Artisanal food makers- bread bakers, pastry makers, cheese makers, and others- are specialists and have access to the freshest ingredients.
Food artisans craft their wares in a special, artful way. Their foods are made in small batches by skilled hands. Artisans bring a tremendous amount of learning and experience to their craft, made manifest in each loaf of bread or each round of cheese. Their works are the product of passion and pride, not just commerce.
True artisanal foods reveal the hand of the maker, since they are crafted in a uniquely individual way. For example, a baker may bake black olive loaves, but each one will vary a bit in size or shape, be a bit bumpier from the dispersal of olives, or be less than perfectly rounded- a sign that human hands have been at work.
This touch of life is what makes the loaf of bread, the round of cheese eloquent and expressive- attributes that are unattainable in mass-produced foods.
Viana La Place Unplugged Kitchen
I work in a small cafe connected with the shop of a Biodynamic Farm. Here, farmers often supplement their income by selling either products from their own farm- eggs, milk, cheeses, vegetables, meat- and/or by having a small organic foods store where they sell the full range of groceries from cereals to bread to cheese to vegetables, frozen pizzas and so forth, albeit on a small scale.
I bake cakes, which to the Germans are almost holy, for the shop, twice a week- on thursdays and fridays. I am not yet at the level of artisanal mastery that Viana speaks of, in terms of excellence and experience. My cakes are, however, hand formed and hand made, coming from my wish to make something beautiful and nourishing. They take time to create and I am still working out the details or experimenting with the recipes. Like learning the language if German, I also have to learn the recipes. For sure these last things are too much for my employer. She is of the just get it done fast and efficiently, and make it reproducible so that it is the same each time, mind set. I do understand that a person wants to be able to go to a cafe and eat the same cake they had last week and have it taste as good as it did then, but I also understand, as Viana says, that sometimes the olives are lumped together, or the shape is not quite round. These are the things that are actually alive about what I make.
One of my favorite parts of the job is making something for lunch that day for the people working there. What I don't want to do as a cook is to make large amounts of food for nameless large masses of people. A few cakes a day, a quiche and a pizza, and then either a pasta dish and a salad or a soup and bread or a casserole of some kind are simple to do. Sitting and eating together make us connected as a community of people working together and make our work something different than working at, say, Stop and Shop, or its equivalent here in Germany. I am the sort of cook who would rather invite people over for dinner, and spend the day cooking for them, than put something together as quickly as possible so i can get on to something else.
My boss and I have such a hard time understanding one another because we differ on the ground philosophy of how food should be prepared and enjoyed. A cake, like everything made from scratch and by hand, takes time to prepare and bake, time to cool, ice, and serve. And how it comes out of the oven and how it tastes and how fluffy or dense it is, depends on many factors. For an apple cake, for example, it matters which kinds of apples one uses, and it matters whether they are peeled or not, or poached, or steamed or shredded, or cut, or raw, or sliced. It matters which sort of dough one uses- and there are so many more kinds of cake batters and dough recipes here than in the U.S. Over there, we have regular cakes, where one creams together butter and sugar and so forth, pies, angel food cake, and that's about it. And there are so many more kinds here.
But the real issue at hand here is not which cakes are being baked and by whom, and how long it takes to bake them, but the continuing question of how to remain loving, remain open, in difficult situations. In a relationship with two very different sorts of people, with very different conversation styles and personalities and ideas about food. In situations, as my tai chi teacher said, of apparent closure. The opportunity to love, to turn towards love, is always present. And what better way for me, than through baking and cooking.
