Category Archives: Bakeries

New Premium Organic and Humane-Certified Pastries & Food Gal Giveaway

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Mushroom-thyme savory scone from Pastry Smart.

For the past five years, Pastry Chef Mark Ainsworth has been crafting organic pastries, breads and cookies for a number of San Francisco Bay Area hotels and restaurants, including the Carneros Inn in Napa and the Lodge at Pebble Beach.

Now, you can enjoy his Pastry Smart products in your own home by picking them up at Mollie Stone’s, Real Food stores, Piazza’s and Shokolaat restaurant in Palo Alto, where he is the CFO.

Ainsworth was previously executive pastry chef at the Lodge at Pebble Beach and the Ritz-Carlton in San Francisco. His Pastry Smart company is thought to be the first pastry producer in the United States to be American Humane Certified. The company also works exclusively with organic dairy Clover-Stornetta Farms.

Recently, I had a chance to sample a variety of the baked goods, which are made in a commercial kitchen in San Mateo.

Just reheat these in the oven for a few minutes and you're good to go.

The retail line includes par-baked rolls that only need five minutes in a warm oven to enjoy at home. The challah slider rolls baked up crisp on the outside, tender on the inside, and buttery tasting, but not overly rich. They’d be great for dinner rolls for company or to stuff slices of ham into for Easter brunch. The multi-grain rolls had a nice nutty taste and a crunchy texture from the sesame and sunflower seeds that cover their exteriors. A package of six is about $6.99 each.

Lemon cookies that you'll never guess are vegan.

The cookies are fist-sized and perfectly round — like lunch-bag staples from childhood. My favorite — surprisingly — was the vegan lemon shortbread. Made with vegan shortening, the cookies are very crumbly with a delightful topping of crunchy, crystallized sugar. Take a bite and they just melt in your mouth.  I’m not even vegan, and I couldn’t stop eating these. A box of six cookies is $6.95.

Pastry Smart also makes three types of savory scones, which would be perfect for lunch or dinner with a salad and soup. The curry scone is full pungent cumin seeds, curry powder and paprika.  Like the curry one, the mushroom thyme scone has a fluffy, light crumb, but with a more herbal, earthy profile.

Each square-sized scone is perforated into fourths to divide it easily into four bite-size pieces. But most folks, I’m sure, will see it and think they’re meant to eat the entire square. Just realize, though, that the calorie count on the back of the package is 130 calories for a fourth of that scone in your hand, and not the entire thing.

Cheddar corn cake with the kick of jalapeno.

Same is true with the corn cakes — tender, cakey, corn bread squares that are about half an inch in height. The calorie count for these is 170 per quarter cake, though, few people are going to stop at just a quarter of one, especially when they come in flavors such as blueberry, and cheddar jalapeno.

Contest: One lucky Food Gal reader will win a sampler of Pastry Smart goodies, which includes rolls, cookies, corn cakes and scones. Entries, limited to those in the continental United States, will be accepted through midnight PST April 9. Winner will be announced April 11.

How to win?

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New Cupcake Bakery, Food Truck Gathering in San Jose & Much More

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A chocolate cupcake from Sinful Bliss. (Photo courtesy of the bakery)

Who’s Hungry for Cupcakes?

Downtown Pleasant Hill welcomes a sinful addition in April — Sinful Bliss Cupcakes, to be exact.

Owner Tammie Parnell believes in celebrating life’s everyday moments with something sweet. After surviving breast cancer, being laid off from her banking job and watching her husband lose his own job, she decided to bet the future on her love of baking.

Her cupcake shop offers a dozen flavors, including chocolate peanut butter cup, Nutella, raspberry and Red Velvet cheesecake. Mini ones are $2 each; regular size ones are $3.25 each. Parnell also does custom designs upon request.

Sinful Bliss Cupcakes will celebrate its grand opening at 10 a.m. April 17 with a ribbon-cutting and free tastings. The event is also a fund-raiser for the Pleasant Hill Middle School Art Department, which will receive 100 percent of that day’s cupcake profits. The students will be creating inspired artwork, which will be displayed at the bakery.

Morever, during the grand opening, children are invited to make their own cupcake design. Fifty of the winning designs will be made and sold on April 23, with profits of the sales going to Pleasant Hill Elementary School.

Custom cupcakes from Sinful Bliss. (Photo courtesy of the bakery)

A Food Truck Meet-Up in San Jose

Aren’t you tired of hearing about all those great food truck gatherings in that city to the North and that other one to the East?

Well, South Bay foodies, you don’t have to feel left out anymore. Here’s the event you’ve been waiting for –  SJEats: A Moveable Feast, noon to 8 p.m. April 2 in the Fallon House parking lot at Saint John Street and Almaden Avenue in San Jose.

