Rustica Quotes

“What's on the menu for tomorrow?" I ask.
"Celery root soup with bacon and green apple. And bean and Swiss chard."
"Why don't you ever do something normal, like chicken noodle?" Gretchen asks.
"If you want that, buy a can," Tee says, stirring the creamy goodness in her speckled enamelware pot.
Gretchen begins preparing for the morning. I hover, watching, though by now she knows what to do. She'll make the dough for the soup boules, challahs, sticky buns, and Friday's featured sandwich loaf, cinnamon raisin. I start the poolish- a pre-fermented dough- for my own seven-grain Rustica as she weighs the flour and fills the stand mixer. The machine wheezes, rocking a little too much, as it spins the ingredients together. It's old and will need to be replaced soon. Vintage, Gretchen calls it.”
― Christa Parrish, Stones For Bread

“The reason that she loved cookbooks so much was that the people who wrote them were experts at food who weren't chefs. They could tell you how to make the coziest roast chicken with root vegetables, how to bake up a lasagna, they'd probably roll all the pasta sheets from scratch, using 00 flour imported from Italy; they'd add some rare and unexpected cheese, char the sides of each individual piece in a skillet to give it a restaurant sheen, add microgreens, and swirl some unneeded sauce around the plate before making the waiter give a speech on how to eat it properly. Why go through all of that trouble when a basic, familiar lasagna is the kind of comforting, rib-sticking goodness that most people want?”
― Adam D. Roberts, Food Person