Hannah Wallace

Portland Visionary Rukaiyah Adams

Every so often an assignment comes along that takes you out of your typical beat, making you so honored to be a journalist because it allows you to meet wise and captivating people and learn about their work and their passions. This was one of those moments. I got to profile Rukaiyah Adams for Bon Appetit's Healthyish series on "Superpowered Women"—women who are redefining wellness in their communities. As I spoke to Rukaiyah over lunch at her southwest Portland home, I realized that we have a lot in common: she's a runner, she invests in startups run by women and people of color (I don't do that, but I write about them), she loves Oregon wines (particularly Antica Terra) and she longs for our city to be a place where everyone is included in its successes.  I learned a lot from interviewing her. 

 

When Rukaiyah Adams left a New York City–based hedge fund in 2010, a non-compete clause forced her to take an extended break from work. Missing her mom, who had just been in a car accident, she flew to her hometown of Portland, Oregon.

“I went for a run in Forest Park. It was raining lightly, and the sound of rain tapping against the leaves, the smell of soil...” and that’s when it came to me: I am not a New Yorker.”

Nine months later, she packed her bags and moved to Portland, a decision that had major ripple effects. Not only did living in Portland reignite her relationship with David Chen, a lawyer in the Bay Area, it helped her switch gears professionally.

“I could make ten times more in New York, but I was past the mastery part,” Adams tells me, as she putters around the kitchen of her 1920s English-cottage-style home, making us lunch. “I needed to develop a point-of-view.” In Portland, she landed a job as director of investment management at the Standard, a financial services group, and, in 2013, was appointed to the board of the Oregon Investment Council, the state pension fund.

Today, Adams, 44, is the chief investment officer at Meyer Memorial Trust, the third largest foundation in Oregon, with assets of $788.5 million. Started by Oregon grocery store magnate Fred G. Meyer, the trust gives away roughly $35 million a year to Oregon-based social justice and advocacy organizations, equitable education and affordable housing initiatives, and environmental programs. These grants are only possible due to the success of the Meyer investment portfolio, which Adams manages.

“Rukaiyah is tackling big, thorny, important, often fraught issues,” says Eve Callahan, an executive vice president at Portland-based Umpqua Bank and long-time admirer. “And she’s doing it with such grace and generosity.”

But when I ask her what she does at Meyer, Adam’s reply is pithy: “My job is to make the money.”

Long runs in nature—she loves jogging along the Willamette River as well as in 5,200-acre Forest Park—help keep Adams poised in her high-pressure position. “Believe it or not, being healthy and having outlets is pretty important to the technical requirements of the job,” she says as we sit at her marble kitchen table, eating iceberg lettuce with goat cheese, sliced cucumbers and radishes, and shaved carrots, along with avocado smeared on toasted sourdough. “If the person managing money is pulling out her hair and crying, it generates a lot of stress!”

In high school, she played basketball and soccer, and, at Carleton College in Minnesota, she was passionate about rugby. Running has even spurred radical investment changes that have been good for the Meyer portfolio.

“Once, in 2014, I was running in Forest Park and stopped and heard the trickle of water and decided that day to switch our investments from oil to clean water.” She has not regretted the decision—global water stocks continue to outperform oil stocks by a considerable margin.

More recently, Adams has shifted Meyer’s strategy from a more traditional one of investing in global markets to mission-related regional investing.

“Historically, Meyer has focused on venture capital and accelerators—which has done quite well,” says Adams. “But, looking back over who has benefitted from that investing, it’s the same people who normally benefit.” Over the past year, Adams has stepped up investments in businesses run by women and people of color. In 2016, she invested $2 million in Nitin Rai’s Elevate Capital, a fund that invests in Pacific Northwest startups led by women and minorities. (Elevate was a seed investor in feminist tomboy clothing company Wildfang as well as in Hue Noir, a makeup company geared to people of color.)

