Honorable mention, only because the author of Tea & Cookies splits her time between Seattle and the Bay Area.

Well, after my post on food websites last week I received a surprising response from readers asking why I didn't include more information about blogs, questioning my rationale between blogs and websites, and asking for blog recommendations--specifically local ones. So in a way, this is a continuation of last week's post, a Part 2, blogger-style. And it was surprisingly difficult to put together. I needed to choose some way to narrow down the food blogs I read or the list would get out of control. So after many sleepless nights (I jest), here's the criteria I came up with:

• Must be a Bay Area food blogger
• Must be on my Google Reader (hey, it’s my post after all, right?)
• Must write interesting, creative content that's somehow innovative/unique.
• Cannot be one of the contributors to Bay Area Bites (although some of us have awesome blogs...but I want you to discover someone new this week).
• Must keep current and produces consistent posts.

So here goes. I realize I'm probably leaving out your roller derby buddy or your girlfriend's sister, but hopefully you'll stumble across something new here that's worth a look. Happy reading.

local lemons

Originally from Brooklyn, Alison Arevalo moved to Berkeley for a change of pace. Her blog, local lemons, focuses on original, all-natural recipes. Of the recipes and ingredients she chooses, Alison says:

"I take advantage of as much local produce as I can in my recipes. I shop at farmers’ markets in Berkeley and Oakland, while making stops at Berkeley Bowl and Monterey Market. Using organic, unprocessed ingredients is as important to me as shopping locally. When I was living in Brooklyn, Whole Foods or Fairway was my supermarket of choice. Now, even though I live a few blocks from one, Whole Foods is only an afterthought."

There are a few things that make her blog an absolute pleasure to read. First, those photos. Good lord. Alison has a brilliant eye for composition, color, and light and you can’t help but become enthralled with each recipe after taking a quick glimpse at each post. Second, her recipes are creative and varied. I was blown away by the 'Fast Food Makeover' series she did recently, where she took typical bad-for-us food that so many of us love and revamped them using organic and local ingredients. Who doesn't love a chicken nugget? Or how about a filet of fish sandwich? Yeah, that's what I thought. I remember when I first started blogging and I posted about how I was trying to find the identity/voice of my blog, struggling with how much personal information to include and where to draw the line. Alison wrote in, encouraging me to do what felt right—whatever I wanted. You can tell she follows her own advice. local lemons is the real deal: a genuine, likeable voice in an increasingly glutted food blogging world.
Twitter:@LocalLemons

eating/sf

I'm not totally sure how, but Kasey's blog was one of the first local food blogs I discovered. We have similar taste in recipes and cookbooks and I often notice strange coincidences between what she covers on her blog and what I cover on my own--like how we both made Brussels sprouts the same week or fell in love with the Ad Hoc Cookbook around the same time. But, besides the no-fail recipes and clean site-layout, the concept of Kasey's blog makes this a must-read. She's paired up with her husband, Matt, who does the "Musical Pairings" portion of the site. I love thinking about food as a sensual experience--and obviously music is much the same way. So it makes perfect sense: when you think about the components of a meal, there's the food but there's also the lighting, the music, and the company you're with. So I've always loved the concept over at eating/sf, and I've discovered some great new artists by reading the blog.
Twitter: @kfleisher

No salad as a meal

Last week, my friend Anthony contacted me to ask if I'd heard about this blog, No salad as a meal. Anthony's flirting with the idea of moving to San Francisco, so he's been checking out our food scene, and apparently this was one of the first hits that came up on his Google search. Of course, I replied with a resounding yes. How could you not appreciate a blogger that doesn't fear lugging the ol' DSLR camera into dark restaurants and getting busy? There's even a post about shooting food in dark restaurants if you're interested in learning the ins and outs of setting up shop at COI. So essentially, No salad as a meal focuses mainly on detailed restaurant reviews featuring exceptional photos. The author also includes a supplementary section entitled "Entremets:" short stories in between meals. Recently one on airplane food caught my eye. This is a great site to explore when your mom's flying into town and you're drawing a blank for dinner ideas. There's a brief "NO SALAD RECOMMENDS" list with such favorites as churros at Contigo and couscous at Aziza. So all in all, it's a fun, visual feast that'll inspire you to try someplace new. The restaurant selection is tastefully culled and the posts are smartly written. What more could you ask for?
Twitter: @nosalad

