A nod to traditional German-Jewish cuisine

Most American Jews—and for that matter, most Americans—are familiar with egg-enriched challah, the traditional bread baked for Sabbath and holidays. Since my family’s roots are in Eastern Europe, this was the only one I knew until I started studying food more seriously after we opened the Deli. There is, though, another kind, German challah. It is little-known in the U.S. but has long been the norm in the German-Jewish community, where most will know the bread as berches.

Food writer Joan Nathan is part of a German-Jewish family in which berches is the norm! The same goes for Gabrielle Rossmer Gropman and Sonya Gropman, the mother-daughter team who co-authored The German-Jewish Cookbook. And now, after all these years, we’ve begun to bake it here. This likely was what Erich Fromm’s family would have had on the Sabbath table every Friday evening.

The Bakehouse crew has spent months working to craft our own recipe of this centuries-old German-Jewish classic. Amy Emberling, longtime co-managing partner at the Bakehouse, and a member of our five-person Stewardship Council, shares,

Jews for centuries have made our food in the context of other cultures. The spices, fruits, and vegetables used in the recipes often reflected what was available in the region and were then transformed to fit our recipes and food laws. For much of the history of the Bakehouse, we’ve been dedicated to making the recipes that were mainly traditional for Jews in Eastern Europe, including using the flavor choices from that region. Recently, we’ve begun to focus on using ingredients and flavors more common to Michigan as well as transforming recipes with our knowledge of artisan baking—this new challah includes freshly milled local organic spelt and high-extraction organic regional wheat flour. We’ve also enhanced the flavor and texture with a pre-ferment and some of our sourdough starter. For moisture, we include mashed potatoes.

Our German Challah is very slightly sweet, less rich without the eggs, but really delicious. It has a slightly darker crumb and a nuttier flavor from the freshly milled grains used. The fresh milling and local grains make the bread much more like what German-Jewish bakers would have been making and serving two centuries ago than one would get from the more highly refined, bleached, and bromated commercial flours that are now so commonly available.

Toasting the German Challah brings out the sweetness and gives a lovely, lightly nutty flavor. Great with the Vermont Creamery Cultured Butter and a bit of good jam. Or try it with the Creamery’s wonderful handmade Cream Cheese. On a more savory side, it’s lovely with chopped liver, and makes a beautiful base for a corned beef sandwich. Whether you want a new way to celebrate the Sabbath, you want to experience a bit of Jewish cultural diversity, or whether you just like to eat a lot of good bread, swing by and grab a loaf or two soon!

The German Challah is available on Mondays and Fridays. It will be on the shelves at the Bakeshop after 9 am and Deli around 11 am. Eventually, you’ll be able to find it on the Zingermans.com Mail Order site, too. In the meantime, we’d be glad to ship you some—just email us at [email protected] and we’ll send some your way!

Zinglish Muffins, cream cheese, fresh fruit, and jam make a magical combo

A Jamwich is an easy dish to make at home for breakfast, lunch, dinner, or afternoon snacks. I’m reminded of it every summer when the fresh fruit is showing up in abundance at Ann Arbor farmers markets! It brings together a bunch of different flavors and textures in one terrific open-faced sandwich.

Start with one of the Bakehouse’s marvelous Zinglish Muffins. Be sure to use a fork to break it in half or pull it gently apart with your fingers (not a knife) to get the ideal bumpy, craggy, surface-of-the-moon-like look. The unevenness and tiny holes make for much better eating. Toast it up. Spread the toasted sides of the muffin with a good bit of the Creamery’s fantastically tasty, gum- and preservative-free, traditional handmade cream cheese. Spread each side with jam. And then lay on fresh fruit—if it’s peaches or pears, you can slice them; if it’s berries, keep them whole.

The key to the Jamwich is to pair the fresh fruit with jam of the same fruit. Right now, here in southeast Michigan, blueberries, raspberries, and peaches would be the most likely options but of course what’s fresh and in season can swing from week to week and region to region. For blueberries, try the American Spoon Wild Blueberry Jam. If you get fresh raspberries, try the Red Raspberry Preserves from American Spoon. For fresh peaches, I go to American Spoon’s Red Haven Peach Preserves. In the fall, you can use pears with some of the Golden Pear Preserves we have from American Spoon Foods. Figs and fig jam from Agrimontana in Italy. It works well with every fruit you can find.