But sexy startups only comprise a small part of Oregon’s economy. “The reality is that most brown people and people of color are employed by small businesses. And we need to grow those businesses,” Adams says. At the moment, Adams has her eye on a few businesses around the state. She’s particularly keen to invest in firms that bridge the urban-rural divide. “They don’t know it, but I’m watching them closely,” Adams says, conspiratorially. “I’m watching how they respond to stress. How they manage their time. How steady they are over time. When you invest in someone, it’s like getting married to them.”

On that subject, on New Year’s Eve, Adams wed Chen in an elegant ceremony at the Parker Palm Springs. Adams paused as she sliced vegetables for our salad to show me some photos: One of her and Chen all dressed up in their wedding best, looking radiant and joyous; one of Adams hugging her mom in front of a decorative concrete screen wall.

Several times during our interview, she tells me with pride what a fabulous cook Chen is. The youngest of three boys (by about a decade), he spent a lot of time at home with his mom, who taught him to be confident in a kitchen. He has a habit of leaving a cookbook lying on the kitchen counter—Andy Ricker’s Pok Pok, for instance, or Yotam Ottolenghi’s Plenty—with a note: “Pick a recipe.” Adams grabs the Pok-Pok cookbook and flips to Ricker’s recipe for Vietnamese turmeric-marinated catfish with noodles and herbs, and I glimpse a note she scrawled beneath it commemorating that he made it for her on Valentine’s Day last year. Adams says their division of labor is simple: she takes care of the baking and roasting, and he does all the cooking. (She happily does the dishes.)

Adams also loves Oregon wines, particularly winemaker Maggie Harrison’s Antica Terra. (“All I do is hug the bottles when I get them,” Adams says.) But her weekday routine does not allow for leisurely meals—at least until dinner. Like many other West Coast investors, she’s up by 6:00 a.m. to check the markets. “So even if I’m not at work, I’m working.” If she runs in the morning before work, she’ll grab a yogurt or piece of fruit on her way out the door. “I love those shredded wheat things that have sugar on top, which I probably shouldn’t eat, but they’re delicious,” she says. Once at the Meyer Memorial Trust office in the Pearl District, she’s at her desk for a few hours, and then around 11:00 a.m. she goes for a 20-minute walk. “I usually have to miss lunch, then I have to gobble it standing up at the sink,” she says. In an effort to eat more mindfully, she’s started bringing leftovers. By around 3:00 p.m., she’s ready for a cup of coffee and a walk—without her phone. “I like to smell the city and see people,” says Adams.

Lately, though, she’s working on cutting back. “2018 is going to be the year of no. I have two talks to give this year, and that’s it,” Adams tells me, with what sounds like resolution. But you get a sense that this woman would never be satisfied sitting on the sidelines.

When Adams moved back to Portland in 2011, she found a city in flux. Always a majority-white city, Portland was gentrifying at a rapid clip, with black and brown families being pushed out to the suburbs. A fourth generation Portlander—her great grandmother moved to Portland from Louisiana in the late 1950s—she had already witnessed gentrification first hand. Walnut Park, the neighborhood she grew up in, is now known as the Alberta Arts district.

As we eat, she tells me the devastating history of Lower Albina, better known today as the Rose Quarter. A vibrant African American and immigrant neighborhood full of bungalows, jazz clubs, corner groceries, and churches, it was affordable and easily walkable to downtown and the neighborhood known as the garment district (now the Pearl). In the late 1950s, the city declared the area blighted and leveled it, making way for the Interstate, Memorial Coliseum, and a hospital that never materialized. Residents, including Adams’ great grandmother and the German family she rented a room from, were forced to move out. It was an act of racial injustice that many Portlanders are still smarting from.

