It’s not a well-known fact, but I’m pretty sure that one of the most delicious ways to have breakfast or lunch in the ZCoB is to come out to the Coffee Company (a few hundred feet up the walk from the Bakehouse). Hanging on the wall behind the counter, on the left, you’ll see what we call “The Big Brew Board”—it’s all the ways we offer our coffee varietals (and yes, every single method means a different flavor). To the right, about half its size in both height and length, is the toast menu! While the coffee is, of course, the main point, don’t miss those terrific (if seemingly peripheral) toasts! They are truly tremendous! Great breads from the Bakehouse, toasted and offered in eight different ways. Every single one of them is delicious!

This week, the Coffee Company toast that I have in my mind is the first one on the list—it’s what we’ve come to call over the years “The Caviar of the South.” It starts with a toasted slice of Roadhouse bread from the Bakehouse. If you don’t yet know that loaf, it’s long been one of my favorites. Though no other bakery I know of makes it, here in the ZCoB we’ve brought it center stage! Historically, it’s the old “thirded bread” of New England from the colonial era, a blend of rye, wheat, and corn, nearly all of which we mill right here at the Bakehouse (fresh milling means more flavor and better nutrition!). The bread has, as from its beginnings, had a small bit of molasses in it to sweeten it up just the slightest, barely perceptible bit.

When the toast comes out of the toaster, we spread on a whole bunch of the Creamery’s Pimento Cheese—“the Caviar of the South” so to speak! Then we pour on a little extra virgin olive oil, and last but not least, we add a nice grinding of the Zingerman’s 5-Star Pepper Blend. It’s a blend of five different black peppercorns, put together for us by our friends at Épices de Cru up in Quebec: Tellicherry Reserve (from the original home of pepper, Kerala, on the southwest coast of the country), Mlamala, Rajakumari (the last two from the Cardamom Hills in Southern India), Tellicherry Extra Bold, and Shimoga (from the Indian state of Karnataka.) It’s terrific! Buy a tin for your kitchen table!

“Caviar of the South” makes for a beautiful breakfast, lunch, late morning or late afternoon snack! The toasted grain flavors of the bread, the roundness of the olive oil, the creamy piquancy of the pimento cheese, set against the spiky pepperiness of the 5-Star Pepper … as we often say when we come out with combinations like this where every single element is awesome on its own, “What could be bad?”

Swing by soon! Sip coffee! Eat toast! Have a fun day!

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