Mani's bakery offers gluten-free diets some friendly options

After a visit to El Carmen and a stop for a ham and gruyere croissant at the Little Next Door, my friend and I (who recently moved to the Fairfax area) wandered down to Mani's bakery. To my pleasant surprise, this bakery has rare late night hours and even better, offers gluten free, sugar free, and other specialty products for people with special diets. Since I am friends with many individuals that are often searching for these options, I was thrilled to see that Mani's offers a warm, inviting bakery experience with the thoughtful touch of clearly listed ingredients and a variety of options. I have heard wind of or visited only a few bakeries on the West side that cater to special diets (including Jamaica's Cakes, which offers vegan products, among other things). What I liked about Mani's is that any person working there that night could tell us what their favorite product was and why-- they really seemed to take pride in what they were delivering to the bakery consumer. The bakery, at around 10:00 on a weekend night, was crowded and full of conversation and life-- bakery culture at its finest, if you ask me. I'm looking forward to another visit to this bakery and would definitely recommend it as a place to try in LA. On a sidenote, the ham and gruyere croissant from the Little Next Door was also delicious, and a good place to visit if you find charm in French accents.

In keeping with the spirit of specialty product discoveries, my friend April recently visited Bob's Red Mill during a family trip. Because the people of Milwaukie,Oregon-based Bob's Red Mill were kind enough to speak with her about gluten free products, I have included an excerpt below about her experience there when she just so happened to meet Bob himself:
"Bob’s Red Mill has been processing whole grains for 38 years and is proud to offer many gluten free products, a line they continue to develop each year. Recently they have also dedicated part of their warehouse where only gluten free products are milled. I was so excited when my family mentioned Bob’s Red Mill was based in Milwaukie, OR, just a few miles from my aunty and uncle’s house! We had to visit! As we were eating breakfast on Saturday morning, sitting right behind us was Bob Moore, founder of Bob’s Red Mill! Of course, I couldn’t let a good opportunity pass... He also introduced me to Lori Sobelson, Program Director of Bob’s Red Mill. Lori is their gluten free expert in many ways. She is very knowledgeable about all things gluten free, puts together recipes, does cooking classes, and is even presenting at the upcoming annual Gluten Free Culinary Summit! Lori took about 45 minutes to share gluten free knowledge, show me different products, tell me about leading gluten free authors, cookbooks and new GF research/discoveries. She has also offered her contact information to us if we have questions that she could answer or help us in other ways."
If anyone knows of other gluten free or specialty bakery products for other diets, please support the Great American Bakery Hunt and send me an email about your discoveries. I would love to pass these resources along to people I know!

Scandinavian film festival returns to LA!

For all of you Scandinavia loving readers out there, don't forget to check out the lineup for this year's Scandinavian Film Festival in Beverly Hills. What better way to pay homage to such a great bakery country than to watch some Scandinavian film?

I don't know of any other place you can access such a variety of recent Scandinavian films, so I'll surely be checking it out. As tradition dictates, my friend Hae Jin will attend with me and we will drink one honorary Carlsberg to celebrate and relive our glory days studying in Copenhagen.

Sipping away on imported memories, we'll chatter about the films and try to resist staring enviously at people when they speak Danish. As we watch the films, squinting at subtitles, we'll dream of one day returning to that chilly city that won our hearts.

Poilane is in the news yet again...

BusinessWeek is running an online slideshow about "The Making of Poilane Bread".

Poilane is run by a French owned company that has gained an international reputation.

According to the slideshow commentary, 1/5 of Poilane's revenues come from online orders. Thus, it is clear that bakery hunters everywhere are using the power of technology to transform the international bakery hunting landscape.

Washington Times says bakery business is booming

According to a recent story by the Washington Times, bakery business is booming everywhere. Now if only they would bring a little more sweetness over my way to Orange County.

The heart behind Poilane

I'm a little peeved that the Hiltons felt it necessary to name their daughter after one of my favorite cities. Here I sit, but a peasant blogger, just trying to keep tabs on recent news and events happening in the city of lights. But my Google Alerts keep bombarding me with stories of notorious socialite shenanigans instead. I'm going to have to see about some sort of filter.

Thank goodness Google Alerts don't always lack relevance to The Great American Bakery Hunt. Tonight Google alerted me to a fascinating Washington Post story about a different Paris heiress: Apollonia Poilane. Poilane is the 22 year old Chief Executive of Paris- based Poilane bakeries, a family-run business she inherited from her parents.

Poilane is a bakery I have declared my love for in the past. However, this was the first I had heard of Apollonia's story. While running one of the best bakeries in the world, this Chief Executive continues her studies as a Harvard undergrad, where she will graduate with a degree in economics.

