"food blogging" news and stories

Croissants are one of the scarier things that a home baker can consider making. The dough is essentially that of puff pastry, loaded with butter and folded multiple times to create flaky layers, but also has yeast added to it, which for all practical purposes just adds one more element that could go wrong. Fortunately for anyone brave enough to give them a try, homemade croissants are not actually as difficult as they look as long as you are willing to be patient and make sure that you don't skip any steps in the process to save time. Bea, from La Tartine Gourmande, made up this batch and accompanied her tempting photos of the delicate pastries with an excellent guide on how to make them. Her croissants are light and tender, with a crisp flakiness to them and, of course, a very buttery flavor. This particular batch is slightly sweet and has a touch of sugar and a lot of vanilla added to it, so they're not going to be the best choice for a turkey sandwich at lunch time, but they will be perfect for breakfast.

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According to Yorkshire Post, baking at home is on the rise in the UK, and according to the UK Guardian, it's no coincidence that baking blogs are are on the rise as well. Baking bloggers run the gamut, from amateur bakers to professional pastry chefs, posting about their latest and greatest (and sometimes not-so-greatest) creations out of the oven. The Guardian highlighted a few, like The Pastry Department, written and baked by a former Phat Duck pastry chef, but the one that's important to us is Bakingsheet (now Baking Bites), the personal baking blog of our very own Nicole Weston!

Newspapers and magazines are slowly jumping onto the blogging bandwagon, and food is definitely a hot topic. We've seen food blogs now on major food websites like Epi-Log, the editor's blog on epicurious, critics' blogs like Michael Bauer's Between Meals at the San Francisco Chronicle and Frank Bruni's Diner's Journal at the New York Times. Now New York Magazine has a blog called Grub Street, which launched today. They have several writers, and wouldn't you know it, one of our own feature writers, Josh Ozersky, is the editor!

Looking forward to their coverage of LA's Pinkberry in New York!

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After the first day of the BlogHer conference, everyone was having a great time and enjoying meeting other bloggers. The food bloggers were having the most fun (according to those of us who met up, of course), despite the fact that the food hardly improved at all the second day. The biggest change was that fresh fruit was offered at each snack/meal, which everyone seemed to appreciate. But even though were talked about the food, everyone was more interested in learning about other blogs and what things inspired people to start blogging in the first place.

Along with the established bloggers, like those from Simply Recipes, Kalyn's Kitchen, Chez Pim, Cupcake Bakeshop, Gastronomie-SF and so many others, there were lots of people who simply read blogs and wanted ideas and advice on how to start their own. Here is a quick rundown of our tips for starting a food blog:

Hawaii's favorite food blog, 'Ono Kine Grindz, is hosting both Is My Blog Burning and Sugar High Friday for the month of June. It's a special event for blogger Reid, since it was IMBB no. 3 that was the motivation for his starting the blog back in April 2004!

The theme for both events is "soy," which includes everything from soy milk to tofu. I'm not quite sure if that means a single dish works for both (which means that it has to be something sweet), or if you can make one sweet dish for SHF and another separate dish for IMBB.

Either way, soy is definitely going to take a little bit of creativity. The deadline to email or post an entry is Sunday, June 25, 2006.