Adams is now on the board of Albina Vision, a coalition of community leaders and developers that aims to redevelop the Rose Quarter with affordability, equity, and walkability in mind. If Adams and the rest of the Albina Vision board get their way, the Rose Quarter will have a public connection to the Willamette River (right now, the lovely bike-and-pedestrian Eastbank Esplanade ends abruptly at the Steel Bridge), a walkable street grid from the 1950s, and affordable housing as a form of reparations to the families who were displaced.

Adams pauses and her voice drops to a whisper, so that I need to lean in to hear her. “My grandmother wrote in her Bible, ‘Dear God, I hope I’ve made the right decision in bringing my family to this place. And someday, I hope that one of my children has love, meaningful work, and safety.’” says Adams. “And I am that child.”

Locavore Lunchrooms: 7 public schools that are serving seasonal, healthy fare

Students at West Tisbury School on Martha's Vineyard get fish chowder and fresh veggies (Photo by Elizabeth Cecil)

School cafeteria food gets a bad rap. But the truth is, as the national farm to school movement has taken off over the past few years, schools have begun sourcing the sort of high-quality ingredients you see at your local farmers’ market. At public school lunch rooms around the country, it’s now possible to taste dishes like shrimp cocktail (with homemade cocktail sauce), grass-fed burgers with roasted potatoes, and burrito bowls with local veggies and antibiotic-free chicken. Realizing how vital farm-to-school programs are to local economies, state governments from Alaska to Texas are encouraging regional purchasing, in some cases doling out grants to districts that want to buy more local and regional food.

The Obama administration has stepped up its support, hiring a director of farm-to-school at the United States Department of Agriculture and, last fall, allocating $4.5 million in grants to 68 projects that connect school cafeterias with local agricultural producers. In fact, according to just-released Census figures from the USDA, 38,629 schools across the U.S. are buying local food and teaching kids where their food comes from. And then there are nonprofits like FoodCorps, which deploys idealistic young service members—125 of them at last count—to 15 states to teach kids about healthy food, instruct them in gardening and cooking, and help school food directors get more local food into schools (including, sometimes, the very produce kids grow themselves).

Since October is National Farm to School Month, we decided to showcase some of the yummiest locally sourced cafeteria meals out there. We bet you’ll take a second look at your kid’s cafeteria—and maybe even join her for lunch some day soon.

Read the rest of my story—and see a slideshow of amazing cafeteria meals from New York City to Tennesee —on BonAppétit.com.

Seed-saving at Portland's Irving Street Kitchen

Seed-saving: Chefs like Sarah Schafer do it, too   (photo by Kirk Jones)

Sarah Schafer, the chef at Portland, OR's Irving Street Kitchen, comes from a long line of gardeners. Her grandfather, who lived in Buffalo, NY, grew orchids in his basement and an array of vegetables in his backyard. But as Schafer told me recently, he "loved loved loved tomatoes." Starting at age 15, he planted the heirloom seeds his mother had saved from her parents, who had grown them in Baden-Baden, Germany, and he was pleased with the results. To him, the perfect way to eat them was fresh, sprinkled with salt and a bit of mayonnaise.

Grandfather Schafer saved his seeds religiously, and when Sarah and her brother were old enough to have gardens of their own, he gave them seeds. But he never told them what precisely the tomato variety was.

"He was the kind who never liked to share exactly how he did things," said chef Schafer. When Schafer, then executive sous chef at Eleven Madison Park, left New York City for San Francisco and finally had a yard, she sowed a few of the seeds in five separate dimples of soil, and 15 plants emerged. The resulting fruit was memorable. "It was that perfect combination between sweet and acidic," she recalled.

Continue reading my story about Grandfather Schafer's heirloom tomatoes on Bon Appetit's web site. 

What we learned from the Organic #SNAPchallenge

Last Friday, April 26th, Bon Appetit published my post, which they entitled "Yes, You Can Feed a Family of 3 All Organic On a Food Stamp Budget."  I'm re-publishing it here in its entirety, even though some of it will be old hat to those of you who've been reading my installments here. 

