There are few things as consistently satisfying as baking your own bread. But for every solid period of having our bread game together, of being in the rhythm of always having a long-proving batch of dough standing around the house, of cultivating sourdough starters and going months without buying bread, there is also a stretch where we lose that rhythm, where there is too much work or too much travel or where we spend our bread-baking time making sausages or chutneys or beer. In those stretches we buy bread from one of two places: Forno Cultura on King Street (which deserves a post of its own), and Blackbird Baking Company in Kensington Market. The amount of work that goes into the bread at Blackbird reminds me of Tamar Adler’s line in An Everlasting Meal where she reminds us that “If you’re going to choose a food not to make at home, choosing bread represents a judicious division of labor.” I love their baguette and their seeded sourdough, and they make lovely hamburger buns, too.
CAKE AND DECAY 