The Sobremesa 23.

toastess with the mostest vol.1: scallion-caper smoked salmon toast

As you all know, bread constitutes much of my diet. I grew up eating bread with almost every meal.

I started packing my own lunch in first grade (should have been a red flag of my control issues even then….). And the main course was always a sandwich. I would get really obsessed with one and then just go ahead and make them every single day for about a year until I got sick of it and moved on.

1. My first love was the butter sandwich. Yes, literally Wonderbread and butter.

2. My second love was the peanut butter sandwich. No jam. Fiercely picky from a young age, I did not want any fruit in the form of jam touching my food.

3. My third love was the tuna fish sandwich. Sadly I had to stop that one before I was actually ready to move on because I was starting to get a reputation as the “kid with the smelly lunches.”

Raised on Wonder Bread, I actually had no idea that sourdough bread existed until my mid-twenties. For a long time “Fresh Bread” to me meant the lit up neon sign at Subway (recently ruled not even bread at all lol). In fact, the reason we opened A Baked Joint was that my family was eating so much bread but we couldn’t find any actually good bread anywhere. I remember trying my first sourdough and thinking DAMN. This. Is. BREAD!!! I was hooked. We opened Joint in 2015 and everyone starting seeing the light too. Bread rocks, dude.

And this is what’s brought me to NYC. To open a bakery and bring the magic of bread to this land of bagels and pizza (and because I also love to eat bagels and pizza). There’s good bread here, don’t get me wrong, but for a city of over 8 million….we need more bread warriors out here.

Big news: I’m currently touring spaces in Brooklyn (!!!). I wanted to do this when I first came to NYC last year, but ya know…covid. And during the height of the pandemic, I was frequently was riddled with self-doubt. I thought to myself, But is the food industry dead? Is NYC dead? Am I out of my mind for wanting to do this? Should I just become an Amazon robot instead?

But then I started to really see what good, simple, hearty food served by local establishments meant to people. I saw everyone really value their local businesses. I saw them buy gift cards, and merch, and even stand 6 ft apart in long lines in order to make sure they stayed afloat. I saw them leave bouquets of flowers at the doorsteps of ones that had to shut down. I realized that good food, especially bread, really is at the core of our humanity. I mean, people even tried to make sourdoughs themselves! We’ve been making it for thousands of years, all across the world, and so of course we would come back to it when we’re stripped of all the fancy restaurants.

So I’m jumping into this crazy adventure to open a bakery during a freaking pandemic — Brooklyn here I come! And guess what, you’re coming with me! I’m going to share all the recipes I’m testing out and share the ups and downs of the journey with you. Consider it my live-diary.

So please, drop some comments and share your thoughts! If you like them, share the recipes you like to your friends! This is a bakery for the people. That’s you. Love y’all.

This month, we’re going to focus on toasts since bread will be the hub of my bakery. I’m calling this series, TOASTESS WITH THE MOSTEST!

Because I’ve learned that with good bread, all you need to do is layer it with fresh and simple ingredients - you don’t really need to be extra with the sauces and flavors and spices. The bread really does the heavy lifting. I want to keep these toasts simple, clean, accessible, so-so healthy, and reallyyyy let the bread shine.

Right now I am obsessed with making this scallion-caper smoked salmon toast for all my lunches. The scallions and capers give the cream cheese a nice salty and briny facelift (if you’re like “ew, capers,” I beg you to try them again!). The smoked salmon is buttery and smooth and gives you that lil’ protein bump. The fresh dill on top tastes like what I imagine a gust of wind through a flower field would taste like.

Oh, and it takes about 5 mins to make.

Scallion-Caper Smoked Salmon Toast

Ingredients

1 slice sourdough bread (any variety you like!I used a sunflower flax seed from Saraghina)

1 scallion (green onion), sliced

1 tablespoon non pareil capers (the tiniest and cutest of the caper fam)

cream cheese

smoked salmon

pepper & salt, to taste

a bit of dill

Let’s do it!

1. Slice your sourdough and get her toasted up nice.

2. Sautée your capers in a pan with olive oil and a little of the caper juice for 1 min. We just want them to soften a little.

3. Portion out your cream cheese in a bowl. Add your scallions and capers (+ the juice in the pan). Take a fork to mash it all together.

4. Spread your scallion-capers cream cheese on your bread.

5. Top with smoked salmon.

6. Crank a little pepper

7. Add your fresh dill on top.

for some reason I feel like sebastian and ariel had this toast in the green room behind the scenes of the “under the sea” video

And there you go!

Check back next week for our next installation of Toastess with the Mostess. In the meantime, I’m going to be dropping more videos on Instagram of quick little recipes I love :)

Happy cooking, Love ya mucho.

Tessa