It was exciting to write about this for a publication that doesn't often cover food justice issues and thus far, the feedback has been positive. I've gotten a few effusive letters from readers who have been on food stamps and also managed to feed their families a healthy, plant-based diet (if not all organic).  They were pleased to see such tips on Bon Appetit's site.

A small selection of the produce available at Portland's main farmers' market

Here's the post:

When I tell people that my fiancé, Don, and I did an all-organic food stamp challenge for Lent this year, they are incredulous.

"That must've been impossible, right?" they say. "Organic food is SO expensive!"

But these doubters were wrong. For six weeks—the entire Lenten period—Don and I shopped frugally, cooked at home, and went without luxuries like beer, ice cream, soda, bottled salad dressing, and (horror of horrors!) Stumptown Coffee. But we ate nourishing, fulfilling meals—some of them more inspired than what we regularly cook—and I'm proud to report that we stayed within our budget of $526 a month for a family of three, with a few dollars to spare.

A word about our budget. Unlike most people who take the food stamp challenge, we chose to limit ourselves to the maximum Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP, i.e. food stamps) allowance for a family of three: $526. (Don's 8-year-old daughter, Madeleine—who eats a heck of a lot of organic Fuji apples—lives with us half the time.) Though this put us far ahead of most Americans who are on SNAP--nearly 60 percent of participating households receive less than the maximum and are expected to make up the difference with their own income. It also meant that we couldn't use any "extra" money for groceries. (The USDA expects SNAP recipients to spend 30 percent of their own resources on groceries. People who are poor enough to qualify for the maximum benefit spend proportionately less out of their own pockets on groceries.)

I won't go into all the ground rules here (you can read about them in my first blog post) except to say we allowed ourselves to use up whatever was already in our cupboard (or fridge) before the challenge began—organic or not. We already had olive oil, spices, sour cream, almond butter, and basic staples like flour, lentils, and rice. That said, we did the challenge for six weeks (most people, like Cory Booker, do it for a mere week) so we did end up replacing these items during Lent using our lower budget.

How did we manage to stay within our budget? Let me be the first to say that we have many privileges. We live in southeast Portland, OR, within walking distance of three full-service grocery stories (Safeway, Fred Meyer, and a New Seasons), one gourmet grocery (Pastaworks), and a farm stand/fishmonger's. Portland is a veritable food oasis—our micro-neighborhood especially so. Second, Don and I both know our way around the kitchen and love to cook. Third, I work from home, which makes it easy to roast vegetables, whip up a batch of pizza dough, or start a soup as I go about my work day. (Office workers may run errands on their lunch break; I start preparing dinner.)

That said, with some effort and planning, eating an entirely organic diet on this budget was not as difficult as you'd think. A few money-saving tips:

Buy in bulk!  Like practiced hippies, we go to the grocery store armed with old yogurt containers, which we use for dried beans, quinoa, nuts, pasta, etc. It's much cheaper than buying packaged staples—plus, you reduce waste.

Look for sales. We get a circular in the mail each week from New Seasons that trumpets weekly deals. Organic fuji apples: $1.49 a pound. Organic whole wheat bread: two loaves, $5. Build your meals around the sale items—and what's in season.

Shop at the farmers' market. Okay, so we have some of the country's best farmers' markets in Portland—with competitive prices. Stick to produce, and you'll be surprised by how much booty you'll walk away with for just $25. (Many farmers' markets nationwide accept food stamps; some even have matching programs that give food stamp shoppers up to $20 extra to spend at the market.)

Buy lower-case "o" organic. I don't want to cause a major kerfuffle here, but I'm of the opinion that if you can talk to the farmer and ask her or him whether or not they use herbicides or pesticides and they look you in the eye and say they don't, then their produce is just as good as certified organic. It's often cheaper, too.