And since tomatoes are a fruit, there’s no reason you can’t do this with tomatoes and tomato jam. Or go get some of those wonderful fresh varietal peppers that are only now beginning to appear at local markets in southeastern Michigan. Sauté them down in olive oil. Use some of the American Spoon Jalapeño Pepper Jelly on top of the cream cheese then lay on the roasted or sautéed peppers.

The textural contrast in a Jamwich—golden brown, wheaty Zinglish Muffin, creamy Creamery Cream Cheese, the sweet intensity of the jam, and the vitality of the slightly sweet fresh fruit make for a really marvelous combo. If you want, garnish with fresh mint leaves or fresh basil. If you like black pepper as much as I do, grind a bit on as well. Eat ’em while the muffin is warm and toasty!

Pick your preserves

Great to eat, no meat, and handmade on the island of Evia

Looking for a lovely confection that’s well suited to the summer heat? I’m happy to report we have a fantastic new arrival from Greece that will fill the bill beautifully! Made to do well in the very hot Aegean climate, dried fig salami is super tasty!

We get them from longtime friend and importer, Vivianna Karamanis at Hellenic Imports. Everything we get from Vivianna is very, very good and these dried fig salami are up there with my favorites. Here’s a bit of the backstory:

My husband Theo loves figs and whenever he was visiting me in the U.S. he would always buy fig cakes, but he really didn’t enjoy the quality or firmness of the product. He would go on and on about the quality of dried Greek figs, specifically from the island of Evia. Upon heading back to Greece, he started researching the local fig farms and their products from Evia. He met with a lady who was making fig salamis by hand with her partner. We worked closely with them, but with a twist. Instead of just a pack of dried figs, we made them into these great salamis.

The woman who works with the figs is based in a small facility in Athens. She controls everything from beginning to end, meaning she visits the farms/farmers on the island and checks the harvest, she works with very specific producers, and it has helped as they commit their harvest to her—many Greek farmers feel most comfortable working that way. She handles the production and oversees the packaging. Despite how popular the product has become for us she still insists on doing most of the product using traditional methods.

We only use figs from the island of Evia which I believe is the key ingredient to the “juiciness and sweetness” of this product. Only simple, raw ingredients are used to make the product making it a high-fiber, healthy snack. There are no added sugars or salts and they are certified by the Non-GMO Project. It makes for the ideal cheese companion.

Evia is the second largest island in Greece, as Vivianna says, “just a bridge away” from Athens. It lies off the country’s east coast, in the Aegean Sea. The figs come from various farms, but they are all grown in and around the town of Kymi on the central east coast of the island. Evia has a long history and has, at various points, been ruled by Athens, the Roman Empire, Venice, the Ottoman Empire, and more! Since early in the 15th century, there has been a sizable Albanian population.

We have four of these fantastic, dried fig salami on hand. All are great. The Aleppo pepper with orange is probably my favorite but they’re all fine! Each has a touch of sweetness and a bit of spice and all are excellent!

• Cinnamon + Pistachios
• Aleppo Pepper + Orange Zest
• Almonds + Black Pepper
• Aleppo Pepper + Smoked Paprika

I love them on their own, and they’re beyond terrific on cheese boards—I’ve yet to find a cheese they don’t pair well with. A nice little gift, a great addition to your provisioning for a camping trip, something special to keep on the counter for late-night nibbling, and a wonderful sweet to serve while trying to channel the wisdom of ancient Greek philosophers during consensus-seeking meetings.

 Snag this fig salami

An early evening belief in the beauty of bivalves

If you’re up for a bit of an ocean-based boost, between 2 and 6 pm, Monday through Friday, here you go. At Mail Order and the Deli, our annual Summer Sale will conclude at the end of this month. The Roadhouse though has a different, year-round special that opens eyes in an equal but very different way. That Happy Hour slot is when we have East Coast oysters on special for the very low price of just $2 a piece!

