Prairie Flour Bakery

I was in a wonderful CSA through Taproot this summer, and one of the many great things that came out of the experience is that I got formally introduced to the Prairie Flour Bakery. Anne Burnside has a self described miniscule artisanal baker (I guess she thought 'micro' sounded a tad on the large side to describe what she is doing), and she makes the most sublime bread I have had the pleasure of eating in Iowa City. The bread is baked in her brick oven, right outside her back door, and one of the real joys (besides eating the bread) is that Anne emails her bread buyers the afternoon that she is baking to let us know how things are progressing--it is not like setting your Wolf oven to 450 degrees and setting the timer.

I snagged the logo off her blog , but this photo is in my dining room--the bread I bought myself (well, what is left of it after the first night). The pictures on her website are not cherry picked. Each and every loaf I have gotten has been a thing of beauty to behold. The first time I bought bread, my husband and I were hosting a dinner for 30 people, so I bought quite a few loaves, intending to serve it. When we got it home, we were slicing it up to serve and my husband had a big change of heart, "Oh, no this is much too good to share--look how little we have!" I looked at the mountain of bread, and told him in no uncertain terms that we were serving this bread. The second time we got it, I ordered a bit extra to take to a friends' house--and we actually had an argument about whether that was going to happen. My husband is a generous man, under ordinary circumstances. We like to share our cooking with others, and we are not prone to hoarding. But this bread is something else. Bread worth sparring over. Check this out:http://prairieflourbakery.blogspot.com/