Eat meat sparingly. We're a vegetarian household most days, but during the challenge we ate even less meat (including fish and seafood) than usual. Organic meat and poultry are a lot more expensive than conventional (as they should be), but for that reason, we avoided both. One night, Madeleine and I made an exception for New Seasons' grass-fed ground beef (from a ranch that does not use sub-therapeutic antibiotics); it was $6 a pound—how could we resist?

Love your leftovers. Knowing we had no extra money to spare, we made a special effort not to waste anything. Leftover beans went on top of a salad or into a garlicky hummus. Cauliflower macaroni and cheese was re-heated for the next day's lunch. Remnants of last night's salmon went into a hearty mushroom-and-cheese omelette. Multi-grain waffles (made Saturday morning) are frozen and re-heated for breakfast throughout the week. Delicious all!

The most universally popular meal I made during the challenge was also the easiest and the cheapest. (Let that be a lesson to us all.) No, not rice and beans. A baked potato bar! I got the idea from Jenny Rosenstrach and Andy Ward, who write Bon Appetit's The Providers.

Here's the non-recipe recipe:

Baked Potato Bar

Ingredients

1 russet potato for each person
Toppings: grated cheddar cheese, sour cream, an onion, black beans, cooked broccoli, sauteed spinach, and anything else you have in your fridge that might be good on a potato

Preparation

In a 450-degree oven, bake the potatoes, placing them directly on the oven rack. (No need to wrap them in foil.) Let bake for 50 minutes or until tender. Meanwhile, cut the onion into thin slices and cook slowly in about 1/4 cup olive oil in a large skillet over low heat. Season to taste with salt and pepper. Stir occasionally so onions don't burn. It'll take 20-30 minutes, but the results are astonishing: a sweet, golden brown, deliciously goopy mass of onion.

When the potatoes are done, slice each one horizontally and butter both halves. Serve with toppings.

The results surprised me. Don kept saying, "This is so delicious!" And even picky eater Madeleine "mmmed" as she ate her potato (most of it, anyway). I agree with Rosenstrach and Ward: The secret is letting the kids put their own toppings on. Giving them agency makes them more excited to eat the result. I also served a side of frozen edamame from Whole Foods.

Total cost of meal: less than $6: $2.50 for 3 organic potatoes at our local farmstand, $3 worth of toppings, and about 50 cents' worth of edamame.

Vampire Slayer's Soup
From Rebecca Katz's The Longevity Kitchen

Makes 4 servings

Ingredients

4 heads garlic ($3.83)
2 tablespoons + 4 teaspoons extra-virgin olive oil (about 20 cents)
1 cup diced yellow onion ($1.10)
2 teaspoons minced garlic (included in above price)
1 cup peeled and finely diced Yukon gold potatoes ($1.62)
1 teaspoon minced fresh thyme (we went without this)
1/3 teaspoon freshly ground black pepper
3 1/4 cups veggie broth (roughly $2 worth of broth)

Preparation
Cut the tops off of the heads of garlic and discard. Drizzle each head of garlic with 1 teaspoon of the olive oil, then sprinkle with a pinch of salt. Wrap the garlic in parchment paper in one bundle and then wrap in aluminum foil. Bake in a 400-degree oven for 45-50 minutes; the aroma will tell you when it's ready. The flesh should be soft and golden brown. Remove from the oven to cool.

Heat the remaining 2 tablespoons of olive oil in a skillet over medium heat. Add the onion and a pinch of salt and sauté until translucent, about 4 minutes. Add the minced garlic, potatoes, thyme, pepper, and 1/4 teaspoon of salt and sauté for 5 minutes. Pour in 3/4 cup of the broth to deglaze the skillet, stirring to loosen any bits stuck to the pan. Simmer until potatoes are tender and the liquid has mostly evaporated. Remove from heat.

When the garlic is cool enough to handle, squeeze the flesh into a bowl and mash with the back of a spoon to form a paste.

