Bakesale for Japan April 2nd @ Ristretto Roasters & Barista

Giovanna Zivny, Elizabeth Nathan and others have organized Portland's Bakesale for Japan next Saturday, April 2nd from 10am-2pm at two of Portland's favorite coffee shops -- Ristretto Roasters (Williams) and Barista (Pearl).

Home and professional bakers are grabbing their whisks and cranking up their ovens to raise money for Peace Winds Japan, a partner of Mercy Corps.

This is a nationwide effort (Bakesale for Japan currently has generated 17+ bake sales stretching from San Francisco to NYC) that originated with Oakland chef Samin Nosrat. She raised $23K for Haiti last year with just three bake sale locations. Portland's Bakesale for Japan has a matching donation lined up from Intel.

If you'd like to bake (amateurs and professionals welcome) or volunteer for Bakesale for Japan contact pdxbakesale@gmail.com.

Here is the amazing list of Portland folks signed up so far to contribute tasty baked goods: Little T American Baker, Alder Pastry & Dessert, Woodlawn Coffee and Pastry, Fleur de Lis Bakery and Cafe, Alma Chocolate, Kir Jensen (The Sugar Cube), Kristen Murray (Paley’s Place), Kim Boyce (Golden Oven), Bakery Bar, Suzette, Random Order Coffeehouse & Bakery, Petunia’s Pies & Pastries, Confectionery, Little Branch Jam, and Bees & Beans.

Portland's Bakesale for Japan 10am-2pm Saturday, April 2nd @

Ristretto Roasters (N Williams location) 3808 N Williams Ave & Barista (Pearl location) 539 NW 13th Ave

Dovetail Bakery about to spread its wings: New retail location!

I'm in the final edits stage of my book at the moment and in an effort to stay on the sunny side about the seemingly endless tedium it's been great in the past few weeks to add some exciting new ventures to the pages of Food Lover's Guide to Portland.

One that I'm very excited about is Dovetail Bakery's soon to open retail location on Northeast Alberta Street. For years Dovetail has vended at farmers market and delivered wholesale only, with no retail location.

These lovely vegan baker ladies have been working around the clock the past few months to make the retail bakery happen and if all goes well Dovetail Bakery plans to ring in the new year and open shop on January 1st, 2010. The new Dovetail Bakery location has indoor and outdoor seating and plenty of bike parking in front.

Grand opening Jan. 1st, 2010! Dovetail Bakery 3039 NE Alberta St. Portland, Oregon 503.288.8839 Hours: Tue.-Sun. 8am-8pm

Same great vegan sweet and savory pastries at new retail location.

New menu to include:

Cinnamon rolls Aunt Miriam's sticky buns Seasonally inspired sweet buns Daily selection of cookies Seasonally inspired loaf cakes Seasonally inspired muffins Sweet & savory tarts Seasonal fruit pies Changing selection of cakes & cupcakes Artisan breads Housemade coconut yogurt w/ Dovetail Bakery granola & fruit Daily soup (featuring farm direct produce) French press Courier CoffeeMagic Kombucha Special orders are always welcome!

*Everything baked fresh on site. *Loads of local ingredients. *New CSA/CSB program. Dovetail has partnered with local farm Wealth Underground Farm that will provide the CSA portion (veggies, fruits, beans, etc.) while Dovetail will provide the bread and pastries CBA portion. Contact Dovetail for more information.

The fabulous Dovetail Bakery ladies move shop to Northeast Alberta.

Dovetail Bakery 3039 NE Alberta St. Portland, Oregon 503.288.8839 Hours: Tue.-Sun. 8am-8pm dovetailbakery.blogspot.com

galleryHOMELAND Bake Sale @ The Cleaners at Ace Hotel THIS Saturday

A week ago I got word of a galleryHOMELAND bake sale taking place this Saturday at The Cleaners at the Ace Hotel from 11am-2pm. galleryHOMELAND is a local non-profit arts organization and they've invited 30-plus chefs, mixologists, artists and others to donate baked goods and other tasty treats for the Saturday bake sale in order to drum up funds for their 2010 programming.

Hot cider and old time country music tunes will be on the house and you can buy individual baked goods for $3-$5 and various jarred goods for $5-$8.

A few participants and their treats include:

Chris DiMinno of Clyde Common: Terri DiMinno’s Sour Cream Coffeecake Emily Katz of Emily Katz: Cardamon Apple pie Sara Dudzinsky of Better Late than Never: Banana bread Morgan Wu and Colette Higgins of Clyde Common: Artisan Ice Creams Colleen French of Renegade Dinner Club: Old fashioned Chocolate Cake

galleryHOMELAND is a Portland, OR based non-profit arts organization advancing awareness of Portland’s rich cultural community by creating new opportunities and lasting cultural exchange in a unique series of programs focused on exporting local arts and artists and importing national and international art and artists.

galleyHOMELAND Bake Sale Benefit Saturday November 21, 2009 11am-2pm The Cleaners at Ace Hotel 403 SW 10th Portland, OR www.galleryhomeland.org

Grand Central U-Bake -- June 6th, 9am-1pm

I'm much more of a cook than a baker. I make my own pizza dough and every once in awhile I'll bake a cake or some cookies but that's about it. So when Piper Davis of Grand Central Bakery came by the other day with a big bag of GC's soon to hit the market U-Bake frozen cookies, puff pastry and pie dough I felt pretty unworthy. Turns out I'm the ideal person to give them a try because I'm a novice baker who loves tasty baked goods but rarely takes the time to make them. For my U-Bake pie I started by making this...

A strawberry, pear and rhubarb filling

Then I filled this...

Grand Central's U-Bake pie crust

And I ended up with this...

