Fresh-Baked News

Great crusty San Francisco-style bread rises in hot Fort Worth district

The best bread is good and crusty.

Great bread comes to Fort Worth via Icon Bread, a new startup that sells its loaves every Thursday from 4-7 pm at the West Seventh Farmers Market. Icon operates under the wing of Bravo Catering, the company launched in 2015 by Dena Peterson, former chef at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth.

Peterson's husband, Trent Shaskan, grew up in the Bay Area, giving him an appreciation for sourdough bread with lots of tangy flavor; moist, dense crumb; and thick crust.

"I'm a bread lover and grew up eating great bread every day," he says. "When you grow up with it, you have an appreciation for that taste and even the weight of how the bread feels."

He experimented with bread recipes, and after they started the catering company, he decided to launch Icon.

"I was inspired by Tartine Bakery, the San Francisco bakery from Chad Alexander," Shaskan says. "He came out with a book, and I started playing with dough. Bread is unpredictable, and that's probably what attracts me to it, the level of risk."

Tartine's recipe has some similarities to the famed "no-knead" recipe by New York baker Jim Lahey, in that it's hands-off, rises slowly, and is a very wet dough. Like the no-knead recipe, it's also baked in a cast-iron kettle with a lid, which helps create the steam necessary for the irresistible contrast between the moist crumb and crunchy, browned crust.

"But this requires a starter," Shaskan says. "I'm getting it to work for me."

He aspires to the sourdough loaves made at Pain Poilane in Paris, viewed by many as the best in the world. He uses a flour mix of 90 percent white and 10 percent wheat. And rather than doing a bunch of flavors or fillings, he's taking the purist approach, offering what he calls plain, perfect bread, and maybe some cultured butter on the side.

"For now, we're selling it on Thursdays at the West Seventh Farmers Market," he says. "But we ultimately hope to open a restaurant and possibly a storefront, and I can see the bread being part of that."

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Chef News

Fort Worth's Will Rogers Memorial Center welcomes bright new chef

FortWorthtx.gov

Will Rogers Memorial Center

There's a new chef in town: Waylon Cornelius, named executive chef of catering and concessions for Craft Culinary Concepts, the food and beverage provider at Will Rogers Memorial Center.

Will Rogers Memorial Center is the 120-acre entertainment complex anchoring Fort Worth’s Cultural District, owned and operated by the City of Fort Worth. Cornelius will oversee menus for trade shows and other events at the center which bring in more than 2 million visitors a year.

Craft Culinary Concepts is headquartered in Glendale, Arizona, and manages food and beverage programs for entertainment, sports and cultural facilities.

Chef Waylon Corneliusfortworthtx.gov

According to a release, Cornelius joined the team this summer and is already shifting the expectations of guests from a typical “BBQ and beans” menu to a bill of fare satisfying every kind of palate.

“We always have fajitas ready to go, but we also make a beautiful Beef Wellington or baked salmon with a pink salt crust,” Cornelius says in a statement.

For consumer trade shows, Craft and its partners Caribou and Taco Heads offer more choices for the thousands of guests who attend events at WRMC annually.

“Some of our equestrian guests are away from home and here for several days, and they need more than popcorn and hot dogs,” Cornelius says. “Our concessions offer biscuits and gravy, burritos made in-house, strawberry salad, fruit and yogurt cups.”

A native of Mansfield, Cornelius grew up helping in a farm-to-table kitchen. He was raised on a farm with his mother, grandmother, and grandfather -- a Vietnam veteran who enjoyed vegetable gardens and raising hogs and chickens. He studied computer science after high school and holds an associate's degree in Cultural Resource Management and Policy Analysis from Tarrant County College.

He's a 2003 graduate of AIMS Academy of Culinary Arts in Dallas where he was mentored by a number of great chefs. While training as assistant executive sous chef at the AAA four-diamond Grand Hyatt DFW, he worked with Executive Chef Sutti Sripolpa, chef Eric Dreyer (who went on to be Oprah Winfrey’s personal chef), and Chef Jean-Claude Plihon, under whom he honed his French cooking skills.

As executive sous chef at the opening of Perry’s Steakhouse and Grille in Southlake, Cornelius gained expertise with volume. While at HG Sply Co., he learned about gluten-free items and other food allergies.

HG Sply is also where he crossed paths with Chef James R. Schell III, Craft’s general manager at WRMC, who recruited Cornelius to the complex.

"James said he needed someone who can hit moving targets, push the culinary team to be more avant-garde and use locally sourced, seasonal ingredients, so here I am," Cornelius says. "Culinary is a small world."

“I want people to say, ‘When we were in Fort Worth, you won’t believe what we got at Will Rogers!’” Schell says. “Even the celebrities who perform [in the auditorium] are surprised. When Chicago played here recently and we served dinner backstage, they said they felt treated like the Rolling Stones.”

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