Pour the remaining 2 1/2 cups of broth into the blender. Add the roasted garlic and the onion-potato mixture and blend until smooth. Transfer to a soup pot over low heat and stir in 1/4 teaspoon salt. Cook just until heated through. You may want to add a spritz of lemon juice, a pinch of salt, and a drizzle of chive oil.

Lucky for me, everyone--even Don--loved the garlic soup, which cost $8.75 total to make. Don made a big green salad ($2 worth of lettuce) with a variety of raw veggies shaved or sliced on top (50 cents), and we toasted some homemade bread.

Total cost of meal: less than $12

Charred Brussels Sprouts
From Ned Ludd chef Jason French

Makes 6 servings

Ingredients
1 pound Brussels sprouts
1 tablespoon olive oil, plus more for finishing
Pinch of coarse sea salt
1/2 teaspoon red chile flakes
Juice from 1/2 lemon

Preparation
Preheat broiler to high. Place cast-iron skillet on the middle rack of the oven to preheat.
Remove the loose outer leaves of the sprouts and trim the stems. Cut sprouts in half. In a large bowl, toss the sprouts with olive oil, salt, and chile flakes. When the skillet begins smoking, add the sprouts and broil, stirring once or twice, until charred and soft but not burnt, about 10 to 12 minutes. The amount of time will depend on the sprouts themselves, as they change throughout the season. Toss cooked sprouts in a bowl with lemon juice, more olive oil, and a pinch of sea salt. Serve immediately.

Total cost of meal: roughly $4

 

Long-fermented Bread & why you should eat it

Walnut Levain from Runner & Stone, Brooklyn, NYC (Credit: Mayumi Kasuga)

[This article first appeared on BonAppetit.com on April 8th.]

No one really knows why celiac disease, an autoimmune disorder of the small intestine that's caused by eating gluten, and gluten sensitivities are on the rise. But celiac disease researchers and plant geneticists have some solid theories, one of which is the abbreviated fermentation times used at industrial bakeries.

"Most of the plastic-wrap bread you find at grocery stores is made very quickly with yeast--it goes from flour to plastic-wrap in three hours or less," says Stephen Jones, a wheat breeder who is the director of the Washington State University Research Center at Mount Vernon.

What that means is that gluten proteins don't have time to break down as they would in a bread made by traditional methods, where fermentation takes place over 18 to 25 hours, and that makes it harder to digest. It's possible, celiac experts theorize, that after years of eating highly processed bread, our guts are rejecting it.

Thankfully, there's a resurgence of craft bakeries around the country that make bread the old-fashioned way. All of these bakeries ferment their dough with wild yeasts for at least 12-15 hours—often much longer. This not only improves the digestibility of the bread but also lowers its glycemic index. All of these bakers also use "whole-milled" whole wheat flour—that is, flour that's been milled from its intact state. (To make white flour, industrial mills separate the endosperm from the more nutritious bran and germ. They add them back for whole wheat flour, but some craft bakers speculate that the germ, which goes rancid quickly when removed from the endosperm, is either not added back or is "denatured.") Some of these bakers even mill their own whole wheat flour in-house.

And perhaps most important of all: These breads taste fantastic!

Grand Central Bakery:

This Northwest bakery, with ten locations in Seattle and Portland, ferments loaves for at least 12 hours. Portland head baker Sean Coyne, a Per Se alumnus, just launched a 100 percent whole-grain bread made from whole-milled whole wheat, emmer, spelt, and rye flours. The lighter Goldendale loaf (made with 68 percent whole wheat) is perfect for sandwiches. All the whole grain flours are milled at Camas Country Mill in Eugene, OR.

Ponsford's Place (San Rafael, CA):

Unlike most bakers, Craig Ponsford uses 100 percent whole-wheat flour for all his breads--even the challah, which is made of hard white whole wheat. (His croissants and pain au chocolat are made of a whole-milled whole wheat flour that has 5 percent of the bran sifted off.) All the flour--used for loaves such as American whole wheat, sourdough walnut, and pumpernickel--has been whole-milled at Certified Foods in Woodland, CA.

