#stohrer

[detournementsmineurs]

Pause "flan" crémeux de chez Stohrer ^^)

[baba-rhum]

joyeux noël

[ftnbooks-blog]

Walter Stöhrer (1937-2000)

[germanpostwarmodern]

Summer House (1959-61) built for himself in Dingelsdorf, Germany, by Paul Stohrer. Photo by Sigrid Neubert.

[oldsardens]

Walter Stohrer - Ich bin ein Ungeheuer, das seine Geheimnisse mit dem Wind teilt F.B.. 1986

[sardens]

Walter Stohrer - Ohne Titel. 1993

[sgiandubh]

Life beyond OL - Xmas movies and a short Bucharest tour

About three weeks ago, What Else Anon prompted me to tell her what else I was reading, watching or interested in lately (https://www.tumblr.com/sgiandubh/734634576675274752/so-about-tcnd-no-im-kidding-dont-throw-me). That gave me an idea for a poll:

Should I turn this ask into a Life Beyond OL weekly, preferably on Tuesdays?

97,1% of the 35 brave people to answer said yes, so here we are.

Reading won't do it this hectic week: since Friday is my last day on the job before the holidays, I'm literally in a wrap-up frenzy, both at home and at the office. Let's say I am not exactly the type who buys her presents in July, which pretty much explains the circus.

As for watching, well: nope, I will not watch A Princess for Christmas if you'd pay me. It's both beyond and beneath my dignity, I am afraid and bless The Boy, but that is not enough for an incentive. By the same token, I shall not willingly acknowledge in public (at the blessed age of 45) that I know all the damn lines of Home Alone 1 by heart. With age, my absolute go-to Xmas movie has to be Love Actually. If only for this perfect opening scene with 0 cheesiness in it - you watch it and you are immediately hooked:

Interested in: going home for Christmas, what else? And before local exasperation hits hard (roughly two days after arrival, to be honest), I am still procrastinating on YouTube and watching those foot-in-mouth travel vlogs ('John and Jane Doe do ...'). In a sea of meh, you might find something interesting enough: I have no idea who Sammy & Tommy are, but they are smart people and they surely know a thing or two about travel. Once in Bucharest, my hometown, they followed their instinct and engaged with the natives - always the best plan.

Let's say it was worth it and probably went above and beyond their expectations: we tend to be obnoxiously hospitable. And I found the bakery people flawlessly endearing. I can confidently say it was something absolutely spontaneous and something I would do myself anytime for a total stranger:

A bit of context: the Cișmigiu Gardens look way better than the last time I ventured in there. It is probably one of the most beloved parks of the city, a stone throw away from the Old Town, and also a wannabe copycat of Munich's Englischer Garten.

The featured bakery & cake shop are actually quite decent, serving traditional pastries from Transylvania (the West of the country) and some of the local dessert mishmash fare. Despite what the very nice bakery guy is telling Sammy and Tommy, neither savarina, nor amandina are 'traditional ' Romanian cakes. Savarina is simply the Polish/French rum baba, Stohrer invented for Stanisław I Leszczyński, the exiled Polish king who was also Louis XV's father in law. As for the other one, let's say it could be the love child of a Sachertorte and a Rigó Jancsi cake - totally Austro-Hungarian (Wikipedia babbles: it has nothing to do with French cuisine!)! Both sickeningly sweet and both personal favorites, amen. The first one they tried, cozonac, is a babka spinoff: something I hate with a passion, but also something that is going to be literally every(fucking)where this Christmas ('oh, you don't like my cozonac?! huh, nonono, I do, it's so fabulous I am taking my time!').

Honestly? This is a place that suffered a lot, especially during the Eighties, when Ceaușescu thought it would be a great idea to bulldoze about 60% of the old neighborhoods, after the horrific 1977 earthquake (perfect pretext). Words could never decently describe the shock, the drama and the abuse: people throwing themselves under the first passing car as their beloved houses were torn down, people displaced in the middle of nowhere, a human chain of people holding hands in a failed attempt to stop the demolition of a beloved church. All that quiet, endearing charm suddenly replaced by a Pyongyang transplant smack in the middle of town. This explaining perhaps why Bucharest is not the best/most touted tourist destination in my country. Tourists usually choose Transylvania (absolutely deserved) or, if they really want to be adventurous, Bucovina (or Țara de Sus, literally: The Highlands, hehe) - an off the beaten track gem and a very special place to me (half of my family hails from there). Impressed to see these guys hit Timișoara - one of the most beautiful, interesting and definitely underrated cities, right next to the border with both Hungary and Serbia.

Nice guys or not, I would never take you to that bakery, though. Nah: I'd take you round the corner, at the Athénée Palace's English Bar - the red arrow marks my very own spot since, heh, forever? And we'd have the Amalfi Old Fashioned cocktails: they are mandatory, here.

PS: the Romanian guy kept his word and took them places the next day. I'd happily babble about this next week, though - from home. :)

[topcat77]

Walter Stohrer

Ohne Titel, 1977

Mixed media with collage on canvas

[distinktionsfetzen]

Check out Walter Stöhrer, Yellow Figures (1976), From Galerie Georg Nothelfer

[mariacallous]

If you did a culinary DNA search on baba au rhum, you’d find that this fancy French cake’s ancestral line has the same humble roots as the homey babka. 