While the Roadhouse Happy Hour is still relatively new, oyster fossils have been found from as far back as something like 530 million years ago. Here in North America, First Nations people on both coasts were consuming great quantities of oysters long before Europeans arrived. On Manhattan Island, the Native people traded oysters to the Dutch; there are still massive, covered-over “middens” of oyster shells all over Manhattan. Mark Kurlansky’s excellent book The Big Oyster addresses this New York City history in great detail.

By the end of the 19th century, many natural oyster banks were already exhausted. Happily, over the last 20 years, there’s been a lot of work done to restore the quality of the watersheds and un-dam some of the waters, and the oysters have come back nicely. The folks at Foley Fish, from whom we have been buying these for over 20 years now, have been at the forefront of that ecological restoration work! All of these are raised sustainably and are carefully checked by Foley to maintain their 100-plus-year tradition of having incredibly high-quality fish and shellfish. One of the four will be available for a couple bucks per piece every Happy Hour day!

• Blue Point – While the “Blue Point” name is widely (mis-)used, authentic Blue Points of the sort we buy come only from the estuaries of Long Island. Ours are from one oyster farm in the aptly named Oyster Bay, named by the Dutch colonists back in 1615 due to its abundance of shellfish.
• Chebooktook – These come from New Brunswick in the Canadian Maritimes, north of Maine. Harvested in Bouctouche Bay, the Chebooktook oysters generally bring a softer salinity with a lovely sweet, nutty finish.
• Savage Blonde – From Prince Edward Island, Canada’s smallest province. These are harvested at the beautiful Savage Harbour on the far eastern end of the island, and have a wonderful meaty flavor.
• Wellfleet – Harvested, eaten, and enjoyed for many centuries from Wellfleet Bay about two-thirds of the way out on Cape Cod. Wellfleets are known for their sweet/salty flavor.

As with fresh fruit and vegetables, the flavor of any particular oyster will be different from week to week—more rain will make the merroir (the oceanic equivalent of terroir, i.e., the flavor that the soil imparts to what grows in it) less salty; less rain will increase the salinity. As a big oyster eater, I will say from first-hand experience all of these always taste great! It’s no accident that the Roadhouse rolls through a LOT of oysters each week.

If you love oysters, $2 high-end oysters in 2024 are a totally terrific way to break up your day! If you don’t love oysters, there are also other great offerings on the Happy Hour menu, as well as a plethora of drink specials. While the Happy Hour oyster offering will be different from week to week depending on what’s available, more often than not, it’s one of these four. All, I will say from firsthand eating experience, are fantastic!

Make a reservation at the Roadhouse

Angel food cake to celebrate summer berry season

A Bakehouse favorite from many years ago, it’s named after managing partner Amy Emberling’s son Jake, who’s all grown up now, and still loves this cake. It’s soft, fluffy, sweet, and light—“pillowy,” the people at the Bakehouse like to say—heavenly angel food cake made with lots of fresh egg whites, cane sugar, a small bit of flour, a touch of cream of tartar, and lots of vanilla extract and vanilla bean. This time of year, it’s particularly relevant because this lovely light cake marries so marvelously with berries.

Angel food cake is named for its lightness. A cake angels might eat. Although some will say it must have come down from heaven, culinary historians don’t seem to agree on its actual origins. Many give credit to Pennsylvania Dutch bakers. Others argue it was invented in the American South. Mrs. Porter’s New Southern Cookery Book has a recipe for “Snow-drift Cake” which was pretty much the same thing. Many historians agree that the invention of the eggbeater—which made making it much easier—in the 1860s increased its popularity. If it did come from the South, it was likely developed and perfected by enslaved women. In The American Pastry Cook, Jessup Whitehead says it came from St. Louis in 1894. And, he says, it was shipped from St. Louis all over the country in an early form of mail order. Some were even sent all the way to London.

In her 1881 cookbook, What Mrs. Fisher Knows About Old Southern Cooking, Soups, Pickles, Preserves, Etc., Abby Fisher, a former enslaved woman who’d moved to San Francisco after Emancipation, calls it “Silver Cake.” To get the full context, the recipe on the top of the same page is “Gold Cake.” Gold cake is made with egg yolks. Silver cake starts with the egg whites you’d have set aside when you’re “going for the gold.” Mrs. Fisher had quite a business selling pickles and sauces in San Francisco and was a well-known local culinary authority. The book was published by the very progressive Women’s Co-operative Printing Office.

