Impromptu....

‘Tis the season of potlucks and cocktail parties all played to the tune of Chestnuts Roasting. If you are like me, the holiday season kind of showed up out of nowhere. Wasn’t it just summertime? And now there are lights in all of the trees and garland in the windows. Not to be outdone by all of the other party planners in my life, I intend to throw an “ugly Christmas sweater” themed shindig that would blow Martha out of the water. At the Block Party on Hayes, I picked up the perfect little tree, which we’ve trimmed to perfection. We’ve decked our halls and composted the pumpkins that were lingering in the entryway and I have a great playlist of festive tunes. The problem…my calendar is rapidly filling and who has time to cook? Enter my holiday hero….catering.

So, from the comfort of my living room, I peruse the menu online. It looks like La Boulange…..It tastes like La Boulange….but its La Boulange Catering…and alongside some of my favorite pastries and salads are an array of treats and bites that will knock my party-goers’ socks off. The menu of my party, decidedly a little bit more upscale to counteract the bad clothing and “small apartment décor” will be a mix of hors d’oeuvres and specialties:

Petite Gougères
Butternut Squash & Goat Cheese Crostini
Brioche Tea Sandwiches
prosciutto and fig

Charcuterie & Cheese
served with organic baguette, Dijon mustard, cornichons and mixed olives
Smoked Trout Salad
Apple, potatoes, avocado, walnut croutons, greens, citrus vinaigrette served with organic bread

French Sweets Basket
An assortment of Chocolate Fondant, Financiers, Madeleines & Canneles de Bordeaux
Dame Blanche
Petite cream puffs filled with whipped cream, topped with course sugar

Trés magnifique, n’est-ce-pas? I click my mouse and complete my order and all of this is delivered to my door, wrapped adorably in super cute packaging and ready to impress my salivating sweatered guests. Rachel Ray…Move out the way.

Let's Celebrate the Season

Thanksgiving: over. Christmas: not here yet. But it’s Friday night and you’re feeling merry. It’s time to channel your inner child and get excited. The shops are all lit up in pretty white lights and we’re feeling festive. Already the place to be, complete with delicious food stops, galleries, design stores and boutiques that would make anyone’s home and closet the envy of all their friends, Hayes Valley is kicking it up a notch to start the holiday season off right with the annual Holiday Block Party. A long running tradition, everyone who’s anyone should come and strut their stuff in trendy Hayes Valley tonight and check out what San Francisco’s perfectly posh have in the way of holiday spirit.

And when the chill in the air gets to be a bit too much, come cozy up in our corner with hot apple cider or a bowl (oh yeah!) of hot chocolate. Listen to some carols and savor the sweets of the season.

Game Day

In the midst of a new store opening, one can imagine the energy, the excitement, the exhaustion that comes along with it. We are in the home stretch before opening our new location in Noe Valley. Yesterday, the construction walls in front of the store came down, revealing the first lavender boulange. The smiling staff has been training all week and every day, new furniture or equipment arrives to get us closer to our Tuesday opening date. So what do you think the highest point of tension in the last weekend before a new store opening might be? Well, this time around, it is the World cup play-off match between Ireland and France.

To appreciate this completely, we’ll need to rewind a bit. As you are certainly aware, the whole of La Boulange is made up of Frenchmen and Francophiles who are clearly rooting for the red and blue. But among us is one lone Irishman, Adrian, who manages our kitchen operations, and over the past few weeks, he’s done a fair share of smack-talking leading into this match. There is a soccer ball in the office above our pine street store that is kicked around regularly and the opposing fans rib each other incessantly. From an outsider’s perspective, I’ve been trying to learn a bit about all of this soccer stuff, and from doing my research, asking other citizens of the world who follow the sport, and listening to the verbal battle in the office, the gist of the situation is this: Whoever wins this match tomorrow, as well as the second leg in Paris on Tuesday, will get to go to South Africa in 2010 to play in the World Cup. And the smack-talking story behind that is that the French team is the better team that did not win enough matches to make it into the World cup based purely on their season, so they must now play in a play-off, and since there are some French heavy-hitters on the FIFA board, they decided to “seed” the teams, ensuring that a “beatable” team, like the Irish, would be put against them, hopefully ensuring victory. I asked my non-French, non-Irish soccer source point blank, “so who’s going to win?”

