What an exciting weekend we just had. Holidays always push our little bakeshop to the limit, and maybe a bit beyond, but when the team is grooving together and the pastries are baking off luscious and lofty, the week of extra long prep lists and near constant shuffling of sheet trays to make all the product fit makes all of the hard work worth it. Thanks to all of you.

We have news! We are now stocking a select number of excellent and affordable wines we have curated to pair with our sweet and savory pastries that you may purchase for carry away when you visit the bakery Saturday and Sunday 9-1pm.

This week we are so excited to bake with spring bounty to celebrate Moms this weekend. We’ve curated a menu of pastries, sweet and savory to mark the day.

We have gorgeous stalks of rhubarb that we will oven roast with sugar, vanilla bean and hibiscus flowers to balance their tart flavor and coax out their rosey red color. Once the rhubarb is out of the oven it will put on top of croissant dough with a dollop of frangipane and baked until golden to make our Hibiscus Roasted Rhubarb Danish.

In the 1980s, Tiramisu stretched across the United States, appearing on menus of nationwide chains, local mom and pop restaurants, and everything in between. Today you’d be hard pressed to find Tiramisu on a menu and even harder to find those that are willing to admit their love and adoration for it.

During quarantine, I’ve read, watched and eaten my way through so many novels, shows and meals that have taken me far away on imaginary vacations in lieu of the actual ones that I long for. I’ve found fulfillment considering far-flung fantasies of visiting cliffside hotels overlooking the Italian sea; or of living in a new foreign city, creating a new foreign life while facing its trials and tribulations. And of course I’ve been cooking, which has set me off on new adventures around the world, to various European countrysides and to Asia - Japan and China.

Over the years, we have found that savory pastries are high on the wish list, so an often requested pastry returns this weekend — the Everything Croissant!

One of the best smells of spring is the blooming citrus trees. Years ago, a French chef taught me how to make the most luscious lemon curd and I’ve carried the recipe with me throughout my career. The cream is both mouth puckering tart and gently sweet. The balance lies with a generous addition of butter. The curd is cooked over a double boiler to a high temperature, then removed and stirred until it reaches a much lower temperature at which point the butter is added.

I want to start off by saying Thank You So Much for your interest and support of our 1503 Matzah. Your response and interest in this item was incredible. Making a product that is so culturally relevant to people is very special to focus on. As I fell into the rhythmic rolling of the dough, I found myself thinking about the generations before me. I remembered my grandparents and wondered about their parents, their triumphs and struggles, many of which continue today. I thought about the persistence and determination that we each have needed to carry on.

This week has been particularly hectic. We made our first batch of our annual Matzah from a recipe from Spain in the year 1503 that we were introduced to by Rabbi Brian. A story about it was written by Karen Brooks in Portland Monthly Magazine, and before we knew it the phone as ringing off the hook asking about how to order. Once we put it on sale on the online store at noon on Sunday, it sold out within half an hour. We decided to double the quantity, and that too sold out within the next hour.

Week after week we hear from customers asking for their personal favorite pastry which, for one reason or another, we are not able to put on our menu regularly -- Kouign Amann! Everything Croissant! Creamssants! To satisfy these requests, for one weekend every month we will now be bringing back these oft-requested favorites as our Secret Item.

My fear of losing my Great Grandma Goose began many years before I actually did. For years before her death, on every phone call I’d try to quietly keep my tears to myself. To me, she was a grandma that dreams were made of. To visit her was to escape into a world with boundaries but not rules. As we arrived, she was always standing on the porch waving wildly to us, greeting us with open arms while we made a quick decision -- run for the crystal candy bowl to grab a butterscotch hard candy, or run through the kitchen, stopping momentarily to grab the bag of bread crusts that she saved for our visit, and then right out to the pond to feed the waddling and squawking ducks and geese.

My very first professional job was in the pastry department at the original Spago, in West Hollywood, plating pastries on the line two days a week. Already at that time, and even still, Spago was part of the handful of restaurants operating at the highest level of service and cuisine in Los Angeles. A year spent at Spago was equivalent to three to five elsewhere, if you were fortunate enough to be part of the experience afforded to cooks at this fine dining establishment.

The morning is just beginning to break, the light is blue. I’m sitting on my couch looking out the window at the snowy yards with my pup snuggled up close and a warm cup of coffee nearby. Yesterday, I woke without power, boiled my water for coffee in the fireplace and made a vegetable hash over the open flame, the live flames licking the sides of the pan, crisping the potatoes.

I fondly remember my mom making Valentine's Day special for us when we were children, often marking the day for my sister and I with a pair of heart pajamas and a box of See’s candy. Now with a family of my own, I love celebrating the day with my kids. We make it as celebratory as we can, with a fancy table laden with pink crystal glasses filled sparkling cider, cards, flowers and a candlelit dinner that we end with creme brulee in vintage pink ramekins, with each of them eager to try their hand at the torch used to caramelize the surface.

Under the tutelage in Los Angeles of Nancy Silverton, chef and owner/creator of Mozza as well as the La Brea Bakery (and the now-shuttered Campanile), I learned and honed many of the principles that I now have regarding food. While working with her, every Wednesday I would return from the Santa Monica Farmers’ Market and head into the kitchen with cases of fruit to bake with for our pastry menu.

I’ve been wanting to add bread to our repertoire at the bakery since we opened and the time is finally here! We are going to go slow, as this is all new to me, and open the bakery on Friday afternoons for limited, pre-ordered loaves. We are kicking off the program this Friday with this week’s Secret Item - Challah!

This morning I woke while the sky was still dark. I am accustomed to years of waking in the middle of the night; be it for kids or work I’m unable to sleep in, try as I might, but I really don’t mind. I cherish the quiet of the dark, where I can think and do as I please as I drink my morning coffee, uninterrupted. Eventually, the sun rose this morning and I went for a walk in my neighborhood. Upon my return, I set out to create the comfort that I so desire these days.

The bakery staff and I are so grateful to have had this opportunity to take a break after the year that we just endured. Rest, recharge and reset were at the top of each of our lists as we talked about how we planned to spend this time.

Last week I sat in on a zoom meeting put on by Larder Books in Seattle, that featured Luisa Weiss and Molly Weizenberg, two of the first “food bloggers”. Luisa, specifically, cooked from the Wednesday food sections that were published in the New York and Los Angeles Times. One day, I was thrilled to find one of my own recipes on her weekly post. What I had not yet realized, was that Luisa was a cookbook editor in New York and eventually, the manuscript that I would write in hopes of selling my first cookbook, would land on her desk. I owe a great deal of gratitude to Luisa for championing Good to the Grain and helping me bring this book to life.

This week we are making another one of my childhood favorites, rugelach! As a kid my mom, sister and I would stop at Solley’s deli in the San Fernando Valley to grab a few treats on the way to my grandparents’ house for Friday night Shabbat dinner. As we walked through the line along the bakery case I’d be eyeing all of the little cookies; butter cookies with a cherry in the middle, small rounds of butter cookies speckled with flat pastel-colored sprinkles, and the delicious looking filled-pastry rugelach. Off we’d go with our pink box wrapped with white bakery twine, and a loaf of challah.