Tuesday, April 22, 2008

EAT, DRINK AND GET PUBLISHED

Greetings from Carmela's Cucina,

Last night I had an opportunity to attend my first ever meeting of "Eat, Drink and Get Published". This is a number of Twin Cities writers that have formed a group a few months ago to get together monthly for networking purposes. Last night's gathering was all about food writing so I was very anxious to attend. The moderator for the evening was one of the food writers for the Minneapolis Star and Tribune, Kim Ode. Her guests were Zoe Francois and Robin Asbell, both cook book authors, who have best sellers on their hands. WOW!

Since this was the first meeting that I attended, I was quite surprised by the number of people gathered together. All were happily sipping wine and noshing while networking. When I first walked into the room I saw Zoe, uncovering several platters of bread that she had baked just for the occasion. On one was a platter of sweet rolls, a recipe from her new cook book with co-author Jeff Hertzberg, called Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day. The rolls were still warm from the oven, soft, nicely flavored with cinnamon and glazed with icing and delicious. I needed to hear more about her new way of baking bread!

She and Jeff have come up with a new method of preparing a yeast dough and keeping it in the refrigerator for up to two weeks. The longer it is kept the more depth of flavor is developed in the dough. The theory is that you can always have dough ready to be baked into many different shapes sizes and types. The book is in it's 7th printing with more than 20,000 copies being sold. For more information on her method, the book and baking bread in general go to her blog at:
www.zoebakes.blogspot.com I think you will find that you like the bread as much as I did. You can also get her book at www.barnesandnobel.com and www.amazon.com

The evening ended with more sipping and noshing, but when I went back for another piece of cinnamon roll, sadly only the empty plate was left.

Buon appetito,

Carmela Tursi Hobbins

2 comments:

Kim Ode said...

Carmela,
I wish I'd known you were there! I would like to have connected a face with the recipes. It WAS a fun evening - lots of info and delightful people. I hope our paths cross soon.
Kim

Zoe Francois said...

Hi Carmela,

It was so wonderful to see you at the event on Monday. What a wonderfully inspired group of writers and foodies!

I'm so glad you enjoyed the breads I brought and hope to hear about your expereince baking with our method.

Thank you for sharing it with your readers!

Zoƫ

www.zoebakes.com
www.artisanbreadin5.com