In 2003, when Zingerman’s Coffee Company first started roasting coffee, small, specialty coffee roasters were few and far between. A decade ago, specialty coffee was beginning to find a foothold, but it was still a nerdy, niche product with a limited audience. Today, the story has changed. Even a small town is likely to have […]
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I love bread. I eat toast for breakfast at least four times a week. So I’m always excited to discover a new bakery offering beautiful, artisan loaves. Most of the time, though, I’m disappointed.
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Drying, salting and smoking are the trinity of ancient methods to preserve a harvest. Of the three, drying is the simplest. Here are a few quick tips to finding the best tasting dried fruit. Was it grown where it was dried? To get the most flavor out of your fruit you want to pick it […]
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What exactly is soy sauce? Soy sauce is a salty, umami liquid made from fermented soybeans. At a minimum, it is made with soybeans, salt, and fermented with a mold—typically Aspergillus oryzae—known in Japanese as koji. In the 20th century the production of soy sauce was modernized. Today most soy sauce is made in giant […]
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Today’s Calabria, the region at the toe of Italy’s boot, is one of the country’s poorest provinces. But once upon a time, 26 centuries ago, it was home to Sybaris, a town synonymous with wealth and excess. While Calabria may no longer have Sybaris’s fabled luxury, it does have at least one sybaritic indulgence: candied […]
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The USDA’s shorthand definition of a preservative is any substance that slows or stops the deterioration of food. The sugar we add to make jam to keep fruit from rotting is a preservative. So is the salt we use to cure ham. We’ve employed preservatives like sugar and salt for millennia.
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It starts with the olive varietal Just like wine made from Chardonnay grapes tastes different than a wine made from Merlot grapes, olive oils made from different types of olives can have totally different flavors. There are thousands of different olives in the world. Some are milder. Some are more bitter. Some are more buttery. […]
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Think of a powdered food like ground cinnamon or cornmeal. What do you get if you add it to some water and mix them together? Something like a paste. Now imagine the powder is wheat flour. Mix it with water and it creates a dough that holds together, yet stretches. What makes wet wheat flour […]
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First things first. What’s a grain? The foods we call grains are the seeds of certain members of the grass family. Wheat, barley, oats, rye, rice, corn, sorghum, and millet are all grains. Each grain has three main components: (A) The endosperm: the starchy part that would feed a baby plant if the seed were […]
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1. Really good chocolate. It probably comes as no surprise that the first step to making a really good box of chocolates is to use really high quality chocolate. Here are a few ways you can suss out quality, without an advanced chocolate degree. Look. Good chocolate is glossy. Avoid any chocolates that are dull […]
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