Latest news with #JamieSams
CBS News
18-07-2025
- Business
- CBS News
San Francisco bakery known for sourdough stays hot despite rising costs
Inside an unassuming bakery in San Francisco, something's happening that might just have you believing in carbs again. "This is not your Wonder bread," Jamie Sams told CBS News Bay Area. Sams runs the kitchen at Jane the Bakery. On busy mornings, he and his team can crank out up to 600 loaves. Each one requiring about five days from start to finish—proof there's nothing half-baked about taking your time. "It's a really simple idea of using what's already in nature," Sams said. Owner Amanda Michael said they wanted to go back to how bread was made thousands of years ago. "We're using the whole kernel of grain, so the germ, the endosperm, nothing is stripped out of it," Michael said. Not only do they mill grain on site—it's grown on their family farm, taking every loaf from seed to slice. It seems the bet is paying off. Customers like Sharon Garrison said it's the best thing since, well, you know. "There's no way to describe it… it's an experience," Garrison said. Across the country, sourdough has been on the rise, fueled by the pandemic-era obsession with baking, and it's still going strong. "There's so much greater interest in the commercial sector in functional bread, breads that are healthy," said Karen Bornarth from the Bread Bakers Guild of America. Bornarth said shoppers are pickier now. And while that has pushed bakeries to step up their game, artisanal bread takes work—and that costs more. "The ingredients may not be expensive but the hands that make them are worth a lot of money. So keeping it accessible for people, keeping it affordable so that the market can grow is the real challenge," Bornarth said. With the global sourdough market projected to surpass $3.5 billion by 2030, it seems clear: the notion that people are done with bread is, well, toast.
New York Times
13-03-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
Tori Amos Saw a New Side to Baltimore Thanks to Russell Baker
What inspires the Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter? Her first picture book, 'Tori and the Muses,' offers an answer. In an email interview, she shared how her gently rebellious mother made her a reader. SCOTT HELLER What books are on your night stand? 'Medicine Cards: The Discovery of Power Through the Ways of Animals,' by Jamie Sams and David Carson. It's an interactive book and card set where you can pull a card and read about the healing properties that each animal embodies as it relates to mind, body and spirit. Jamie Sams was of Indigenous heritage, and I feel like some of it was passed down to her as a gift she has channeled for us all. How do you organize your books? Let's put it this way: Being a librarian is a fantasy of mine. In my album 'Tales of a Librarian,' I'm dressed in different imagined librarian costumes, and in the liner notes the tracks are organized by the Dewey Decimal System. My own little libraries don't have a system, but I have dreams of one! What kind of reader were you as a child? My reading was all inspired by my mother, Mary. My father, a pastor, believed that she was reading me Bible stories. But what she was doing, and I'm convinced this was her rebellion — her Methodist minister's wife rebellion, because it was difficult to rebel, especially as a minister's wife in the late '60s if you wanted to stay married and accepted by the parishioners and society at large — was reading to me from the collection of Edgar Allan Poe's works. What's the best book you've ever received as a gift? 'Growing Up,' by Russell Baker, which I got a few years ago from my friend Mary Ellen Bobb. I'd never heard of Baker and I couldn't put the book down. The way he could tell the story of his life made me feel like I knew everybody in it by the time I finished. I grew up in Baltimore and he put the city in a different light for me: more like a shining city on a hill. What's the last great book you read? I'm rereading 'Landmarks,' by Robert Macfarlane. The way this man writes about landscapes, particularly in the U.K., makes the wild tracks and the sea roads come alive. You published a book called 'Resistance' in 2020. Why a children's book now? Francesco Sedita at Penguin reached out and said, 'I've been reading your liner notes for years, since the '90s. You usually thank the fairies and the muses. Do you want to write about them?' That was the jumping-off point. We found the illustrator Demelsa Haughton, who just magically understood and was open to hearing about the muses and their stories. She captured them so beautifully. What's the last book you recommended to a member of your family? 'Making Faces,' by Kevyn Aucoin — a gift I gave to the band, my collaborators, my extended family. People are looking at all of these tutorials online. Some people know what they are doing, and some don't, so I thought let's go to the master. Kevyn Aucoin is and was one of the great revolutionaries in how to paint and light a face. What's the last book you read that made you cry? 'Giving Up the Ghost,' by Hilary Mantel, broke me. I had to just be in my rocking chair and sob till my shirt was wet, it completely cracked me open. I had such empathy for her pain. The last book that made you furious? There are two: 'The Road to Unfreedom,' by Timothy Snyder — I've underlined so many things and have Post-it notes in so many pages. It gave me an understanding of how we as a collective — unknowingly sometimes — are utilized to put authoritarians and dictators in power. And 'Dark Money: The Hidden History of the Billionaires Behind the Rise of the Radical Right,' by Jane Mayer, explained things that I didn't understand, though I knew some of it at a cursory level. I certainly had no idea of the machinations that were going on when I was working the piano bars off K Street in Washington, D.C., and the liquid handshakes were occurring in front of my eyes as I played 'As Time Goes By.' When a lobbyist would lower his hand down my back when I was 16 playing some of these swanky hotels, I had no idea what some of them were planning. What's your favorite book no one else has heard of? 'The Dark Is Rising,' by Susan Cooper, which came out decades before another popular series about a boy discovering he can wield magic. I reread it now every year around winter solstice. I'm so envious of anyone who gets to experience these books for the first time. I want to be there with you, having s'mores and hot chocolate.