101 Cookbooks

I can't say enough about 101 Cookbooks, the local food blog where Heidi Swanson writes about "the recipes that intersect my life, travels, and everyday interests." The inspiration behind the site goes a little something like this: Heidi turned around one day and realized she had over 100 cookbooks--it was time to get cooking. Most of the recipes are vegetarian and focus on natural and whole-foods ingredients. From baked doughnuts to pan-fried chickpea salad, I've whipped up some amazing meals from Heidi's site. And in addition to her growing recipe collection, 101 Cookbooks was my original inspiration to learn more about food photography. If you take a look at Heidi's blog posts or her book, Super Natural Cooking (of which she did all of the photos), you'll see why. They photos are actually quite spare without the use of a lot of fancy props, but they're absolutely stunning. She has a way of capturing the essence of each dish with the simplicity of a special bowl, the right light, and the perfect angle. When I'm struggling to think of how to photograph a certain dish for my blog, I often step back and think, what would Heidi do?
Twitter: @101Cookbooks

chez us

Denise Woodward and Laudalino Ferreira created chez us from a 20 square-foot apartment kitchen in the city (which has since changed to 40 square feet). They say: "We wanted to share with everyone how we live small but still eat big." chez us stands out for a few reasons: their rotating thematic organization and great videos. For example, instead of just listing the recipes under categories like "Breakfast" and "Main Entrée," Denise and Laudalino create searchable categories such as "Easy Eating," "French," and "Portuguese." Then there are the videos, where the couple walk their readers through things like making homemade yogurt (I want that yogurt machine!) or hearing Peter Reinhart talking about bread. The blog's easy to navigate, informative, and has great original content. Anyone whose trying to make a small kitchen work in the city will appreciate what Denise and Laudalino pump out (you can see their video on creating a pantry for storage inspiration ideas).
Twitter: @chezus

Continued from Part One on Monday April 16.

In California we have more than our fair share of live yeast in the air. Catching it and turning it into "sourdough starter" or "natural starter" is pretty easy. All one needs to do is to feed one's starter with cold water and bread flour every week or so. The concept of the 100 years old starter, though, is negligible. But I'm not here to rain on your sourdough starter parade. Although I will mention that sourdough is just that. It was not, originally, a nice thing to say about one's bread. It meant bad. It meant that your bread had gone off.

Like trifle, sourdough was originally a mistake. Or an exaggeration of a mistake. I have heard more than one Master Bread Baker disparage sourdough bread.

Also, for the sake of clarity, sourdough bread and sourdough starter are not the same. It is possible to make bread from live yeast cultures, whether they are from wheat or grapes or some other source, and not have it "taste sour." Although the nomenclature is the same, there's an argument here for saying starter when one means just that, and sourdough starter when one means the starter to make sourdough bread.

Now, who's on first?

All this being said, I had quite a lot of fun and education whilst hanging out with the humble Dylan of Sourdough Monkey Wrangler. A student of the live yeast culture, this man has come far in his self-education of all things involving bread flour. And he's neat and clean to boot.

Is there someone in your community you want to learn from? Maybe pick up a new skill? What stops you from calling them? Do you feel like they need to be paid for their time? Do you have anything to barter?

In my profession we have open doors for barter. I can give my time to just about any chef in whose kitchen I want to learn. We call this a "trail" or a stagiere.

In March, Dylan came to one of my classes, and afterwards brought me some sourdough inspired gifts. Very lucky for me there was a generous bag of homemade English muffins. I could not have been happier!

I love English muffins.

Dylan's English muffin recipe is based on one he found at Nicole's Baking Bites. He adapts his to include favorite locally grown and milled whole wheat flour from Full Belly Farm, as well as milk instead of water.

Milk is a traditional addition to English muffins, as well as Crumpets, which are basically English muffins, but griddled on only one side. In bread, milk becomes a softener. It feeds the yeast an alternative, tastier sugar, and the butterfat relaxes the crumb for a more pliable mouth feel.

When one bakes bread, a baked good of few ingredients, one must really know what each ingredient does, can do and is doing. Yeast, obviously, helps things rise. But the more you use, the faster bread goes stale. (The same goes for baking powder.) Flour and water combine to bind bread. But inherent in most flours is gluten. Gluten is protein, in its simplest terms, and, once "activated," is the structure builder, the 2X4's of bread doughs. Without gluten, there is no barn to raise. This, as we well know in Northern California, does not mean bread cannot be made without gluten. Tall, light bread, though, cannot be made without gluten.

Sugar, even the sugar that exists in the starch of the flour, feeds the yeast. Yeast is an animal, albeit a small single-celled one. (Ask the vegans if yeast is an animal they won't eat, and you will get a myriad of answers.) It eats sugar and emits gas (carbon dioxide), creating the bubbles that will, hours later, become the holes, or the nooks & crannies, in your bread. When flour has enough protein in it, the bubbles will keep their shape as they encircle the gas.

