Here’s The Pitch
Why should you subscribe?
Well, if you’re the sort of person who wants to learn how to make your own bagels and lox and cream cheese, then this is definitely the place for you. If you just like reading about culinary experiments and improvisations by someone with considerable chops, then I think you’ll be happy here too. If you like gardening, I’m in the process of building Garden 3.0, and will be documenting that progress. If you’re into nature, I spend a lot of time foraging—especially for mushrooms—so in season there will be plenty of that to talk about.
And whatever the provenance of the ingredients—homegrown, wild, or purchased, many of them will undergo one or more transformations at the hands of various microbial populations. Fermentation is totally my bag, baby, and that includes just about all of the categories you can think of and probably a few you can’t. Fermentation is central to good food, I believe, and there will be lots to talk about on that front as we proceed.
Things On Bread is meant to be pretty open-ended, since Things can be just about any, well, thing, and more often several. And bread is a vast topic, and I’m my own assignment editor so if I feel like going off-piste I will. I tend to wander pretty far and wide across the culinary landscape (while generally trying to use food from close to home) so this central conceit will function more like an armature than a cage.
Above all, my goal is to center creativity in the kitchen, share knowledge, and give you all permission to take risks, try new things, and generally enliven and deepen your culinary practices. I believe firmly that the way to change people’s lives is through pleasure, and I’ve learned how to make the sort of food that experts agree we should all be eating more of—made of whole ingredients, heavily favoring the plant and fungal kingdoms, and in moderate amounts—pretty freaking delicious.
Why Things on Bread?
Because it’s a marvelous (and easy) format for all manner of exciting culinary exploits. Every component can be pursued in innumerable ways—bread is a universe of its own, ferments, sauces, schmears, drizzles, pickles, and more are effectively limitless, and even if you confine the toppings to tinned fish you’d still spend a lifetime exploring all the permutations. Once you expand to include my homemade pancetta, duck prosciutto, various pâtés, and whatever else seems like a good idea, you’re once again confronting infinity.
And there’s no shortage of inspiration from all over the world—the sandwich is, after all, pretty universal and even if it’s not central to a cuisine the flavors from anywhere can be made to feel right at home in this format. And an open-face sandwich is like a room without a roof—there’s much more potential for adding layers, garnishes, and even liquid sauces that require fork-and-knifing the gloriously sodden result. I see this format as an ideal jumping-off point for all manner of culinary excursions, and you’re invited to join me on these tasty adventures.
A Seminal Epiphanette
I was in Copenhagen recently, and among my many excellent meals there I made a point of digging into the state of the smørrebrød art. Smørrebrød means “butter and bread,” and those are still the fundaments, but in today’s modern times the formerly staid genre has been subjected to the gravitational waves of imaginative and technical virtuosity that began transforming Nordic cuisine (and then the rest of the world’s) when Noma opened in 2003. The famously sturdy Danish rye bread is now bedecked with all manner of sauces, chutneys, pickles, fish, eggs, meat, greenery, and flowers, in all sorts of globally aware yet locally grown combinations—some of which have garnered stars from a certain jumped-up tire company.
This open-source approach to open-face sandwiches got me thinking about how (as I said in an Instagram post after a lovely lunch at Møntergade) “One could argue pretty accurately that somewhere around half of what I’ve been eating for the past five or so months fits some definition of smørrebrød, and I’ve gone to significant lengths improving my brown bread, pickle, and condiment games during said period for that very reason. So it pleased me to have those choices handsomely validated by a visit [here], where Things On Bread reach an apotheosis.” And thus was this era-defining phrase birthed into a grateful world.
And it’s true—I dearly love my homemade bread, I generate a dizzying array of pickles and condiments, and between my tinned fish stash and the various homemade charcuterie and cheeses, not to mention an ever-shifting vocabulary of interesting leftovers, there’s no shortage of candidates for the star of each show.
In Conclusion, Things On Bread is a Substack of Contrasts
I’ll post regularly (exact cadence TBD, and likely to fluctuate somewhat) and between the food, the garden construction, and a planned kitchen reno there should be no shortage of fun processes to document. I’ve spent the last 20 years chasing ingredients back to their various sources, and developing a granular understanding of how food works. And because I’m a home cook, I can communicate this knowledge in a way that will help you get better at feeding yourself and the people you love.
So join me—subscribe, enjoy, and I'll guide you to a closer rapport with cooking.