Runner & Stone (Brooklyn, NY):

This five-month-old restaurant and bakery carries marvelously flavorful loaves such as buckwheat baguettes (made with buckwheat, rye, whole wheat, and white flour) and spelt ciabatta (made with 85 percent spelt and 15 percent white flour). The man behind the magic is baker Peter Endriss, who uses only organic flour, much of it milled at Farmer Ground in Trumansburg, NY. Most loaves here undergo an overnight fermentation and even the brioche and croissants contain some whole wheat flour.

Tabor Bread (Portland, OR):

Like Grand Central Bakery, this six-month-old Portland bakery sources its whole wheat, rye, and spelt from Eugene's Camas Country Mill. Instead of buying it pre-milled, however, baker Cory Mast mills it on-site in an Austrian-made Osttiroler stone mill. (The organic white flour, which is pre-milled, comes from Central Milling in Utah.) The dough ferments for three hours in the morning and then is shaped, put into baskets, and fermented in the walk-in overnight. In the morning, Mast bakes kamut baguettes and enormous boules of red fife (an heirloom whole wheat varietal) in a wood-fire oven. Coming soon: polenta bread made with corn from Ayers Creek Farm.

Tartine Bakery, San Francisco:

Chad Robertson has achieved rock star status for his authentic long-fermented loaves of whole wheat, walnut, sesame, sourdough, and olive. He uses whole-milled organic flour from Central Milling and lets his dough leaven for as long as 30 hours. Ever since his wife, Elizabeth Pruitt, became gluten-intolerant, Robertson has also been experimenting with easier-to-digest ancient grains like einkorn, emmer, kamut, and spelt.

Walnut Levain
Recipe by Peter Endriss, Runner & Stone, Brooklyn, NYC

INGREDIENTS:
300g white bread flour
100g whole wheat bread flour
300g cold water
1g dry, instant yeast (osmotolerant if possible)
10g kosher salt
150g levain
200g walnuts, raw, untoasted

PREPARATION:
Prepare levain with equal parts water and flour and 25 percent old starter 12 hours before mixing the dough. Leave to ferment at room temperature.

Mix together white bread flour, whole wheat flour, and cold water until combined and let sit for 30 minutes. Add all remaining ingredients except walnuts and mix on low speed until combined, and then medium speed for 1 minute to develop a little strength. Mix walnuts in on low speed just until combined.

Put dough in a lightly oiled bowl and let ferment at room temperature for 1-2 hours (longer if room is cooler, shorter if room is warm). Fold all four corners of the dough into the center and flip over in bowl. Cover and place in refrigerator for at least 12 hours, up to 24 hours.

Two hours before you'd like to bake, remove the dough from the refrigerator and allow to come to room temperature for 1 hour. Divide dough into 2 pieces (about 1 pound each) and shape into boules or batards. Place on floured board or sheet tray, cover and allow to proof for 1 hour. Halfway through the final proof (and 30 minutes before you're ready to bake), preheat the oven to 450 degrees Fahrenheit with a baking stone on the lowest rack of the oven. Score loaves and place on stone. Throw a few pieces of ice onto the floor of the oven, quickly close the door (be careful for steam!) and bake for 20-30 minutes, to deep golden brown. Cool completely on wire racks before cutting and enjoying.

Note: This recipe has not been tested by the Bon Appétit test kitchen.

Show me Some Skin: skin-fermented white wines in the U.S.

The grapes used in Big Table Farm's Wirtz Pinot Gris sit on skins for up to 10 days. The result? A full-bodied and luscious wine that's amazing with seafood.

