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Culture Food & Drink Living

Baking connections

By Julia Stumbaugh

In 2018, Charlottesville residents Jessica Niblo and Samuel Kane met for a first date at The Pie Chest. But they were both too nervous to eat the shop’s signature dish. Instead, they sipped coffee.

Three years later, in January 2021, Kane proposed to Niblo at the same spot where they’d first met. But like many of Charlottes­ville’s bakery/cafés, The Pie Chest had changed drastically. It was forced to pivot from the kind of community gathering spot where Kane and Niblo gazed at each other over cups of coffee to a purely commercial exchange of money for take-away boxes.

“I think a big part of The Pie Chest’s identity was the space we provided for people…it would get full pretty quickly, and a lot of people would end up talking to people they didn’t know,” says Rachel Pennington, baker and owner of the shop. “Losing that, going to fully carryout and takeout, it’s just heartbreaking. I think of it every time I’m up at the shop now. We’ve lost the buzz that can happen in the room, the connections that can happen…the whole social component is mostly gone.”

The Downtown Business Association of Charlottesville told NBC29 in December that COVID-19 had sliced business revenue in half through the 2020 holiday season. Even places that have been able to remain open have felt the sting, both from the loss of income and the loss of a place to gather.

In Charlottesville, a town defined by its love for food and drink, bakeries and coffee shops are a core part of the town’s social fabric.

“We’re able to stay open and survive, but it’s become more about commerce than community, which is kind of sad,” says Jason Becton, who opened MarieBette Café & Bakery with his husband, baker Patrick Evans. “Eventually, one day, we’ll come back to that.”

With the current closure of MarieBette’s dining room, what Becton misses most is the conversations and connections he used to find with regular customers. But like Pennington, he knows the changes are necessary to keep the business around.

“I think any business that’s been able to stay open is a comfort to people in our community, just because we crave that normalcy,” Becton said. “Even though it’s not quite normal, we try to be able to keep it as normal as possible.”

Thanks to an endless series of stay-at-home orders, home bakers across the United States have turned to their kitchens for comfort, trying viral recipes to make everything from sourdough bread to whipped coffee. But for bakers like Evans and Pennington, who have spent the last year baking to keep their shops afloat, the art is more about sustenance and less about fun.

Even so, their influence has led other local bakers to discover their own love of the craft. Pennington held a series of baking classes in 2019; now, she can turn to social media to see her students reap the benefits. One student displayed her fresh-made biscuits, still golden from the cast-iron skillet. Another posted an album featuring her Pie Chest-inspired veggie pot pie.

“Before I did it for a living, baking at home was absolutely comforting, not just in the process but in knowing that I was able to do something for other people and give them something that they would enjoy,” says Pennington. “So I still know what that feeling feels like.”

The search for that feeling helped spark a new addition to the Charlottesville bakery scene—Pear, a stall at the IX farmers’ market that opened in January 2021, is a local collaboration by two strangers whose only connection was that they both love to bake for people who love to eat.

Myo Quinn, co-founder of Pear, moved to Charlottesville from New York City this summer. Lonely and homesick, the Food Network test kitchen cook headed to the farmers’ market for a sense of normalcy. There she met Holly Hammond, who was working at the Whisper Hill Farm stall.

Quinn is a culinary school-trained chef, Hammond a farmer from Arizona. This winter, they opened their own bakery stall at the market where they met.

“We’ve had a lot of recurring customers, including friends of Holly’s and customers of Whisper Hill, that keep coming over and over again,” says Quinn. “We had our third weekend and the faces started looking familiar.”

Sharing her baking with newly familiar faces has allowed Quinn to weave herself into the fabric of the Charlottesville community. She and Hammond have learned through Pear what the owners of The Pie Chest and MarieBette know well: Even in a pandemic that forces people apart, baking can bring strangers together.
But for now, most of Charlottesville’s professional bakers are left dreaming of a time when their work involves more leisurely connections with customers.

“I long for the first day I can go into a coffee shop and just sit at a table and read the paper,” says Pennington. “I think about it at least once or twice a week. I just want to be part of the food community.”

Categories
Culture Living

Dough-ing home: A renowned pastry chef hopes to taste success where it all starter’d

Rachel De Jong has traveled the world and rubbed elbows with its best chefs. She earned her diplôme de pâtisserie from Le Cordon Bleu École de Cuisine in Paris. She learned hospitality from The Inn at Little Washington’s Patrick O’Connell. And she traded dessert ideas with Ludo Lefebvre at Petit Trois in L.A. But De Jong’s roots are in Charlottesville, and it’s here she’s returned to bake her own way. We recently chatted with De Jong about her new gig as pastry chef at The Workshop in The Wool Factory, the bakery she’s opening, and her illustrious young career.

C-VILLE: What brings you back to Charlottesville after eight years away?

RDJ: I was at Petit Trois, and I loved it—loved the work, loved my co-workers. But L.A. is expensive, and I found my work-life balance was out of whack. And there is a unique interest in food here. I found out about The Wool Factory, and I asked Brad [Uhl, of Grit Coffee] if he was interested in a pastry aspect.

