“At culinary school, often you learn only how to bake from mixes. But anyone can learn to prepare healthy food from scratch, and this is what I want to change.”
“Bread isn’t bad for anybody!” exclaims Robert Plantadis, owner of The Midnight Bakers, holding court over freshly brewed French coffee in his working kitchen.
There are many places in which that might be seen as a contentious remark, but addressing the bad press bread tends to get these days (“A disaster!” Plantadis says) is one of the tasks he’s set for himself in America. “In Europe, people eat bread all day long, and it’s not a problem for anyone,” says Plantadis. Here in America, he continues, the problems are all in the ingredients and methods, and in the difference between mass production and artisanal baking — which, as you might guess, is a stark one.