Mast Brothers Chocolate, Quite the Influence

http://www.http//www.mastbrotherschocolate.com/

The two of us visited an artisan chocolatier in Brooklyn yesterday. Rick and Michael Mast are self described craft chocolatiers, importing high quality raw cocao and transforming it into a delicate, subtle, delicious chocolate bar far and above that produced by companies like Nestle or Hershey. I will write another post going into more detail later when I have some pictures to post. What I do want to write about however is a chord struck by the older brother Rick from yesterdays tour. He simply stated, so many American's, not to mention billions of people around the world, regard chocolate as one of their loved foods. A large percentage of people when asked what their favorite thing is or what they could eat every day would respond with chocolate as an answer. Interestingly enough, not many people actually know where chocolate comes from, how its made, its intricacies and nuances. 

That started me thinking. As common as chocolate is in many of our diets something all of us eat daily and rarely think twice about is bread.

Bread comes in hundreds of varieties, flavors, textures, styles etc. Recipes are as unique to the baker as grandma's tomato sauce is to the Italian. It's history goes back hundreds and hundreds of years and is as complex as a rubik's cube. Yet, not many people really know anything about it other than we find it near the eggs in the supermarket and that it contains a bunch of awkwardly named chemicals so it can sit on our counters for weeks without going bad. If you have ever tasted a well baked bread you will understand it is so much more. The flavors are delicate and deep and infinitely versatile. From crunchy and tangy to soft and sweet the ratio of ingredients are endless constantly producing new flavors and textures. If you ever try to make bread from scratch it becomes even more evident how much of an art form bread baking is and it is one that has caught my eye like the Seurat in Chicago.

So for this reason over the past few weeks I have been reading as much as I can about bread making and will begin my experimentation into homemade bread. As I perfect the recipes I'll keep you updated and try and make it as accessible to the home cook as possible.  I've started with a focaccia recipe that is very versatile and after one attempt is promisingly simple. I'm going to follow this up with one of the many hearth breads, possibly a french baguette and then a simple white bread loaf. So, stay tuned and we really encourage you if you follow our blog to try to reproduce one or two of the recipes and let us know how it goes!