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