Bread Furst

Bread Furst has been a great addition to the vendor offering here. Mark Furstenberg's latest venture -- he is in his 70s -- is a great success. His pain au levain rivals anything in France or Germany, Poilane included, and everything we have had -- bialys, baguette, key lime pie, donuts, cheesecake, chocolate cake, frittata, quiche -- has been excellent. Granted, his bagels are too bready and his croissants are not as good as Fresh Baguette, it has nonetheless become one of our very favorite shops.

Photo by Bread Furst

So we began a perfect Saturday morning -- no humidity, temperature in the 70s, blue skies, pleasant breeze -- with breakfast at Bread Furst, located next to the car wash across the street from my old home in the Albermarle (now rechristened the Avalon). After a cappuccino and croissant, we went the two and a half blocks to the New Morning Farm market at the Sheridan School. There we discovered beautiful asparagus and fresh peas and knew what we were having for dinner.

For a midsummer night's dinner the following week I wanted to infuse my own aquavit, according to a recipe in Saveur. It suggested rhubarb, caraway seeds, dill, juniper berries and lemon verbena as botanicals. We got the rhubarb at the market but of course they didn't have lemon verbena. So we went out to American Plant, since we wanted to supplement the herb garden anyway, and got some lemon verbena and lavender, among other herbs. Having decided we would do Marcella Hazzan's orechietti with peas, pancetta and ricotta, we then swung through some lovely neighborhoods in Montgomery County to go to Vace in Bethesda and pick up the Italian ingredients.

For dinner then we had the pasta dish, which I've made often but only rarely with fresh peas. It is a nourishing and satisfying dish, rich with the ricotta and parmesan and flavored by the pancetta. The peas add a sweet vegetable note of their own. We also roasted the asparagus and dressed it with a lemon vinaigrette for a nice, virtually meatless summer meal on the patio. The asparagus was outstanding after the roasting concentrated the flavor and the vinaigrette accented it.

As to the aquavit -- the jury is still out. I like it, but it is definitely an acquired taste. I've just drained it so it needs to spend a couple of days in the freezer for the real test. I added the lavender and to one jar I added a star anise and to another some fennel seeds. The anise version tastes more like the store-bought, but both have flowery undercurrents you don't really get in the bottled versions.

Bread Furst, by the way, is a very clever name. It plays on Mark's surname of course, and puns with first. Yiddish and German speakers recognize a further pun -- Furst means prince and that make the store Bread Prince, and it truly lives up to its name.