RECIPE: Panzanella Salad
Bélinda Quinn is a wielder of sensory pleasures. A baking wunderkind, she fell in love with making bread the very first time she visited the boulangerie where a friend worked, tied an apron around her waist, bellied up to the counter and extended her hands downward. “As soon as I touched the dough,” she recalls, “I said, ‘Oh, my God. This is what I want to do.’”
In Quinn’s native France, bread-making is a profession that’s near sacrosanct, insinuating itself into every aspect of French culinary culture. “Bread has been in the world forever, and still today, it’s part of our diet. Bread-making is our thing in France,” Quinn says in a thick Parisian accent, with an unapologetic chuckle.