His response without even pausing to consider, “the French…they’re very good.”

And so, although the Irish are the clear underdogs in tomorrow’s game, if they are anything like Adrian, they might just be scrappy enough to do some damage, or (dare I say it?) even pull off a win…

We’ll be working furiously on the final touches in Noe, no doubt checking in online on the score. And there is a bar just down the block, The Dubliner, where Adrian can celebrate with like-minded individuals (or drown his sorrows) depending on the outcome. Vive la France!

Sliding into Autumn...now we're cooking.

It’s November 4th….which means if you have a sweet tooth like me, then you have already polished off all traces of Halloween candy in fun sized packages. I never have understood the power people possess, who are able to make it last until Christmas or even longer. Strange. But now, with All Hallow’s Eve under our belt, the holiday season is officially kicking off. Bloomingdale’s has had their glittery Christmas trees on display for a couple of weeks now and Union Square will be decked out in no time, no doubt.

With all of this holiday fuss underway, I am sitting in a Boulange, channeling Thanksgiving with a slice of pumpkin crème fraîche tart, appreciating the little autumn chill that crept in this morning after a string of sunny San Francisco days of Indian summer. Although we are French, we absolutely feel thankful each year that we are here in San Francisco and relish making a few traditional items for the holiday table, with our personal embellishments, of course. They are all available for the tasting now, and if you are like me, life seems to spiral into busier and busier days as the holidays approach. My secret? Order early.

Pumpkin and Crème Fraîche Tart
(makes one 9 inch tart)

1 ¼ cups (10 ounces) solid pack pumpkin puree
½ cup plus 2 tablespoons firmly packed dark brown sugar
1 teaspoon ground cinnamon
½ teaspoon ground ginger
¼ teaspoon ground nutmeg
1/8 teaspoon ground cloves
2 extra large eggs
1 cup heavy cream
1 chilled, unbaked deep 9-inch tart shell
¼ cup crème fraîche for garnish

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. To make the filling: In a large bowl, whisk together the pumpkin puree, brown sugar, cinnamon, nutmeg and clove. Add the eggs, then whisk in the heavy cream until well combined. Pour the filling into the chilled tart shell. Dollop on the crème fraîche and , using a knife, swirl into an attractive design on top of the pumpkin filling.
2. Bake for 40 to 50 minutes or until the filling is set. Cool completely on a wire rack before removing from the pan. The tart is best at room temperature the day it is baked, but it can be kept, covered and refrigerated up to 3 days.

Feeling Patchy

We are outfitted and decked out with pumpkins now at all of our Boulanges. After deciding this year that we would do it right and make a day trip to Half Moon Bay’s Art & Pumpkin Festival, we waited through the traffic, hand-picked our pumpkins from the patch, filled the CR-V with hay and gourds and made the delivery rounds. But we didn’t leave without tasting a few pumpkin-inspired creations and checking out the festivities. Here’s a list of things we liked:

1. “Hot Tamales” from the Cougar Boosters of Half Moon Bay. With Mole they were delish!
2. Live country music you could line dance to.
3. People in costumes.
4. Hand Blown glass pumpkins in all different shapes and sizes, made right there in town.
5. The great Pumpkin weigh-off….the winning pumpkin from Iowa weighed in at 1,658 lbs (The farmer who brought it here blew out a tire in Wyoming just to get it to the festival.)
6. Pumpkin Rolls with copious amounts of cream cheese frosting.
7. Everything pumpkin, from pumpkin ice cream to pumpkin mac-n-cheese.
8. And everyone loves a parade.

And after a long day of careful placement of hay bales and figuring out the right big pumpkin to little pumpkin ratio for displaying, a hot apple cider hit the spot as we headed home. So we suggest loading up on your own picks from the patch and letting that festive fall feeling in.

