eG Foodblog: chrisamirault - Place Settings

[Chris Amirault]

Just got back from the open house at Johnson & Wales. We spent our time visiting Chefs Mitch Stamm and Christina Harvey, along with their students, in HAL 6. They all were terrifically gracious hosts in this magical world of bread and baking. I'll try to give you a quick overview of what you'll see here, but I'm largely ignorant, so Mitch (a.k.a. boulak) has agreed to pop on the foodblog later to amend.

One quick comment before the pix. I've been a teacher for over two decades and a teacher of teachers for one. I'm here to testify that Mitch Stamm is a fantastic teacher. His students spoke not only about his love for bread ("Do you know what his favorite color is?" one asked me. "Bread.") but about his devotion to his teaching. Several told me about the extra time and effort he puts into his teaching, both group and one-on-one. You could tell by their interactions with him that he is a wonderful, thoughtful, excellent teacher.

The offerings for guests, which included several amazing artisanal breads, perfect chocolate chip cookies, and a great Italian cornmeal cookie with apricots. That's Mitch off to the right of the frame:

A decorative bread with wine bottle for baking:

A finished version:

One of the work surfaces:

Boules awating the oven:

The P&B student kit (sans the sifter -- "the handle broke!"):

Waiting for final scoring:

That multigrain bread was to die for:

Chef Christina Harvey:

Chef Harvey's pastries awaiting apples and whipped cream:

A friendly and deservingly proud student:

Here's the main, triple-deck oven that the students were using:

This canvas mechanism, part of that oven, was probably the coolest thing in the classroom. It serves as a base onto which you can finish the doughs, scoring and positioning them as you want. Here's what it looks like before any bread is laid:

Mitch laying out and scoring the bread dough:

Then, all at once, the canvas panel is raised to the desired oven opening and -- whoosh -- the bread is placed onto the oven floor with a blast of steam (I think...):

Mitch was then kind enough to take us to the experimental baking lab, which has a wall of ovens, Hobart stations, and a whole lot more, enabling the students to experiment with different ratios and determine the effects such changes have on finished products:

Each student gets a complete set of equipment for use in the lab (drool...):

Bebe gives her boule end the seal of approval:

[Chris Amirault]

I brought a bag of Kenyon's Corn Meal home to London from Massachusetts this summer.  Just made the Bittman pancakes: thank you, they were much appreciated, especially by two small children.

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I'm so glad to hear it! Now you ought to use some of that meal for cornbread!

[srhcb]

I loved the photos from Johnson & Wales, especially the way you ended with the baby eating bread!

SB (whose grandson leaves the crust)

[Swisskaese]

I am so jealous!!! I would give my eye teeth to go to one breadbaking class at J&W.

[edsel]

Great J&W tour! Those canvas bread-loading things are so cool. A bunch of us got to see a commercial bakery in action last July at the eG Heartland Gathering. The canvas transfers the bread much more gently than a wooden peel.

I dined at Al Forno last November. I was in town on business and decided to give it a try, despite some people on this forum calling it "overrated". I had a terrific meal, accompanied by free entertainment. There was a hapless guy there with his young wife (girlfriend?) and her mother. The mother gave him the third degree throughout the entire meal. He had to explain everything about every course, and why it was worth the bother to , for instance, bake the pizza in a super-hot wood fired oven. He was admirably patient and did a yeoman's job defending the cause of fine dining. He finally won the mom over - at least concerning the food.

[Chris Amirault]

Welcome to a virtual tour of the Johnson and Wales Culinary Archives and Museum!

Your guides will be Mr. Potato Head (thanks to Hasbro, located in Pawtucket RI, he's all over town):

And Emeril, scion of Fall River and New Bedford MA:

Here's Chicago Chef Louis Szathmary, who is the benefactor of the museum (for more on that click here):

Luminaries include Charlie Trotter,

Sara Moulton,

and an acid trip version of Paul Bocuse!

Recognize this?

There is a massive display of dinerana at the museum, most of which is quite impressive:

Some local products -- see if you can find the felon!