In bread, everything after yeast, flour, and water is dessert. Fat, in any form, is a softener. I'm not talking Wonder Bread here; I'm talking a palatable mouth feel. Think matzoh compared to challah, or French bread compared to brioche. Most people would rather make bread pudding or French toast with brioche, rather than ciabatta.

Flavorings are just that.

When working with natural starters one can develop far more flavor in bread. This is a funny sentence if you've not made bread. The concept is that the longer it takes to "proof" bread, or make it rise, the better the overall end result will be. Yeast does not like to be rushed. In turn, if you give it all the atmospheric elements it loves: humidity, mild warmth, time, it gives you rewards tenfold.

Bread tastes best when all you taste is bread. It's why Tartine's bread has such a following, even though it has more restrictions than a reservation at The French Laundry.

I have never been the type of person to have and keep a natural starter around. Dylan has a worm farm in his kitchen for easy apartment composting. I guerilla compost. Dylan rides his bike, I drive. Dylan feeds his starters on a schedule, I water my plants to keep them looking pretty on my window ledge.

But in the past weeks I've done some natural starter experiments. The recipes he gave me are a 3-day process. Day one you feed the starter and keep it out on the counter. Use a larger bowl than you need and make sure it's not metal. Day two combine starter with milk and flours. Day three add rest of flour, baking soda, salt and sugar, proof and begin muffin production.

English muffin production looks like this:

Knead dough a bit. The longer you knead it, the more likely it will hold it's round shape later and rise evenly. Roll dough out, cut, lay on heavily floured (or cornmeal covered) sheet, proof in a warm-ish, moist place (Dylan puts a measuring cup of very hot water in the oven for a more controlled atmosphere), and griddle until done. "Fork" to open, toast and eat with the best butter you can get your hands on. Have you eaten Clover's new Organic butter line yet? It's the bomb. So to speak.

I wouldn't call this the simplest, most efficient way to get to English muffins, but I will say that all the steps are important and worth it in the end.

Dylan and I use King Arthur bread flour, the blue paper bag. King Arthur has been extremely helpful when it comes to answering my questions about the protein contents and wheat origins of their flours. (Northern wheat is considered "stronger" with higher protein than Southern grown wheat that is considered "softer," White Lily being the best example.) Giusto's is a local company, but I can't seem to get them on the phone to answer questions to save my life. If you long to buy flour in bulk, which is less expensive than paying for the pretty packaging, head over to Rainbow Grocery in SF or Berkeley Bowl in the East Bay.

Most "sourdough" people will share a bit of their starter with you if this is the extra hobby you've been waiting for. For all your spare time.

But even if you take the time to make a starter which you keep alive for a few months in order to make two or three batches of these glorious homemade English muffins, I can guarantee you at least one happy mouth, your own, if not a messianic following. Not to mention the immeasurable learning one acquires from understanding the basics in the relationship between flour, yeast, air and water.

There's a chance that Dylan and I will co-teach a class on this very subject. Keep up with this link for announcements.

Monday morning, my friend Bill sent me off an email asking if I'd seen the lead story-- Sharp Bites-- in this week's New York Times SundayStyles section. Well, no. I hadn't. I tend to skip that section in favor of their Sunday Magazine. Of course, I tend to skip most of the magazine and head straight for the crossword puzzle. I sat down with my cup of coffee and read...

"'Food blogs have reached a critical mass with readers in the last six months,' said Phillip Baltz, owner of the restaurant public relations firm Baltz & Company."

God, is that true. Everyone seems to have an opinion on food these days and anyone with a computer can set up a blog, or have one set up for them. Myself included. Critical mass indeed.

I have only recently started to read other bloggers. Especially restaurant bloggers. At first, I was dubious. Why should I trust anyone else's opinion? I'm a food professional, for God's sake.

Why? Because some bloggers are very entertaining, though finding the good ones often feels like panning for gold -- sifting through the bores and frustrated novelists and lonely people with enormous chips on their shoulders. I have been glad of heart lately to know that there are people out there in the blogosphere (a precious few, at least) who are pretty darned clever and who can convey enthusiasm without a heavy reliance upon exclaimation points preceded by the word "awesome".

The first food blog I remember visiting was Adam Robert's The Amateur Gourmet in 2004 His Superbowl post put an enormous grin on my face. Anyone who thinks up Janet Jackson wardrobe malfunction cupcakes is my hero. I loved him for it then, and I still do. Please read if you haven't already...

My new favorite non-KQED-linked blog is A Few Reservations. I don't know who the hell she is, but I'd have dinner with her anytime. Her posts are well-voiced and, as the title implies (sadly), few. Read her take on NOPA, it's like a hypodermic needle to the kidney- sharp and precise. Read her love letter to Canteen, too.

That's all you'll hear from me this week. Go read somebody else. Or start your own food blog-- everyone else is doing it.