What I love best about angel food—or maybe I’ll say silver—cake is that it goes great with berries and as other fruits come into season, it’s well suited to them too. Just crush your berries and add a small bit of sugar. Let the juices come out for an hour or so, then ladle the berry mix over slices of the cake. Eat up and enjoy! Its lightness makes a lovely pairing too with the equally light elegance of the Mexico Chiapas coffee brewed as an espresso!

Order your Jake’s Cake

Truffles, wine, hazelnuts, cheese, chocolate, and more!

Looking for a life-changing adventure? Something that will provide you with marvelous memories of great food and great people that you will carry with you for the rest of your life? Curious about crafting your culinary and cultural wisdom? Consider this, then: while students are settling into their dorm rooms to start the new semester at the end of August, you could be landing in Turin to take a weeklong excursion in Piedmont with Zingerman’s Food Tours! Heading out at the end of the summer way is one of the best times of year to travel—you beat the bulk of the summer heat and also the height of the tourist season.

I’ve probably been to Piedmont at least 10 or 12 times over the years. While it’s well off the beaten tourist track, it’s long been one of my favorite places to travel to. Without question, Piedmont has some of the best food and wine you’ll find anywhere in Italy. If you want a literary recommendation to enhance what I’m offering here, the region’s elegant capital city of Turin was much appreciated by both Friedreich Nietzsche and Mark Twain. The region is located in the upper northwest corner of Italy, butting up against Provence to the west and Switzerland to the north. The name Piemonte is derived from the old local language and means “the foothills of the mountains.”

Although it’s very much part of Italy, the region really has more in common with eastern France and the foothills of the Alps than it does with other, more distant, parts of Italy like Sicily, Sardinia, Calabria, or Puglia in the south. Seth Sherwood wrote in the New York Times last winter,

With the Alps as a background, Turin, Italy’s fourth-largest city, is elegant, photogenic and rich with history. Grand squares and former royal palaces abound in this northern Italian crossroads, nicknamed Little Paris, which was briefly Italy’s first capital after the country’s unification in 1861. … the city is awash in earthly pleasures. Both gianduja chocolate and vermouth were invented there, and can be sampled among the historic coffeehouses, chocolate shops and aperitivo bars that line the city’s arcaded shopping boulevards.

The tour to Piedmont is a terrific way to taste the jewels of the region’s cuisine. There are truffles and anchovies, and an array of world-class cheeses that are little known outside the area. The wines, such as Barolo, are widely acclaimed. And don’t forget the fantastic hazelnuts, considered the best in the world, which will show up in any number of dishes during the course of the tour. There is also an amazing chocolate tradition—when you’re in Turin try the Bicerin, the classic coffee drink of the town and a favorite of French writer Alexandre Dumas. It’s one-third each of espresso, hot chocolate, and cream, all layered lovingly in a glass so you can clearly see each layer. You’ll also find lots of the terrific artisan chocolate hazelnut spreads that we love so much around here, like the super tasty Noccioliva (featured right now on our Summer Sale) we use so regularly at the Coffee Company and Roadhouse. The region even has its own ancient language called Piemontèis or Lenga Piemontèisa.

The tour starts with a wine class presented by tour cohost Bernardo Conticelli—Bernardo just came to Ann Arbor to visit us for the first time and was the guest star at a series of great events we held around the ZCoB last month. There’s also an old-school stone polenta mill, a century-old cheese shop that’s been selling artisan cheese for so long it makes the Deli look like a new arrival on the food scene, a day trip to go truffle hunting, and then a whole truffle-focused meal! Oh yeah, in the spirit of schools starting up for the fall semester, there are also formal lessons at Slow Food University.

Lots of wine, a whole lot of chocolate, and loads of good learning. There’s a whole range of really great highlights—check out the delicious details! If you’re looking for a life-altering, incredibly tasty, educationally inspiring, culturally rich, wisdom-building way to spend a week, check out this trip today! If you go on the trip, I’ll forecast that you’ll still be reminiscing about it fondly for years!

Plan to visit Piedmont!