Edible Rhody Spring 2011 : Page 5
Food Artisan Jim Williams, Seven Stars Bakery, Providence Is it the durum round with its soft, chewy, golden interior and crunchy nut-brown crust? Is it the savory pumpkin seed bread that you wait for each autumn? Whatever your obsession at Seven Stars Bakery, it’s clear that a deeper passion goes into the making of the bread for artisan baker Jim Williams. Since coming to Rhode Island 10 years ago to assist friend and fu-ture wife Lynn (also a baker) in starting a bakery, Williams has been spreading the gospel of good bread, manifested by the baker’s trinity— method, manipulation and fermentation. “I’m trying to constantly evolve by baking better bread, never forgetting where I started and how I can improve,” says Williams. Seven Stars began with a Spanish Llopis oven in the original store on Hope Street but keeping up with demand meant moving the pro-duction offsite to Pawtucket. Now stainless ovens imported from Swe-den and France, plus additional staff, support three retail cafés, wholesale accounts and farmers’ markets. In order to stay connected to his craft amid the myriad distractions of business ownership, each Thursday Williams creates a different bread made from start to finish entirely by his own hands. It’s available to customers after 2pm. Williams blogs about it at sevenstarsbakery. blogspot.com. Top left photo: Joshua Behan; Top right photo: Carole Topalian; Bottom photo: Elizabeth Harvey Nonprofit Organization Southside Community Land Trust, Providence When Providence faced an economic recession in the early ’80s, a group of concerned citizens saw a rare opportunity to pur-chase cheap parcels of vacant land, with the hope of creating space for community gardens. Thirty years later, over 700 urban gardeners tend their plots on Southside Community Land Trust (SCLT) land, and countless school children experience the “out-door classroom” at City Farm, a ¾-acre urban farm in the heart of the south side of Providence. In addition, a new generation of farmers is learning the trade at Urban Edge Farm, a 50-acre plot in Cranston, managed by SCLT. The organization also pro-vides access to educational programming and resources to teach people how to increase their urban food production through gardening, composting and even raising a flock of backyard chickens. “For the past three decades,” says executive director Katherine Brown (below), “SCLT has been doing exactly what its name states: convert-ing land into spaces that people can trust will not only be there for a long time, but will also serve as safe centers for grow-ing both food and com-munity.” — CC southsideclt.org Beverage Artisan Yacht Club Bottling Works, Centerdale, North Providence The century-old recipe for birch beer soda, still kept on an old slip of paper, was handed down from the founders of Yacht Club Soda to John Sgambato in 1960, when he and his son Bill bought the Centerdale bottling company from the Sharp family. John Sgambato had been working there since the ’30s; Bill (the current owner) began at Yacht Club in his early teens. Today Bill and his sons John (middle) and Michael (right) run the 96-year-old company (purveyors of the official carbonated beverage of Rhode Is-land) and they still make sodas and sparkling waters the old-fashioned way, bottled and sold in glass bottles (in local stores, restaurants and at their small plant). They use real cane sugar, mix their own 33 different flavors including cream soda, root beer, sarsaparilla, ginger beer, orange, grape and even qui-nine (tonic). Their artesian well draws clear clean water (that never needs salt) through 90 feet of granite bedrock. yachtclubsoda.com EDIBLERHODY.COM spring 2011 5
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