More local charm: the original sign to Camille's Roman Garden, a legendary Federal Hill Italian restaurant that was recently featured prominently in Saveur:

An early refrigerator:

Several of the exhibits that I found most interesting featured old cooking equipment:

Finally, there was a great collection of posters in a conference/screening room:

[Chris Amirault]

I've just lost my energy for cooking, so tonight we'll be having leftovers from the previous days' food. I'm also a bit photographed-out. That all ought to do you for the evening, eh?

I'd be really interested to read your responses to the baking demonstration and the museum!

[Gifted Gourmet]

Chris, these last photographs and those of the bakery take my breath away! You have managed to capture the details and put them into a logical sequence to show us ... I am most grateful that you chose to share this with us here at eGullet! May your strength only increase!

The baking class gave me somewhat of a more clear perspective of how bakers receive their training. It is much more complex than I had previously assumed ...

The posters came out in glorious, enticingly beautiful, color! I will definitely go to see them in person when I visit Providence. Adored the photo of Chef Louis Szathmary ... and Mr. Potatohead! So cool!! a perfect avatar ...

The chefs' whites were incredible ... reminds me of a culinary version of the Smithsonian ... and that early refrigerator was no doubt perfectly state-of-the-art in its heyday ...

[Megan Blocker]

Looks like you had a FULL day, Chris - thanks for taking us with you. The cooking equipment is fascinating - I particularly like the temperature indicator on the oven that lists "Biscuit, Bread, Pastry, Meat, Cakes." Wish my oven did that.

[prasantrin]

Not about food, but what kind of bilingual school does your daughter go to? In non-Quebec Canada, French (for example) Immersion schools are for kids who don't speak French in the home, while French schools are for those who have at least one French-speaking person in the home. Are the bilingual schools in the US more like the former, the latter, or are they a mixture of both? And generally, what types of bilingual schools do they have in the US? I would assume Spanish is the most prevalent kind, but what about other minority languages? In Canada, I know of French, Hebrew, German, Ukrainian, and a few indiginous language (ojibway, for one) immersion schools. I'm sure there are more, but I can't think of any off-hand.

And what's a charter school? I remember hearing that term when I was doing my MAT (I was in the general TESOL stream, not the public school cert stream) in VT, but I don't think we use that term in Canada.

[TheFoodTutor]

Some local products -- see if you can find the felon!

Lunchables! Oh, dear. I really like Ovaltine, though.

Excellent blog and baby pictures. When I read that you're looking for the perfect cannoli, I thought of posting a picture of some of the ones I'm making lately in my new job, but they're really the frou-frou sort, entirely untraditional and not likely to fit the bill.

Thank you so much for the nice pictures!

[Pan]

Great stuff, Chris! You really went out of your way for us today. Granted, I'm sure you enjoyed it all, but anyone who's blogged before knows how much time it takes to upload and edit photos. Thanks, I enjoyed it!

[boulak]

Wow! What a great spread on the school. Thanks Chris for the extremely kind words. It was great having you and your family visit us in the lab today. Your photos really capture a sense of what the day was like. The students, such as the ones you met today (Dan, Kate, Laura, Kristi, Benjamin, Ricky, and Christine), really keep me motivated and inspired. My colleagues (especially Ciril Hitz and Richard Miscovich in the bread department) and the administration keep the fires burning and make the program successful. When all the baking and tasting was done, I definitely went home a happy baker. If only I could figure out how to post the photos of the other decorative breads.................

I'm glad that you were able to include the museum in your tour. It is an incredible source of cultural and historical information.

To answer your implied question, yes, that is steam that is injected into the oven chamber just before the bread is loaded and immediately afterward. Each deck has it's own control. If anyone is interested, I could post more about the dynamics of that. The loader enables us to place the loaves all at once precisely where we want them on the oven floor for an efficient bake, opening the door only once which prevents excessive heat and moisture loss. The individual decks are each fitted with a vent for evacuating the moisture at the appropriate point during the bake. In one of the photos of the oven, you will notice the glass doors propped half way open. Many breads complete the baking cycle in this manner to further evacuate moisture and ensure a crisp crust without excessive browning. The loader may also be used to remove the bread from the oven by reversing the position of the belt and running it in under the loaves and then pulling everything out in one motion. Typically, in the lab, we remove the loaves using a baker's peel such as the one Ricky is holding in the photo. The oven is a rather small version of the same type ofoven used in artisanal bread production and enables the student to get a sense of what baking in the industry is really like.