It all started with the inspired tinkering of an exiled Polish king. No one knows exactly what happened, of course, but it seems that Stanislaus I, twice deposed in 18th-century Poland, moved to his country estate in France, where he loved to cook and held court in the chateau kitchen. There, he baked a gugelhopf, a yeast cake invented by Viennese bakers to celebrate the victory of the Austrians over the Turks in 1683. Gugelhopf is rich and regal-looking. It’s usually baked in a tall, fluted pan called a Turk’s head mold because of its resemblance to an Ottoman sultan’s turban. 

The cake came out too dry, so the ex-king soaked it in wine and decided to call it baba (grandma), because it reminded him of the welcoming confections of everyone’s baba back in the old country. In fact, besides for the shape and some chopped-up dried or candied fruit, gugelhopf and baba are essentially the same. 

As is babka, which is among the most beloved of Jewish comfort foods. But while babas are large cakes and were mostly saved for special occasions such as Easter, babkas, though similarly egg-rich and yeasty, were smaller and regularly baked by Jewish balaboostas. Babka means “little grandma,” and in most Eastern European Jewish households, they were not only smaller but plainer, too, as dried fruit, raisins, and spices were costly. Babkas were more like little loaf-pan versions of Stanislaus’ gugelhopf. 

The ex-king was so pleased with his invention that he served it in dramatic fashion to his guests at a party one night. He poured some alcohol over his gugelhopf, set it aflame, and carried it into the dark ballroom, thrilling the crowd. He called the cake Ali Baba — a play on the word baba, but also a tribute to a character in The Thousand and One Nights. 

The story and recipe might have ended there, except that the Stanislaus’ daughter eventually married French king Louis XV and gave the recipe to Nicolas Stohrer, her pastry chef, who revised it to include raisins, candied fruit, and a soak with rum. And thus, baba au rhum was invented. 

Over the years, baba au rhum and babka went on to produce more progeny. Parisian pastry chefs, reluctant to be outdone by a Polish pretender, created several versions, changing spices, shapes, and alcohol soaks. More than a century later, when baba au rhum had already become a classic, a pastry chef named Auguste Julien decided to bake baba in a plain ring mold and substituted kirschwasser (German cherry brandy) for the rum. He glazed the cake with melted apricot preserves and served it with a mound of whipped cream in the center. The cake, named savarin to honor Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, French author of The Physiology of Taste, is considered one of the most elegant pastries ever created.

And the homey babka? Less stylish to be sure, but most beloved by Jews and non-Jews alike, and reinvented with ever-more variations. For most babka-lovers, the basic question is: cinnamon or chocolate? But these days there are recipes galore and this “grandma loaf” is stuffed with chocolate, nuts, marzipan, fresh and dried fruit, preserves, and sprinkled with streusel in top. 

And so the baba, a simple old recipe, stands proud today, centuries on. We take pleasure in the numerous varieties that have sprung from it — fancy offerings in elegant pastry shops, humble cakes from neighborhood bakeries, and fragrant loaves baked in our own ovens. Because a great recipe will always stand the test of time.

[chez-mimich]

Parigi, agosto 2023. “… Mon Paradis c'est la rue …” cantava Malcolm McLaren ne “La main parisien” (in un disco in cui faceva cantare anche una ineguagliabile Catherine Deneuve). Lui la “main parisien” ce l’aveva, o comunque voleva averla. Cos’è ? È il modo di fare parigino e lui londinese di nascita amava Parigi come pochi altri. Che la “main” sia questa vista poco fa in Rue Montorgueil che usciva da Stohrer?

[atotaltaitaitale]

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Thursday Throw Back… way way back - The Oldest…Bakery in Paris.

This pastry shop “Patisserie Stohrer” in the center of Paris bears the name of its founder Nicolas Stohrer, pastry chef to King Louis XV. Founded in 1730, it is considered the oldest pastry shop in the capital, people come here to taste appetizing sweet and savory creations, but also to admire its sumptuous decor, listed as a historical monument.

The interior of the shop is designed by Paul Baudry a French painter who lived in Paris during the 19th-century. Other famous places decorated by the artist include Opera Garnier and Musée d’Orsay.

Nicolas Stohrer, Franco-Polish pastry chef, is the inventor of rum baba. A dessert whose name derived from the Polish word baba – grandmother in the language of children.

[travellianna]

#paris #france @stohrer #patisserie #painauxraisins #brioche #yum #dessert or #breakfast #whereintheworldislianna (at Stohrer, la plus ancienne pâtisserie de Paris) https://www.instagram.com/p/CjYzN0FjA6Z/?igshid=NGJjMDIxMWI=

[mindocr]

Stohrer in Paris, France

http://dlvr.it/T1GqrT

[germanpostwarmodern]

Town Hall (1953-56) in Stuttgart, Germany, by Hans Paul Schmohl & Paul Stohrer

[oldsardens]

Walter Stohrer - Untitled