Man shall not live by bread alone

We're home from a weekend away in Kingston, where the weather was postcard beautiful.  I hadn't really been there before, so it was good to tour around and see places I've heard friends describe many times.  One such place was called  Pan Chancho.  This is a little great-big-why-don't-I-have-one-of-these-where-I-live bakery with a restaurant in the back and upstairs.  What started-out as a way to make bread at the owner's other restaurant, has become something singular and incredible on its own.

Bread is a passion of mine.  I started making artisan loaves over three years ago.  The process of learning to bake really good bread using a minimum of ingredients appealed to me.  Bread is more about timing and waiting than anything else--many of my breads take 2 days to make.

When I walked into Pan Chancho it was clear that these people understand bread.  I loved sampling the breads cut-up in baskets, loved seeing their playful scoring patterns (some of which I'll try).  Most of all I loved that they had a cookbook with all their recipes available.  I can't wait to try so many of them.

If you're after the kid-in-a-bread-store sort of experience, this is it.

Photo credit: http://flickr.com/photo_zoom.gne?id=533052552&size=m