I have really enjoyed reading your blog. Your style is engaging and entertaining, and I have learned more about Providence in the past couple of days than I have in the past two years and am eager to try some of your recommendations.

Bebe is adorable and when it comes to her preference in bread, she is most assuredly a person of character, judgement, and taste.

[Safran]

Oh Chris, what a wonderful tour! I went through those pics three times and was in awe! BTW, Bébé is just too cute!

[Susan in FL]

I am in awe of everything. I really do have to go back to the museum. All your posts brought back such wonderful memories. I must see it once again. Thanks, Chris!

And that baby daughter of yours... Bebe is awesome, too! My kinda girl.

[mizducky]

What they all said.

(Gee, I had no idea that Rhode Island was the home of Hasbro. If my siblings and I had known that as kids, we would have definitely persuaded the parental units to spend some of our Rhode Island vacation time on a factory tour.)

[handmc]

You know it never ceases to amaze me what you can learn about people, food, history and our world just by following the blogs on EG.

Thank you for another important contribution. I'll have to find an excuse to roadtrip to RI to check out that museum.

[Behemoth]

Chris, if you are still on the hunt for a good cannoli by the time you head down to Philly for StudioKitchen, I would recommend Termini Brothers bakery. Their main store is in the Italian Market but they have a branch in Reading Terminal. That and an espresso from Old City coffee? Heaven.

[Chris Amirault]

Thanks for all the feedback, folks! I really appreciate it. Doing a foodblog takes a good deal of work, and your support makes it a bit easier to download those pix!

Meanwhile, today: it's sunny! We're going to grab some food quickly and head out for a good long walk. I'll bring the camera along, natch, and will also report on lunch at our favorite restaurant in the area. So: more soon!

[Chris Amirault]

Not about food, but what kind of bilingual school does your daughter go to? [snip] And what's a charter school? 

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After two excellent years in a Providence district elementary school in Fox Point, Lulu goes to the International Charter School, a two-way bilingual school that teache children in English one week and Spanish (or Portuguese) the other week. The idea is that research indicates that children learn how to read and write more effectively when they are learning in their home language, and learning two languages at once actually helps them with many of the key concepts in early literacy. There's also an obvious cultural component; RI is increasingly Latino/a (in particular, Dominican, Guatemalan, and Puerto Rican), and so these schools promote a wide range of cultural interchange.

Charter schools are schools that are designed to serve a student population that reflects the state or segments of it. (ICS serves Providence, Central Falls, and Pawtucket.) They are given greater autonomy than district schools concerning budgetary discretion, administrative leeway (particularly in re hiring), and a few other things. In exchange, they have a higher level of accountability, with additional state oversight. They are controversial in that they "take money away" from districts; depending on how you feel, that's either a red herring set up to foment dissent or a horrible thing.

As you can imagine, I have many thoughts and feelings about this, all of which are OT. So if you want to know more, please PM me.

[bleudauvergne]

I was on the edge of my seat looking at all those super museum photos, Chris, especially those copper pots and pans! I love that! Enjoy your walk!

[Chufi]

thanks for the museum tour.. wonderful. You are really taking your blog-responsibilities very seriously and it is much appreciated!

one more word about your daughters.. yes Bebe is cute.. but Lulu.. is just beautiful! I loved the pics where she is helping you with the Mexican dinner...

[Rebecca263]

Yes, Chris, obviously we all think YOU are wonderful, but your daughters completely steal the show!

[Chris Amirault]

Thanks, folks! Dim sum (and then some) on the way!

[jamiemaw]

Thank you for a lovely week, Chris. Very insightful, and a terrific overview of J & W. I hope the flour settles for you next week, and that you can exhale. Well done.

Jamie