What was it like working with a brash personality like Ludo Lefebvre?

Food is very much his passion. He loves developing the menu and the savory side, but he also has an extensive background in pastry. We collaborated well and had a lot of fun. Often he would come to me and say something like, “I love fraisier, can we do it?” Or I would bring him something, and we would tweak it. Everything we did there was so classically French.

He must have been a change of pace from Patrick O’Connell.

Patrick is just an incredible human. What I learned most from him was about true hospitality and how to take care of guests. He knew how to take something very simple and mundane to another place.

How did you get into pastry?

It started super early on. I come from a large family of five kids, and my mom is an excellent cook, but she doesn’t have a knack for baking. I had a sweet tooth, so I started making cakes and enjoyed it. When it came time to think about a career, I knew it would be in some creative realm. I think it was my dad who finally said, “Pastry can be a career.”

And your first job was at the Baker’s Palette right here in C’ville?

I started college at James Madison University but decided I wanted to get my hands dirty. That’s when Sheila [Cervelloni] took me on with no experience. She taught me all she knew. It was a huge help and eye-opening.

Then after a stint at Gearharts Fine Chocolates, you left.

I think everybody goes through a growth period where their hometown feels small. I was ready to be away from Charlottesville. But working at the Inn, I still had connections and kept in touch with those folks. I would come home for holidays and hear what was going on from family and friends.

Now that you’re back, what can people expect from you?

Technique-wise, I’m a  traditionalist. I have always loved French pastry, and all of my work is grounded in that. When I was growing up, my mother and grandmother always had a natural and organic world—wild flowers and growing their own stuff. I like finding ways to bring those two worlds together and elevate classic French pastry, bringing to it a natural, organic, tangible, free style.

Categories
Knife & Fork

The joy of eating: How a local cook, food stylist, and blogger with a national following learned to love food again

After years of struggling with disordered eating and food sensitivities, Renee Byrd rediscovered her love of food and cooking. Now she shares recipes—and a bit of life-changing magic—on Will Frolic for Food, the blog she started in 2013.

In a way, Byrd, 29, is the Marie Kondo of food. While she advocates a better, simpler way to eat—plant-based, mostly sugar-free, low on dairy, almost vegan—she doesn’t suggest that her way is the right way. It’s just what works for her, and she invites her blog visitors and 47,600 Instagram followers to find their own joy in food.

“Eating something that reminds you of what your mother made when you were growing up can be incredibly healing,” says Byrd, pictured here in a Richmond coffee shop. Photo by Tiffany Jung

Byrd is more than just an avid foodie. She’s a member of the ethereal folk band Larkspur, a poet, and yoga instructor. But where Byrd really shines is with her food photography and styling. Byrd’s atmospheric images and recipes have been featured in Self and Seventeen magazines, and on the Williams-Sonoma website.

Byrd revels in the Charlottesville food scene. She’s an enthusiastic consumer of produce from City Market, where she can also be found at Frolic, the small-batch chocolate and coffee-roasting business that her husband, Logan Byrd, runs out of their backyard commercial kitchen.

We caught up with Byrd recently to find out more about her and her work. Prepare to be inspired.

Why did you decide to write about food?

I started the blog as a way to practice writing and photography, but at the same time I was also developing recipes, so my husband encouraged me to share them. We were eating interesting, creative, delicious things, but I would just make something once and not write down the recipe. I was just like, it’s what inspired me at the time. He was just trying to get me to share with other people. And I got really into it.

You write about “falling in love with food again” after learning you had food sensitivities. Is sharing this also a mission for the blog?

Yeah, that is part of it. I had some disordered eating problems when I was young, and I had to heal my relationship with food. Getting into cooking and learning how to cook nourishing, plant-based food was part of my healing. But I wanted to make food that tastes really good, instead of trying to nourish my body based on some set of rules I observed in our culture, like, “you should eat salad.”

Sounds like intuitive eating. But you don’t seem like a person who’s into food fads.

I don’t really use diet labels. When I was 21 I did go vegan for a while. I had already stopped eating dairy because I was allergic to it, and after I went vegan I felt so much better. But I eventually developed some food intolerances, which I attribute to eating a lot of processed vegan food. So I started incorporating a little bit of fish, some goat dairy, and eggs into my diet, and I started to feel better again. Food is definitely part of my self-nurturing and -nourishing process. And it’s closely related to my mental-health journey—gaining a sense of fulfillment and of making conscious choices.

What does “frolicking for food” mean, and how can it help others?

It’s about finding joy in food and continuing to make it really delicious even if you do have sensitivities. It reminds me of the phrase “rare diseases are not rare.” Likewise, food sensitivities are not rare. A lot of people are not even conscious of dietary parameters that could rid them of suffering or being deeply fatigued. So, for me, frolicking is about reclaiming the joy in food.

There’s something about your food photography that seems to have a similar message.