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Model Bakery’s Famous English Muffins Now Available Through Mail-Order

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The famous Model Bakery English muffins. (Photo courtesy of the bakery)

Thank Chef Michael Chiarello for this.

The chef-owner of Bottega restaurant in Yountville and a long-time Napa Valley resident recently appeared on an episode of  the Food Network’s “The Best Thing I Ever Ate” show, in which he rhapsodized about the English muffins at the Model Bakery in St. Helena.

The next thing ya know, the phone is ringing off the hook at the bakery from people around the country dying to try these wonderful, fresh-made muffins.

So, the bakery, which has been around for more than 80 years and now has a second outpost in Napa, has finally made them available through mail-order.

After all, we can’t all be as fortunate as Tom Cruise and Katie Holmes, who were visiting Wine Country a couple days ago. According to a source, the celeb couple had their personal assistant run over to the bakery for some goodies to satisfy their craving, before they departed aboard their private jet.

Puffy and rich. (Photo by Carolyn Jung)

I’ve long been a fan of these English muffins, too, which are quite rich and buttery tasting because they are made from a brioche dough. These are not English muffins that have nooks and crannies galore. They are more pastry-like with an airy, fluffy texture that you can’t wait to sink your teeth into.

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Tomato Sale to End All Tomato Sales & More

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Grow your own tomatoes -- with the help of Love Apple Farm. (Photo courtesy of the farm)

Love Apple Farm’s Annual Tomato Seedling Sale

Yes, folks, this is the biggie — the tomato seedling sale that’s the largest in California, the one that attracts droves of home gardeners, including folks from Los Angeles, who have been known to drive up and back in one day just for it.

Why? Because Owner Cynthia Sandberg knows her tomatoes.

Sandberg runs the 20-acre Love Apple Farm in Santa Cruz, which supplies one — and only one — restaurant with an astounding variety of produce. That would be the Michelin-two-star Manresa in Los Gatos.

The seedling sale will kick off at 9 a.m. March 26 and run through June 26. An astounding 30,000 plants representing more than 100 varieties of heirloom and hybrid tomatoes will be sold, including Black Oxheart, Gary O’ Sena, Hippy Zebra and Mountain Pride. Seedling prices range from $3.50 to $5.50 each.

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Healthful Pizza, Ruth Reichl Visit, Chef Demo & More

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The Mexican pizza at ZPizza in San Francisco. (Photo courtesy of the restaurant)

Organic Wheat Flour Pizzas in San Francisco

Laguna Beach, Calif.-based ZPizza, which has more than 90 locations nationwide, now has a locale in San Francisco at 833 Mission St., Suite C (at Fourth Street).

The pizza dough is made from certified organic wheat flour, the sauces are prepared fresh daily, and the cheese is part-skim, rBGH-free mozzarella from grass-fed cows. Gluten-free crust and vegan cheese also are offered. Gourmet ingredients include cremini and shiitake mushrooms, as well as truffle oil and the African hot sauce known as pili pili. For delivery, the pizzas are ferried via bicycles to reduce carbon emissions. Gourmet salads, pastas and sandwiches round out the menu.

Pizza choices include the Thai, with peanut sauce, mozzarella, spicy chicken, cilantro, bean sprouts and serranos; the Mexican with housemade salsa, mozzarella, spicy lime chicken, green onions, avocado, sour cream and cilantro; and the Casablanca, with roasted garlic sauce, mozzarella, ricotta, mushrooms, artichoke hearts and parmesan. Pizzas are $10.95 for a small, $19.95 for a large, and $24.94 for an extra-large.

The one and only Ruth Reichl. (Photo by Fiona Aboud)

Ruth Reichl at Stanford University

Join former Gourmet magazine Editor-in-Chief Ruth Reichl at a free event at the Cubberley Auditorium on the Stanford University Campus in Palo Alto at 6 p.m. March 29.

Reichl, now an editor and author at Random House, will be speaking on “The Intersection of Food, Culture and History.”

A Different Look at Vanilla, Saffron and Chocolate

Sure, they taste good. But did you know all three of those ingredients are rife with politics?

Learn all about the intrigue in getting these three ingredients from harvest to plate at “Politics of the Plate — What’s Behind the Silky Sexiness of Vanilla, Saffron and Chocolate,” 6:30 p.m. to 8:30 p.m. March 16 at the Unitarian Universalist Church of San Francisco (Starr King room), 1187 Franklin St. at Geary Street.

Experts Patricia Rain (vanilla), Juan San Mames (saffron) and Mark Magers (chocolate) will be on the panel with moderator Janet Fletcher, a San Francisco Chronicle food writer.

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