 

On a trip to Slovenia several years ago, I tasted a butterscotch-hued wine that blew my mind. I was visiting winemaker Branko Cotar, in the sleepy village of Gorjansko, not three miles from the Adriatic Sea. Though the Vitovska Grganja I was sipping looked (sort of) like a white wine, it had the full-bodied, tannic taste of a red. In the depths of his cobweb-filled cellar, Cotar, a burly man with an impressive mustache, let me in on his secret: He'd made this wine by allowing the grapes to macerate in their skins for two weeks, a technique that's typically used only with red wines.

Skin-fermented whites were once the exclusive domain of Georgian, Italian, and Slovenian winemakers like Cotar, Gela Patalishvili, Stanko Radikon, Josko Gravner, and Ales Kristancic of Movia. But recently, American winemakers have begun experimenting with them, too. In California, Broc Cellars, Wind Gap, and the Scholium Project are making macerated whites; here in Oregon, where I live, Big Table Farm, Cameron, Johan Vineyards, and Antica Terra have all recently been playing with them as well. Virtually any white wine grape can be used: Pinot Gris, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Roussanne, Malvasia, Ortugo, Trebbiano, Ribolla Gialla, and so on.

And though these wines, frequently dubbed "orange wines" for their copper color, are an acquired taste--they have a funky nose and often a cider-like zing--they've caught on at restaurants, too. Michael Garofola, sommelier and manager at Portland's Genoa restaurant fell in love with skin-fermented whites when he tried Radikon's Oslavje at a dinner party. Now he makes sure there's always an orange wine on the tasting menu at Genoa, so he can introduce diners to them one glass at a time. (The Old World orange wines are not inexpensive, ranging from $63 for Monastero Suore Cisterencensi "Rusticum" '09 to $205 for Gravner's "Breg" '04, so it's best if diners know what they're in store for.) Last fall, Garofola organized a five-course "orange wine dinner" at Genoa with bottles from Movia, Radikon, and Gravner, among others. Because there's no protocol for what to pair with orange wines, Garofola says he just opened all five bottles at once and threw them on the table.

"There was a lot of debate about which was best with which foods," says Garofola. The dinner began with a savory baked romanesco broccoli custard with black truffles and spicy mustard greens and culminated with a braised pork belly and smoked tenderloin with braised cabbage, apples, and pickled mustard seed.

Guest David Speer, sommelier and owner of both Portland's Red Slate Wine and Ambonnay champagne bar, said the Gravner--which gets a whopping nine months of skin contact--went best with the pork. "The Gravner was the biggest and boldest and needed to have bold flavors around it," recalls Speer. The Radikon, on the other hand, was more versatile. "Over the course of the night the Radikon would shift and change. It worked almost with everything."

At Genoa, Garofola is currently pairing a Coenobium 2010 with an Insalata di Carota, cooked with alfalfa hay and topped with mascarpone.

At L'Apicio in New York City, sommelier Joe Campanale always has an orange wine by-the-glass. (He also has them on the menu at his two other restaurants, dell'Anima and Anfora.)

"If you have a dish that you'd normally want to pair with a light red or a rich white, an orange wine would be a good in-between," Campanale says. But because of its tannin-acid structure, he agrees with Garofola. "It does really well with pork."

Skin-fermented whites are not, however, universally acclaimed as alluring and profound. Some critics, in fact, complain that they're not only technically flawed but also an annoying fad. In a recent blog for Inside Scoop, Jon Bonné, the San Francisco Chronicle's wine editor, railed against orange wines ("less oxidized than murky or beset with microbial flaws") but then singled out a few he thinks are worth drinking: La Stoppa Ageno from Elena Pantoleoni and, in the U.S., the 2011 Pinot Gris from Wind Gap and the Prince in His Caves from Abe Schoener's Scholium Project. (Bonné found it "more refined than ever.")

But at restaurants like L'Apicio and Genoa, diners order them all the time. "We've always done well with them," says Campanale, who likes the theater of decanting orange wines. "The way they look is so impressive. And a lot of them do get better in the decanter."

For recipes from L'Apicio and Genoa, see BonAppetit.com.