Bread Furst now a bakery and (cook)bookstore

The businesses along the Connecticut Avenue corridor in Forest Hills aren’t just neighbors. They’re collaborators.

Last month, Politics and Prose, Buck’s Fishing and Camping and Little Red Fox worked together on a special dinner promoting a new cookbook from New York chef Gabrielle Hamilton.

And soon, Mark Furstenberg says, Bread Furst will sell 25 of his favorite cookbooks in a collaboration with Politics and Prose. Not just any cookbooks – Furstenberg limits himself to 25, which results in a process of elimination.

[box]I found myself abandoning a lot of cookbooks that have been really important in my life and in the lives of millions of cooks – James Beard’s American Cooking, a book given to me by my Aunt when I returned to in Washington from Boston, Deborah Madison’s Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone that showed me the versatility of vegetables, and The Silver Palate, the book that molded the cooking of people who came of age in the 1980s.

These were brilliant influences in their time; Madison still is. But I wanted to point you to books that might help you go beyond the large cookbooks like Mark Bittman’s How to Cook Everything, even though such general cookbooks are awfully useful.

So what on earth is left?[/box]

Furstenberg finds plenty. Read the rest of his blog post at BreadFurst.com.

In other Bread Furst news…

The Bread Feast dinners tonight and tomorrow night (see the menu) at Bread Furst will be the last… at least as prepared by Frank Ruta and Aggie Chin. Ruta is starting a new job on January 1st at the Capella hotel’s restaurant in Georgetown. Ruta’s Palena and Bread Feast partner, pastry chef Chin, will also work on revamping Capella’s restaurant, the Grill Room and Rye Bar.

The Washington Post says the Bread Feast dinners might continue in some form. Furstenberg will make that decision after the holidays.