After discovering Poilane on my last trip to Paris, I can think of few bakeries that have a lovelier feel when you enter their doors. As you step inside, you are greeted with a cheerful "Bonjour!" by a group of French women in matching aprons, and the products--well those speak for themselves. If it's any indication, people have been eating their famous bread since 1932, which is made in a wood fired oven. Apollonia Poilane describes herself as having "a sweet tooth" for the family business.

Her story combines two of my great loves: a passionate energy for business combined with a serious love for quality baked goods. And now that I know there is so much heart behind this bakery, I love it even more. Although it's probably why I loved it in the first place. It is clear from walking into Poilane, from tasting their bread, from sinking your teeth into their apple tarts, that the company takes pride in the products they bake.

The Washington Post article conveys Apollonia's personal passion for the business. The story describes a letter she wrote to the Pope in an effort to convince him to take gluttony off of the list of seven deadly sins. With spunky moves like that, I can tell Poilane and I are kindred spirits.

A souvenir bag of Poilane flour has remained on my diningroom table since June. Untouched since its purchase, it is reserved for a special use. Although I haven't determined what exactly I will use it for, I'm hoping the end result will be so tasty that it would make the Pope blush.

An introduction to the hunt...

While The Great American Bakery Hunt glorifies pastry consumption and bakery visits, The Hunt is about much more than this. This blog is a way to show reverence for the practice of living of life at a slower pace. A visit to the bakery is surrounded by a thousand small and beautiful interactions and details: a bakery is a place to slow down and appreciate these details, an opportunity to savor life.

Whether I am writing about breaking bread or hunting it, The Great American Bakery Hunt is about the simple things that feed us in life- physically, culturally, or otherwise. I long for the bakery culture that I once experienced as a temporary resident of Roskilde, Denmark and as a pastry-obsessed traveler to Paris, France. In both countries, life at a slower pace allowed me to wander freely through an endless maze of bakeries, and to explore my historic surroundings with a warm belly full of hand-crafted, mouth-watering baked good creations. Some of these creations came from the very kitchen of my Danish host mother, a professional baker whose tasty recipes were brought into my life by a lucky twist of fate.

By traveling through these faraway lands, I realized that while we have some wonderful bakeries here in the States, we lack the same appreciation for bakery culture that other societies have. Throughout the world, others know the importance of a strong bakery culture-- the beauty of a well-executed baguette, or a carefully crafted pastry are widely appreciated art forms. The EU, for example, even developed a special campaign glorifying baked goods and their recipes from various EU countries. "Sweet Europe: Be Seduced," reads their transnational bakery mantra. Meanwhile, American bakery culture continues to be under appreciated and underdeveloped. I know there are some amazing pastry chefs and bakers in America, and I look forward to discovering more of them as I continue The Great American Bakery Hunt. However, when it comes to bringing their creations to the people, there is a disconnect between culinary creation and consumption. Through The Hunt, I hope to bring new discoveries to those who crave bakery culture. I demand more American bakery culture now.

Here in Southern California, we have some great bakeries, but little bakery culture to speak of. Instead of stopping by their neighborhood bakery, most folks frantically stop at Starbucks, ready to juice up our system in preparation for intense freeway commuting. We have no time for eye contact or pleasantries with the barista, we only stop momentarily to check the time on our cell phones before we race out the door and pound down an uber-caffeinated hold- the- whip beverage, cursing our burning hands because we forgot to get our cardboard sleeve. Americans are all about convenience, but in this fast-paced convenience, we lose something. Unlike the countless layers of buttery Danish pastries, there is no soul, no depth to our triple cappuccinos. (Certainly those coffee beans came from somewhere, but human connection is a faraway one indeed.)

But in this loss, we have gained a worthwhile challenge, and this is where The Great American Bakery Hunt comes in. Great bakeries do not just come to you-- you must search far and wide, tirelessly and devotedly, to find the best in bakery culture. You may even need to use the fearless, aggressive, and unstoppable tactics of a hunter to gain what you need. Not just any bakery will do-- you must search high and low for bakeries that fortify the bakery culture with pride, expertise, and vision.

Before all witnesses of this blog, I vow that I will tirelessly explore bakery culture, reporting items of baked relevance to readers to the best of my ability.

The Great American Bakery Hunt is a place where European and American bakery cultures meet. It is clear that America is settling, but I will hold continue to hold dear the idea of a nation where individuals enjoy quality baked goods as an everyday right.

I welcome any American baker to send me samples, locations of great American bakeries, challenges, rebuttals, comments, questions, concerns, rants, or even recipes if they feel compelled to do so after reading my comments. I want to believe in great American bakeries, much like I always wanted to believe in the tooth fairy, but I have not seen much of either of you yet. I hope you prove my suspicions wrong. There must be others of you who long for truly amazing bakeries around every American corner, I know there are. I would love it if you shared your insights with me, as fellow bakery hunting enthusiasts. Until then, the hunt continues...