At the Culinary Vegetable Institute, if the scent of deliciously amazing bread is in the air, we know that Chef Dario Torres is making his signature focaccia. This bread has become part of the CVI iconography and, in The Chef's Garden: A Modern Guide to Common and Unusual Vegetables--with Recipes, we credit Dario with this bread.
That’s step one. Now Chef Tristan Acevedo enters the picture. Tristan has an incredible ability to look at the big picture to see what gaps might be missing in our offerings and, even better, to brainstorm ideas about how to fill in those gaps. When he looked at our home delivery vegetable boxes and what we offered at the Farmer Jones Farm Market, he recommended that we create a bread making it.
After all, no bread, muffin, or cake can possibly be as good as the one you pull warm from your own oven. Couple the idea with how we used to teach bread making classes at the CVI—and the resulting bread mixes can be considered a cooking class in a tube!
When someone uses our bread mix, they will benefit from carefully selected quality ingredients and clear, step by step instructions that will create a memorable, versatile experience for our home cooks across the country.
Pair Up with Seasonal Fresh Vegetables
The bread kits truly are exceptionally versatile. You can make the dough in advance and then use the right amount for loaves of bread that can be enriched with potatoes, peppers, herbs, onions, garlic, tomatoes, leafy greens, and more. In fact, just about any ingredient in a home delivery box from Farmer Jones Farm can be used in flavorful, personalized ways.
Plus, you can use this dough for pizza night or to make quick and easy flatbreads and wraps. Bake it, fry it, cook it in a waffle iron and then use the result for one-of-a-kind sandwiches. (We’re really looking forward to hearing about how our creative home cooks will use this product as a foundation to make unforgettable meals, snacks, and more.)
Just like we do at the CVI, we encourage home cooks to embrace the ingredients they enjoy and have available to them. We’ve made this bread mix in a way that’s ideal for every kind of cook. If you prefer a more guided path, we have made the recipe straightforward and highly rewarding. If you do nothing but follow the instructions on the provided pages, you will have created a loaf of bread that is the result of years of trial, error, success, and great love.
If you like to experiment, go for it! We applaud innovation and creativity. In short, there is no wrong answer. Do what interests and satisfies you.
Behind the Scenes Glimpse
To produce this bread kit, we tweaked the recipe and instructions in our book to create a consistently delicious result. We thoughtfully considered the details: from the bag where the bread mix is placed to the tube that’s used to ship the product. We thought about the recipe insert along with the specific paper weight used, the custom labels, the graphics chosen, and more. Although you don’t need to know all of this to enjoy the flavorful bread, this demonstrates the care we use from start to finish to provide our customers with unsurpassed quality.
Dovetailing with Our Philosophy
At the CVI, we focus on providing exceptional products that reduce food waste while making the world a more delicious and vegetable-forward place—and this bread mix fits in perfectly. (As a heads-up, so will the additional dry mixes that are coming soon!) Our bread making kit offers easy, delicious vehicles for incorporating vegetables into your diet. Dario’s focaccia works well with just about anything you can think of as a topping and is an especially great outlet for older vegetables and trim that might not typically see their way to a plate.
If you’ve attended dinners and other events at the CVI, Dario’s focaccia will nostalgically remind you of those events because this thoroughly tested recipe was among the most popular foods that we included. By creating a dry bread mix, we are hoping to offer folks a way to bring some of those happy moments into their homes.
Get Your Bread Making Kit
We’ll have them available when you visit the CVI, and you can also order them online at Farmer Jones Farm. (Can’t you just smell the bread baking in your own home?)