Just out of the oven and soon to be topped with vanilla ice cream

The line of frozen pre-made and formed cookies (oatmeal chocolate chip, oatmeal raisin, peanut butter and ginger molasses) are even easier. You pull out the frozen dozen, separate a few cookies, roll them in sugar, put them on the cookie sheet and 10 minutes later you have delicious home baked cookies.

Ginger molasses cookies straight from the oven

I made a whole bunch of savory treats with the puff pastry dough for dinner with a friend's family but I didn't take any photos of the cheesy puffs because the dinner was at their home and I didn't want my camera to get in the way of our eating. Luckily right before we left for their place I took a photo of the fillings...

Ricotta/sorrel pesto/mozzarella mix with bulk spicy Italian sausage

If you have a chance this Saturday, June 6th GC is rolling out its new U-Bake line (pie dough, puff pastry dough, pre-made pies and cookies) at all of its Portland bakeries. From 9am to 1pm each bakery cafe will be staffed with a baker sampling U-Bake products and sharing recipes and advice. Added bonus: 50% of the proceeds of U-Bake products sold that day will be donated to the Portland Schools Foundation. Be sweet and go buy some sweets.

Grand Central www.grandcentralbakery.com 9am-1pm Saturday, June 6th U-bake roll out at all Portland Grand Central Bakeries

Everything is Connected: Portland cheese, bread, pastries and chocolate

Portland isn't so big and once you've anchored yourself in the food community it's hard to buy a loaf of bread without some sort of connection -- oh they're using thatlocal co-op's flour or that's the amazing bread that I used to always wait in line for at the farmers market... Well, the web of connections has been growing to Charlotte's Web proportions lately as I research and write my book which is why I feel ok lumping such a diverse group of people and businesses together in this post.

A couple weeks ago I met with Piper Davis one of the owners of Grand Central Baking. We talked about the history of her family's business, which began in Seattle, while sharing a buttery strawberry raspberry danish. After getting all the details of GC's timeline and current operations I took a tour of the Fremont bakery and snapped some photos...

Grand Central's Easter cookies

Last week I got to meet one of Piper's back-in-the-day employees -- Julie Richardson, now owner of Hillsdale's Baker & Spice Bakery. Julie and Piper are close friends and in many ways they've mirrored each other the past couple years, mostly in terms of writerly pursuits. More on that later, but let's just say that there are a lot of buns in the oven in terms of Portland food books by Portland food folks soon to be published.

Baker and Spice's Katie Buns sheeted and ready to spread with cinnamon and raisins

Julie told me about how she started her first bakery in Ketchum, Idaho at the wee age of 23. After moving to Portland in the late 90s she managed to build up a successful farmers market bakery business. She opened the brick and mortar Baker & Spice Bakery four years ago.

Baker and Spice's bread is baked by Richardson's husband Matt Kappler.

I also recently visited with David Briggs of Xocolatl de David. He's been crafting chocolates for more than three years in Portland and his current commercial kitchen is in the back of his friend's hopping Southeast Portland sandwich shop Meat Cheese Bread. When I visited with David there I got to try his caramelized cacao bean honey brittle, all of the base chocolates, one of his tasty fleur de sel chocolate caramels and a soon to hit the shelf chocolate bar. I met with David in the morning and with one of his friends -- Steve Jones of Steve's Cheese -- in the afternoon. David and Steve worked together at Park Kitchen for six months while David was sous chef and Steve was a server. Now David makes regular deliveries of his chocolates to Steve's shop.

David Briggs has been making his chocolates full time since leaving Park Kitchen a little more than a month ago.

That afternoon Steve and I sat in the back room of Steve's Cheese and tried some tasty Zingerman's poundcake samples while talking cheese. In addition to nearly 200 cheeses in the case at any given time Steve's Cheese also stocks cured meats and all sorts of non-perishable treats such as arbequina olive oil, harissa, sardines and pickled peppers. Oh and he'll let you borrow his Raclette machine as long as you buy at least a quarter wheel of the semi-firm, nicely meltable cheese.

Steve's Cheese case -- always cut and wrapped to order

These are the kinds of wrapped gifts I want from Steve's Cheese reach-in

Anyway the friendship of two premier Portland female bakers and a local cheese vendor and chocolatier has proved yet again that everything (in Portland) is connected, which makes my work all the more enjoyable.

Grand Central Baking Company -- www.grancentralbakery.com Baker & Spice Bakery -- www.bakerandspicebakery.com Xocolatl de David -- www.xocolatldedavid.com Steve's Cheese -- www.stevescheese.biz

Much Kneaded: Portland bread and pastries

I want to write something I really, really do but between the private tastings (private dancer but no exchange of money and no need for a change of clothes), tours and interviews there's some time for my freelance, some time for my taxes (taxes!) and a little more time to actually write this book that's supposedly due by early September. So instead of writing any more I give you this post of images. I'm including some bread and pastry folks and places that I've been to and met with in the past couple weeks...

NatureBake loaves (Dave's Killer Bread folks) right out of the oven...

And into the slicer

Ken Forkish about to hit me over the head with a boule

My dog about to hit me over the head with a hammer so he can get the Nuvrei pastries

Morgan Grundstein-Helvey of Dovetail Bakery loving all blueberries equally

Jocelyn Barda of Bakery Bar didn't cross off a few things on her to-do list because I asked her what her son's birthday cakes are like

NatureBake www.naturebake.com Dave's Killer Bread www.daveskillerbread.com Ken's Artisan Bakery www.kensartisan.com Nuvrei Pastries www.nuvrei.com Dovetail Bakery www.dovetailbakery.blogspot.com Bakery Bar www.bakerybar.com