Peanut Butter Lover’s Day is March 1st

Mark Overbay is deeply amused by the notion of March 1 being National Peanut Butter Lover’s Day.

“For me, that’s like having a National Oxygen Lover’s Day,” quips the founder of Big Spoon Roasters, a maker of artisan nut butters in Durham, North Carolina. “Peanut butter has always been, and will always be, a staple of my existence!”

Overbay just celebrated the fifth anniversary of his company, which was the nation’s first maker of small-batch, fresh-roasted, handcrafted nut butters. He drew inspiration the time he spent in rural Zimbabwe with the Peace Corps, where he experienced the extraordinary flavors and textures of nut butters made with local ingredients and ground with stones. Each family added its own unique touches, such as honey, coconut oil or spices.

Overbay takes a similar approach, sourcing the majority of his ingredients from sustainable growers in North Carolina and throughout the Southeast. The current line of 10 flavors is produced on a rotating schedule, with product delivered as soon as it’s packaged. For Southern Season’s Chapel Hill and Raleigh locations, that means it arrives within hours.

While North Carolina’s Triangle region takes special pride in this local product, Big Spoon Roasters nut butters have been earning national praise since their debut. In fact, Food & Wine magazine named its Peanut Pecan Butter as one of the seven best things staff tasted in 2011. The current issue of Teen Vogue raves about the brand’s Cherry Pecan nut butter bars. Overbay does not take such praise lightly.

“We have zero control over what the media covers, but we do have control over how we select our ingredients, how we roast our nuts, how our food tastes, how our jar feels in people’s hands, how we interact with someone who calls our office,” he says. “These are the things we try to do as well as we can.”

The company will mark its fifth anniversary in the spring by introducing a new nut butter flavor as well as a nut butter bar recipe. Both currently are labeled Top Secret.

“The goals that launched Big Spoon Roasters as a business remain our goals today,” Overbay says. “We want to introduce people to the inimitable experience of eating truly handmade-to-order, fresh-roasted nut butter; to be a progressive market force for sustainable agriculture; and to positively affect the communities we touch.

“These are goals we can never exceed,” he adds “but also goals we can pursue and measure every day.”

Visit Southern Season stores for a wide selection of Big Spoon Roaster nut butters or shop online.

This post first appeared on the Southern Season blog.

Bialys: Loaf catches the eye of Bon Appetit

Indy Week photo of bialys from Loaf
n Durham by Justin Cook

This post first appeared in Indy Week on Sept. 24.

In my New Jersey youth, bialys were the sad, dusty cousin of the chewy bagel. Crowned with poppy seeds or the sticky goodness of not quite burnt onions, fresh-baked bagels released a pleasing genie-like waft of steam when torn. They achieved their full, God-given glory when spread with cream cheese and topped with lox and onion.

But the bialy? It did not receive the ritualistic schvitz bath in simmering water before baking. Even with its pocket full of melted onion, it sat forlorn on the plate, looking every bit like the confused Eastern European immigrant it still was. The only one in our house who appreciated its humility was my father, a child of the Depression who grew up knowing that what wasn't eaten today would be eaten stale tomorrow.

Thanks to artisan baking communities from Brooklyn to Berkeley, the bialy is enjoying a resurgence. A recent story in Huffington Post declared that today's bialy is "better than any bagel you've ever had."

That's a big boast, but Bon Appetit apparently agrees. The magazine, which bestows sales-boosting credibility to a handful of locally produced goods each month, featured a full-page beauty shot of bialys from Loaf Bakery in Durham in its September issue.

Manager Mary Turner recalls when Andrew Knowlton,Bon Appetit's globetrotting bon vivant, came into the shop last April with Mark Overbay of Big Spoon Roasters. Not long after purchasing a bialy, Knowlton posted a photo of it, stating: "I like finding a bialy outside of its native habitat. This was a good one."

"We recognized him, of course, and it was a thrill to see the post," says Turner, who tucks trays of fresh bialys in Loaf's temptation-filled display cases each Tuesday, Thursday and Saturday morning. "A few days later, he asked us to send a box of them to his office to be photographed."

Co-owner Ron Graff first experienced bialys in New Jersey while earning a graduate degree in toxicology at Rutgers. About a year after Loaf opened in November 2011, they added bialys as part of their savory breakfast offerings.

"We thought about bagels but didn't want to mess with boiling" the dough, Graff says. "Initially people weren't sure what they were, but that happens a lot. They either haven't seen it before or don't know how to pronounce it. 'Oniontastic' was one of the words people used."

Graff is very much a traditionalist, so those looking for funky tweaks will have to look elsewhere. "I would hate for someone to have a bialy of ours and then go to New York and see that we were doing something completely messed up," he says.

Long the butt of sour humor—the scheming Max Bialystock of Mel Brooks' The Producers takes his name from the Polish town where bialys were first made—bialys are no longer something to laugh at.

Fulton Forde of Boulted Bread in downtown Raleigh also takes bialy making seriously. He has to, given that customers start lining up soon after the shop opens at 7 a.m. to grab a traditional bialy or his "Southern" version, which features country ham and cheddar. It sounds like something that borders on blasphemy, but it's just too darn good to complain.

Boulted Bread makes bialys every morning and keeps a batch of dough ready in case anyone comes in desperate for a fix. As at Loaf, they only take about 12 minutes to bake. Boulted's version, however, has a higher whole wheat content that lends an appealingly nutty flavor.

"We bake a lot of fancy things, but not everyone wants to eat croissants and sweets all the time," says Forde, who made bialys for several years at Asheville's acclaimed Farm & Sparrow Bakery. "These aren't entirely typical, but we do have people who come in for them every day."

Barrett Jenkins is among them. He prefers the traditional bialy and nibbles around the circumference to save the oniony center, which glistens with fruity olive oil, to savor "like dessert." Matt Wickwire, who painted the mural on their building, prefers the ham and cheese version. "I usually have a biscuit for breakfast, but this is so much better," he says.

Try A Bialy in Something Sweet for Rosh Hashana

While the bialy is not typically a food enjoyed as part of the Rosh Hashana observance—the Jewish New Year officially begins today at sunset—round foods are symbolic of unity, wholeness and eternity, good things to ponder when observant Jews ask to have their names once again written in the Book of Life.

Foods consumed during Rosh Hashana typically include apples and honey, which are intended as harbingers of a sweet year ahead. So this year, why not live large? Stop by Loaf Bakery and Boulted Bread for a fresh warm bialy, dunk it in some honey or add a dollop of apple butter. Whether you observe or not, it's a great way to start the day.