Dobra Bielinski brought her own bread to China.
“They have white bread,” she said, dismissively, noting that her hearty, seed-laden bread kept her alive for a two week trip.
Bielinski is the owner of Delightful Pastries on Lawrence Avenue. Readers on Monday enjoyed our preliminaries before settling down to work on two breads, a potato and roasted onion sourdough loaf, and an oatmeal porridge bread.
“You can see the chunks of potatoes,” she said, tamping dough into rectangular molds with her knuckles. “You can see the chunks of onions. This is a nice dough. I love it.”
Like any fine chef, Bielinski’s all about sourcing ingredients.
“A ton of onions I brought from Wisconsin,” she said. “Making wild onion soup I foraged for mushrooms.”
Why are Wisconsin onions special?
“I love them,” she said. “They caramelize really nicely. I don’t get the big ones, I get the medium sized ones. I love roasting potatoes and onions together, This bread will go well with pate, go well with New England clam chowder. It’s going to be faaaaabulous with that.”
Lunchtime approached. We sat down and ate ... you might want to skip this part if you’re eating, say, a bologna sandwich on Wonder bread for lunch. The envy might kill you.
A bowl of Bigos — hunter’s stew, a sauerkraut-based pottage with pork sausage, smoked bacon, dried plums and mushrooms. Her own horseradish sauce. A superlative apple cider that made me think of the cider at Alinea. Thick slices of warm rye bread.
“I will change your life with this bread,” she said. “Let me get some butter. Some delicious fabulous Wisconsin butter.”
She held the loaf.
“I like how crunchy it is. People are like, ‘Why isn’t this bread fluffy and soft?’ Because, a real rye bread is never fluffy or soft. Once it sets up, the crust is going to harden. When you knock on it, it’s supposed to sound like wood.”
I mentioned an abandoned bakery, Sicilia, a few doors down.
“The Sicilian bakery,” she said, with sorrow. “The father retired. The son took over and ...”
No more need be said.
“A lot of places have gone,” she continued. “There’s that Czech bakery in Berwyn, Vesecky’s, closed its doors.” Last week.
“A Czech baker for 100 years,” she continued. “We’re like dinosaurs. There’s no more real bakeries left around. Modern ones ... you have a brand new oven; you have a machine that does it. You have a dough divider. A dough shaper. Here the shaping we do it by hand. Here, we make our own almond cream from scratch. A lot of places get things out of a bucket. It behooves a real baker to know how to make things from A to Z. If you are proud of your craft you’ll be making all your fillings.”
On her business card, there is an “M.A.” after her name which stands, not for some fancy culinary degree, but for masters in foreign policy in Central and Latin America from UIC. Our political views do not mesh, exactly, but we are of a mind regarding the healing potential of food.
“You know what I think we need? Palestinian food and Israeli food, all around one table,” she said. “That would be the solution.”
Or a start. It’s basically the same food, which is sort of the point. People are more similar than different.
“The more I see, education — Polish people are all about education,” she said. “Jewish people are all about education. Mexicans are all about education. Chinese people are all about education. Indian people are all about education. We have so much more in common.”
And we’re in complete agreement about the media.
“Reporters are under attack,” she said. “We need you. Because you’re so important to democracy, to the future. Without reporters and journalists, America has no future. We will become a fascist military state.”
“And here I am, writing about bread,” I muttered. Of course, the news being what it is, reminding readers of the good yet in life is not without value.
I was supposed to taste the chocolate cremeux with passion fruit pulp. But time passed and we moved on, eating other things and, before I knew it I was heading to the car, laden with bread that I would eat at four out of my following five meals. Next time.
“You’ll have to come here for Easter,” she said. Deal!
