all the ingredients are listed on the cards in front of the breads, including water and salt! Is there some sort of requirement that such details be listed in French bakeshops? And those brioche loaves look fantastic.

Three more for me: Artisan Baking Across America, Maggie Glezer, Breads from the La Brea Bakery, Nancy Silverton, and The Bread Bible, Rose Levy Beranbaum* * I already regret this purchase, but I got it cheap. Does it still count?

The cheese, the strawberries, I'm crying. I mean it, I really am. Please, keep it coming! Could you please torture us--- er, I mean tell us a little more about the lovely local wines that I'm sure you get for very reasonable prices?

Funny, I defrosted pizza dough on Thursday-- this was from the time a few weeks ago when we made the mixed starter bread as a group. And I took a half ounce piece off and tried to make some more mixed starter bread. And it totally failed. By the second stage of the process, it just didn't rise and it had an off odor. I think I might have overheated it, but I don't think I got it hot enough to kill the yeast. Is there a limit to how long the yeast will be effective in the freezer? I know people keep sourdough starters frozen for several months and are able to revive them.... So here's my upside-down rhubarb cake. Is this one for the ugly desserts thread? It looks borderline disgusting in the photo, but in real life it wasn't quite so ugly: Did I do this wrong? Is it supposed to look this way? Actually, when you cut out a piece it looks just fine. I used my 12 inch cast-iron skillet, and I think it would have been better in a smaller pan. The layer of cake would have been thicker. Maybe I didn't combine the ingredients gently enough to ensure the proper rise. The butter cake tastes great, and the rhubarb/sugar layer is tasty as well. When I was cutting up the rhubarb, I was skeptical. The vegetable seemed like the illicit stepchild of a bunch of celery and some radishes. But once it was cooked in the cake, the flavor was quite tame and familiar. This is really just a slightly more refined version of your mother's pineapple upside-down cake.

I'll go you one better, Ling. I'm not sure I've ever even tasted rhubarb, much less cooked with it. I know it resembles stalks of swiss chard without leaves. That's all I know. If I like the cake, a strawberry/rhubarb pie will surely be in order soon. And pardon me, arbuclo, for my provincialism! I should have said rhubarb is in season where I live, in the United States! It's hard to cook seasonally when your group spans the globe, isn't it?

Just want to report that yesterday I baked some Pain a l'Ancienne baguettes. The kind derived from the methods of Parisian Phillipe Gosselin, as described in the U.S.A. by Jeffrey Steingarten, Peter Reinhart, and others. Not the kind of Pain a l'ancienne made by sourdough-scarfing American pig-dogs (just kidding, Mabelline! And see below.). The reason Reinhart flipped when he had this bread is that it has color and complexity-- a sweetness, a nuttiness-- that one would associate with long pre-ferments. And yet the bread has NO PRE-FERMENT. It is the simplest white bread one could imagine. The trick is to combine all the ingredients cold-- the water preferably at 40 degrees, and refrigerate overnight. Then let it warm up and rise in the morning at room temperature, spread out the bread in baguette shapes (this is a wet dough, hard to shape, so you just stretch it out in pieces), and bake 'em. And damned if they ain't pretty amazing. I raised this issue regarding Pain a l'ancienne in the first place simply to make the point that there are many different ways to coax bacteria into creating flavor in our bread (and it's the bacteria, not the yeasts, which create the flavors we want). Using a wild yeast starter is just one of these. If Gosselin's direct-method, commercial yeast, delayed fermentation bread can be awarded "best baguette" status, as it was in 1996, then doesn't it call into question this recieved wisdom about what the best bread method is? Likewise, I made some Ciabatta last week using my sourdough starter. It was very nice, but it was not traditional. All of these wet dough, big holed, delicious Italian breads like Pugliese and Ciabatta are generally made with a pre-ferment called a biga, using commercial yeast. Yet they are complex, rustic loaves, as full of character as any bread on the planet. Would the bread nuts of Italy concede that their bread isn't legit, isn't the height of bread achievement, because they use commercial yeast? Steve Shaw thinks they should, and Mamster, even though he conceded preferring this type of Italian bread, agrees. And I think that reflects a silly kind of chauvinism. P.S. I looked back at Steingarten's article on baguettes, and there doesn't seem to be any agreement on what Pain a l'ancienne has to be. Another award-winning baker named Teixeira makes his with a very young, mild, wild yeast starter. And I called up Le Pain Quotidien's production facility and talked to a guy there who said theirs is made with a combination of levain (mild sourdough starter) and commericial yeast. None of this takes away from my point, which is that world-class bread is often made from non-sourdough leavening, as Gosselin has proved.

Thanks for the advice, Soozi, and welcome to eGullet. And epis too are always welcome. I need to make some more of those. I've heard no proposals for this weekend. What about Rhubarb Upside-Down Cakes (page 244)? Rhubarb season is upon us, and these can be baked as mini-cakes, in muffin tins or as a big cake in a cast iron skillet (which is what I would do). We haven't done many of the cakes. Any interest?

Owen, I hope you won't save that stone just for pizza (as it appears you did with your first one)! For goodness' sake, bake bread!

Mamster, I'm surprised at you. You're almost, but not quite, as bad as Fat Guy. Most American bread nuts would agree that the best breads are sourdoughs. I don't think you could say that of most European bread nuts, who don't tend to favor sour flavors the way Americans do. I'll give you a pass on your disrespect toward all direct method breads, since I take it you're talking about lean breads such as baguettes. Obviously world-class enriched breads (and others) are made using the direct method. And to say that sourdoughs are "better" than these breads is just silly.