If you’ve had Peppered Bacon Farm bread before, you already know how excellent it is. If you haven’t had it, well, there’s a first time for everything, right? The base, as you can tell from the name, is our very popular Farm Bread (naturally leavened, organic flour, with an 18-hour rise time), boosted with a healthy dose of Nueske’s applewood-smoked bacon and a good bit of freshly ground black pepper from Épices de Cru. Of the 50 or so special bakes we do at the Bakehouse over the course of a year, this one is our most popular!
Take a loaf, rip off a chunk, and eat it. If you buy one late in the day, right after it’s emerged from the oven, you may not make it home without eating half (or a whole) loaf, the smell is so good! If you’re eating it later, simply stick it in the oven (as is—not wrapped) for about 20 minutes at 350°F to get the crust nice and crisp and fill your whole house with some seriously world-class aromas. You might feel like you’re at Camp Bacon just from the smell.
Beyond that? Make a fried egg sandwich out of it—while asparagus is still in season, you could use it to make one of those tasty Honest Abe sandwiches that I wrote about a few weeks ago. It’s particularly good with egg salad. If you have any left (most people don’t), you can turn into grated bread crumbs that you can sprinkle over pastas, roasted vegetables, or salads. Use it for a grilled cheese with fresh goat cheese from the Creamery. Make toast and spread it with bacon-fat mayonnaise (recipe in Zingerman’s Guide to Better Bacon) for a sandwich made from the Pit-Smoked Chicken you can get from the Roadhouse. If bacon, peanut butter, and banana sandwiches (á la Elvis) are your thing, then it would make total sense to spread some peanut butter on it. Or maybe even better still, some amazing Almond butter from Georgia! It makes really good croutons as well. Toast, spread with mayo, add lettuce and tomato and tin of those Nuri sardines. The Peppered Bacon Farm bread also makes delicious French toast—sort of like getting your slices of bacon and the French toast all rolled into one. If you want something really special, toast thin slices of it, and then lay on some of that great Red Wattle ham Connor procured for us!
In 1982, Ari Weinzweig, along with his partner Paul Saginaw, founded Zingerman’s Delicatessen with a $20,000 bank loan, a Russian History degree from the University of Michigan, 4 years of experience washing dishes, cooking and managing in restaurant kitchens and chutzpah from his hometown of Chicago. They opened the doors with 2 employees and a small selection of specialty foods and exceptional sandwiches.
Today, Zingerman’s Delicatessen is a nationally renowned food icon and the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses has grown to 10 businesses with over 750 employees and over $55 million in annual revenue. Aside from the Delicatessen, these businesses include Zingerman’s Bakehouse, Coffee Company, Creamery, Roadhouse, Mail Order, ZingTrain, Candy Manufactory, Cornman Farms and a Korean restaurant that is scheduled to open in 2016. No two businesses in the Zingerman’s Community of Businesses are alike but they all share the same Vision and Guiding Principles and deliver “The Zingerman’s Experience” with passion and commitment.
Besides being the Co-Founding Partner and being actively engaged in some aspect of the day-to-day operations and governance of nearly every business in the Zingerman’s Community, Ari Weinzweig is also a prolific writer. His most recent publications are the first 4 of his 6 book series Zingerman’s Guide to Good Leading Series: A Lapsed Anarchist’s Approach to Building a Great Business (Part 1), Being a Better Leader (Part 2), Managing Ourselves (Part 3) and the newly-released Part 4, The Power of Beliefs in Business. Earlier books include the Zingerman’s Guides to Giving Great Service, Better Bacon, Good Eating, Good Olive Oil, Good Vinegar and Good Parmigiano-Reggiano.
Ari regularly travels across the country (and world) on behalf of ZingTrain, teaching organizations and businesses about Zingerman’s approach to business. He is a sought-after Keynote speaker, having delivered keynotes for Inc. 500, Microsoft Expo Spring Conference, Great Game of Business Gathering of Games, Positive Business Conference at the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, American Society for Quality (ASQ), and the American Cheese Society. Most recently, Ari and Paul Saginaw were invited to address an audience of 50,000 for the University of Michigan 2015 Spring Commencement.
One of Zingerman’s Guiding Principles is being an active part of the community and in 1988, Zingerman’s was instrumental in the founding of Food Gatherers, a food rescue program that delivers over 5 million pounds of food each year to the hungry residents of Washtenaw county. Every year Zingerman’s donates 10% of its previous years profits to local community organizations and non-profits. Ari has served on the board of The Ark, the longest continuously operating folk music venue in America.
Over the decades, the Zingerman’s founding partners have consistently been the recipients of public recognition from a variety of diverse organizations. In April 1995, Ari and Paul were awarded the Jewish Federation of Washtenaw County’s first Humanitarian Award. In 2006, Ari was recognized as one of the “Who’s Who of Food & Beverage in America” by the James Beard Foundation. In 2007, Ari and Paul were presented with the Lifetime Achievement Award from Bon Appetit magazine for their work in the food industry. Ari was awarded the Lifetime Achievement Award by the American Cheese Society in 2014. And Ari’s book, Building a Great Business was on Inc. magazine’s list of Best Books for Business Leaders.
Notwithstanding the awards, being engaged on a daily basis in the work of 10 businesses and 21 partners, writing books on business and in-depth articles on food for the Zingerman’s newsletter, Ari finds time to be a voracious reader. He acquires and reads more books than he can find room for. Ari might soon find himself the owner of the largest collection of Anarchist books in Ann Arbor outside the Labadie collection at the University of Michigan library!
When you login first time using a Social Login button, we collect your account public profile information shared by Social Login provider, based on your privacy settings. We also get your email address to automatically create an account for you in our website. Once your account is created, you'll be logged-in to this account.
DisagreeAgree
I allow to create an account
When you login first time using a Social Login button, we collect your account public profile information shared by Social Login provider, based on your privacy settings. We also get your email address to automatically create an account for you in our website. Once your account is created, you'll be logged-in to this account.
If you’ve had Peppered Bacon Farm bread before, you already know how excellent it is. If you haven’t had it, well, there’s a first time for everything, right? The base, as you can tell from the name, is our very popular Farm Bread (naturally leavened, organic flour, with an 18-hour rise time), boosted with a healthy dose of Nueske’s applewood-smoked bacon and a good bit of freshly ground black pepper from Épices de Cru. Of the 50 or so special bakes we do at the Bakehouse over the course of a year, this one is our most popular!