I try to create a sense of aliveness and vibrancy in something that’s still and immobile. I try to cultivate in the images a sense of quiet and space, which are things I appreciate in life and in food. When I’m photographing I have to gain a sense of slowness and stillness, because it’s just me and a plate of something that can’t talk to me. It helps me appreciate the beauty in something as simple and ephemeral as food. It’s here and then it’s gone. But it also can provide a lot of beauty. A bowl of curry is beautiful because it’s delicious, but it reaches another level when it has edible flowers and a swirl of cream on top.

What ingredients are you excited to get your hands on this spring?

Strawberries! I’m like itching for them right now. And, gosh, some of my favorite edible flowers come out in spring—cherry blossoms, apple blossoms, violets. And we have an asparagus patch—it’s like magic every spring. We get a lot! 

Looking at your blog and reading about all of your endeavors, it seems your creativity goes beyond food.

Well, you should see my list of recipes I have yet to post—it’s like hundreds. I’m also a musician and a poet, and I do portrait photography and even weddings. I’m also a yoga teacher. It’s great! I love it!

What drives your creativity?

One of my core missions is to serve people well—to give them things that are practical and provide a sense of simple joy and connection to somebody similar to them. I think that can reduce suffering for people. That is my ultimate goal: to reduce suffering in the world, no big deal [laughs]. Maybe it’s through food, or conversation, or a beautiful photo. A lot of people who follow my work feel connected to me. They are sensitive souls, and I’m somebody who gets them.

Do you feel that food itself can be healing?

Yes, I do. On two levels: emotional and physical. Eating something that reminds you of what your mother made when you were growing up, or of a beautiful experience in your life, can be incredibly healing. Once in a blue moon I’ll go to Sub Rosa Bakery in Richmond. They have these incredible pastries, not something I typically eat. There’s refined sugar and wheat and dairy. But it feeds my soul. If I feel a bit bloated the next day, who cares? Food can heal people physically, too. I used to have IBS [irritable bowel syndrome], and I’ve completely healed my gut through healthy eating.

On the blog you mention your interest in herbalism. Does that play into your recipes?

It does. It’s sort of a hobby, studying herbalism and including different herbs and roots and mushrooms that are beneficial in my diet. I post a lot of recipes that incorporate herbalism—hopefully, in a very low key, non-intimidating way.

Is that important to you—to communicate in an accessible way?

I try to write the blog the way that I talk to people. When it comes to food, I’m sort of irreverent. I’m totally into all of this hippie woo-woo stuff. But I also take it with a grain of salt. I’m very wary of the cult mindset that can develop around things like herbalism and healthy food. So, the way that I speak on the blog is meant to be very inviting and friendly and relaxed. I want people to feel that they’re just hanging out with me.

 

Eating Around

Although food sensitivities make eating at home more practical for Byrd, she’s found plenty of local places that accommodate special dietary needs in delicious ways. “We have an insane amount of good food in this town,” she says. Here’s where she gets it. —JMM

Roots Natural Kitchen: “I go there a couple of times a week for The Southern Bowl.”

Juice Laundry: “I love their raw juices and green juices, cold brew latte, and Coco Verde with a ton of ginger!”

Moon Maiden’s Delights: “Their Best Day Bar is amazing, with a gluten-free oat base and seasonal flavors like mango or strawberry-cardamom.”

Citizen Burger Bar: “My husband likes their grass-fed beef. I get the beet burger and sweet potato fries.”

Bluegrass Creamery: “I love their vegan coconut ice cream, and their housemade gluten-free waffle cones are the best I’ve ever had. You can find their food truck at the IX Art Park in the warmer months.”

The Pie Chest: “Good coffee and dairy-free lattes. Their chai and matcha is the best in town!”

 

Recipe

Honey-sweetened strawberry jam thumbprint cookies

Photo: Renee Byrd

By Renee Byrd (adapted from The Kitchen McCabe)

Soft, honey-sweetened “sugar” cookies meet tangy-sweet strawberry jam. These cookies come together in just about 15 minutes, plus they’re pretty dang healthy to boot! Free of gluten, grain, refined sugar, and dairy, but absolutely delicious—like, “Wow, this is healthy?” delicious.

Prep: 5 minutes. Bake: 8-10 minutes per sheet. Makes: 18 cookies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Ingredients

2 1/4 cups blanched almond flour

3/4 cup tapioca flour

¼ tsp. salt, plus more for topping

½ tsp. baking powder

½ tsp. baking soda

1 tsp. vanilla extract

1/3 cup honey

1 Tbsp. cashew butter

1 Tbsp. coconut oil

1 egg

Strawberry jam for filling

Method

1. In a large bowl combine almond flour, tapioca flour, salt, baking powder, and baking soda. In a separate small bowl, combine vanilla, honey, cashew butter, coconut oil, and egg. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients, and stir to combine.

2. Scoop out rounded tablespoons of dough and roll them into balls. On a large baking sheet lined with parchment paper, place balls about an inch apart.

3. Using your thumb, create an indentation in the top of each, and fill with 1/4 to 1/2 teaspoon of jam. Bake 8-10 minutes, until the bottoms are deeply golden and the tops are lightly golden.

4. Cool 5-10 minutes before eating. Add more jam as desired.