GOLD or bust — Arielle Giusto

People - you need not wait until February 7th to root for your team. On February 6th history will be in the making in Paris, and that is what everyone should really be paying attention to. This ain't no sporting event. What is about to go down is a true competition in every sense of the word, a test of speed, skill, creativity, and focus. This, my friends, is an international baking competition.

In a few days we board a plane headed for France, where Nick will compete as the Artisan Bread Baker for Team USA in the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie. Watch out world, the Americans are coming and they are hungry for gold. My husband, Nicky Giusto, along with Jeffrey De Leon (Viennoiserie), Jacob Baggenstos (Artistic Design) and their amazing coach Harry Peemoeller, have put in over a year of preparation and practice for this day. Their time has come.

You may be asking yourself, how the heck does one competitively BAKE? Here is the short and dirty:

::: 12 Countries have made it to the final selection and assembled three person teams to compete - watch for Japan (2012 Gold), Netherlands, Canada, France to be strong.

::: Each team has a two hour preparation period the night before, followed by a strict eight hour session in which to complete all of their pieces - some 400 pieces of bread and pastry, and one large bread sculpture. Not finishing in the designated time period takes you out of the running for gold no matter how fantastic your products.

::: There are both "obligatory" pieces (Croissant, Baguette) and "freestyle" pieces (Nutritional, Aromatic Bread of Your Country), where the baker can show their creativity. A bread sculpture is exactly how it sounds - a beautiful sculpture made entirely out of bread! Completely edible. Most of it is made up of "dead" dough (no yeast, which makes it easier to work with), while at least 30% must be yeasted.

::: The theme for the Coupe this year is "Sports Nutrition". I am curious to see how each country weaves this into their presentation.

It has been fascinating following along throughout this process. I was fortunate enough to join a recent practice held in Charlotte, North Carolina at Johnson & Wales, where Harry teaches baking. The intensity and focus in the room is so sharp you could cut it with a knife. For fourteen hours straight they move with precision, anticipating each other's needs and getting it done. So tune in with me on the 6th and root our boys on! I will be down in the booth with the judges as the official team photographer, many more riveting baking shots to come...

May 11, 2020

Mating Dance

April 1st and it is the 23rd anniversary of my mother’s death. Usually I go walk the beach, to the place where we scattered her ashes and where she spent her last years, but it’s 2020 and the beaches are closed so instead I go for a walk around the block. In my seventh month of pregnancy now and my feet have started to ache from the extra weight, so the walk starts out slowly, gingerly. I conjure her here, in step beside me - Suzanne Segal, born on Friday the 13th and died on April Fool’s Day. Was that her ridiculous way of encouraging us to see some of the humor, the lightness of life? Those deep dimples and that shrieking laugh are with me as much today as they were decades ago.

February 20, 2020

santa fe, NM 1995

My mom and I got off the plane in Albuquerque and headed for the white Isuzu Trooper we kept parked at the airport. After our first few visits to New Mexico, when my mom had properly fallen in love with the landscape and started buying property – all sagebrush and pink dirt – she decided we needed our own car there. This one was properly beat up enough to fit in, as I learned after my eyes had adjusted from the bombastic wealth of the Bay Area to this perennially poor state. But the colors! Even on the license plates! The flamboyant yellow, red and turquoise delighted me, set as they were against the glow of the high desert. I suppose we both were in love with this new frontier.

December 15, 2019

Peeking through the Back Door

I have always felt most at home in restaurant kitchens. No matter how glossy the paint or how shiny the brass door handle on the imposing front door to the dining room, there is always a dinged up, unmarked back door that leads to the real heart of the beast. It took a few weeks into my first cooking job at The Olema Inn to get used to the complete lack of glamour of it all. Only now do I see how the paucity of it helped to form our psyches, ordained us cooks with the chips on our shoulders and the swagger in our steps. We’re here to do the real work. We don’t need no fancy door.