Warm Fuzzy

One of the best parts of being in the boulanges, we think, is getting to be a part of our customers’ routines, and by extension...part of their lives. It is often the case that not only are we so used to seeing someone that we can grab their favorite pastry and start their espresso drink before they get to the register, but that we’re also privy to the stress they are feeling because they have a midterm coming up, or we’re elated to hear that their wife just had a baby. In any event, it gives us the “warm fuzzies” when our guests let us be part of these triumphs and pitfalls, even if only as spectators.

So our cup runneth over when we found out two of our former regulars from the Boulange de Cole came back in to visit a favorite from their old neighborhood and he got on one knee and proposed to her…

“We went to La Boulange de Cole for coffee and breakfast. When we lived a few blocks away from Boulange, we would go there three or four times a week for coffee and breakfast. I still go for lunch frequently because I work in the neighborhood, but this was the first time Humu went there since moving away from the neighborhood. John and Tim behind the counter greeted her enthusiastically. John topped our coffee drinks with awesome barista artwork. Tim put our name in for our order as some variation on Jefferson because the capital of Missouri is Jefferson City. (This requires some explanation. Some other time. You’re here to read about the proposal.)

After we ordered, we stood in our usual place waiting for our drinks. I took Humu’s hand, looked her in the eye, and got down on one knee. I told her that I loved her, that she was the most important thing in my life, and that I wanted to grow old with her. I asked her to marry me. She didn’t say “Yes.” Instead, she answered in a variation of our favorite Bernard Purdie quotation. She said, teary-eyed, “I would like that very much.”

(This is an excerpt from their blog, which you can check out at http://trottomatic.com/our-wedding/the-proposal/ )

Rich and Humu, congratulations to you both. We’re very happy for you!

Relocating Phyllis

It is not uncommon for a Pigeon to wander in to one of our Boulanges…no doubt tempted by the crumbs of almond croissants that sprinkle the floor underneath our sample platter, and so the staff knows to walk towards them and usher them in the direction of the front door….coaxing them back outside where they belong. Occasionally, the coaxing does not work, and the birds decide to take flight. Typically, this means someone has to catch them to send them on their way again. I’ve seen this scenario play out enough times to not be surprised by it.

At our Polk street store, we’ve been introduced to a particularly cheeky pigeon. She figured out quickly that if she flies up into the spacious loft-style windows above the entry, then no one can easily get to her and she can watch the comings and goings of the busy Boulange undisturbed. She’ll occasionally fly a lap around the dining room, but seems content to perch at the front of the store more often than not. The staff at Polk street has named her Phyllis, and much to our dismay, she has grown more and more comfortable over the last week or so. We were fearful that her lazy circle around the dining room might begin to include a dive-bomb snatch and grab style attack on a dining table, or that the pastry case might be a future target, and so we could not continue to let her feel so welcome. We decided to take her to Golden Gate Park.

Yesterday, when she sauntered in and made her morning appearance, we set to the work of capturing her. We set a ladder below the window she’s most comfortable in, but every trip we made to the top of the ladder resulted in a stressful escape attempt by her, sending her into the windows and then circling the dining room. We have to replace the step ladder we’re using with a larger ladder that will get someone up on the platform where she likes to stay, and we wait.

Watching while we wait for her to get comfortable seeing the ladder beneath her, a curious customer wanders up and asks, “So, do you think she’ll just climb down the ladder?”

“Actually, that would be nice if she did,” we reply. No such luck.

Levi, the lucky one going up the ladder, ingeniously ties an apron to the end of a pole, and as he ascends, he slowly lowers the apron over Phyllis, until her flapping attempts of escape subside. She is cornered and her attempts to fly out the windows are met with thuds. Watching him, you might think he’s done this before….He hops up to the platform and gently wraps her in another apron until she’s bundled and brings her down. She went for a brief ride in Levi’s truck before being safely deposited in the park.

This morning, on my visit to Polk, I look up to the window where Phyllis liked to perch, feeling victorious. We didn’t hurt her and she will no longer be a fixture……and I see a new pigeon has
picked up where she left off.

Cheeky, cheeky pigeons.