Last night I went to the a Cheese Soirée. It’s easy to get caught up in what has become a routine of events, and forget just how awesome and unique each and every one of these things are.
First of all, I had some awesome tasting baked ricotta, cream cheese, and caramel. I also got to taste a lot more interesting things, but the thing that impresses me more is the community of people. There were 4 people that I saw there that I had seen the day before at BASIL Seed Swap just the day before (one of who gave me the garlic I had been looking for). So many people are making great food, and getting it out to people who have never tasted these things.
On the bread front, I got 10 people to sign up for Bread Education. I can easily gloss over the this fact, and forget that each one of these people are truly interested in learning how to make bread. In just 1 night, I potentially got 1/10th of the way to reaching our Goal of 100 SF Bakers. Now it is going to be necessary to follow up, and connect with each one of these people.
I had brought a sign up sheet for people to preorder bread for the upcoming week, but couldn’t bring myself to show it off or talk about it. I’m still going through some issues and internal conflict with selling bread. But, at the end of the night, I still had 2 extra loaves, and I decided that I needed to work on on the Goal of selling 1000 loaves of bread. Many of the other people around me were selling their products, some for quite a bit of money. I had a giant, delicious, healthy loaf of bread, and I was standing in a room full of people who were passionate about food, and had just tasted and loved the bread, but couldn’t quite figure out how I was going to sell it. I just kinda stood around, contemplating making an announcement, or going up to people, or doing nothing at all. After about a minute or so, I mentioned my conflict to the guy standing next to me. He instantly said that he’d buy the loaf, and gladly gave me the $4. Its so funny that really all you have to do is ask.
As I was browsing around the internet looking up some of the people I had met, I came across a video of Alan Scott, one of the most respected oven builders in the world, and the writer of one of the most useful bread books I have read. I almost devoted this entire post just to link to the video, but had to finish up what was on my mind from last night. The video got me thinking again about building my own oven, and I now realize that there is another Goal for Sour Flour. Much more research needs to be done, but we will begin the process of building an oven.