Sunday, January 01, 2006

january 2006 newsletter

I. Happy new year!
II. New extended hours
III. Dinner service update
IV. New items
V. Upcoming events

I. Happy new year (and happy Chinese new year - Year of the Dog)
The crazy holiday season has come and gone, and we at Flour Bakery want to thank all of you for your loyal patronage. If you ordered holiday items from us and have feedback to help us with next year's holiday menu, we'd love to hear from you. Now as we enter a new year, we are re-energized and jazzed about continuing to offer you the best possible food and service we can. We've been extremely fortunate in having customers who come again and again; we want you to know that we don't take any of you for granted. From the early morning "Table" crew to the residents who come for breakfast, lunch, and dinner to the commuters and hospital folks who stop in on their way home, we are grateful to each of you. Each day we push ourselves to see how we can make the service smoother, quicker and more welcoming, and the food even more delicious and scrumptious.

II. New extended hours
We hear you, we hear you! Since introducing our dinner menu almost a year ago, customers have been clamoring for us to stay open later 5 nights a week rather than just 3. Sounds like a good idea to us, so starting Monday, February 6, our hours of operation will be 7am-9pm Monday -Friday, 8am-6pm on Saturday, and 9am-3pm on Sunday. That means that you can pick up dinner and desserts from us each weeknight! We are excited that you've responded so warmly to our dinners and look forward to offering them Monday through Friday. We are making some adjustments to our dinner offerings...read on....

III. Dinner service update
We've been thrilled with the reception of the dinner menu. So many of you have told us how much you enjoy picking up dinners and desserts here and how we've made cooking in your own kitchens obsolete. We have noticed, however, that most of you take these dinners to go and heat them up and eat them at home. While we'd love to have you here in our dining room, being homebodies ourselves we fully understand wanting to just get take-out and go home and curl up on the couch. (Okay, maybe that's just me!)

Thus in order to streamline the dinner process, rather than make you wait for us to cook your dinner just so you can go home and re-heat it, we've decided to offer all our dinner items already prepared to be heated up at home. You won't have to wait anymore; you can just point to the item you want and take it with you.

We'll offer whole roast chickens to go, along with separate containers of roasted vegetables and chef's choice of potatoes. We'll also continue to offer at least 2 dinner specials that one person can eat as a meal, such as beef and ginger stirfry or angel hair pasta with shredded chicken, parmesan and basil. We hope you enjoy the new set-up and would love to hear what you think.

IV. New items
A baker's work is never done. On a recent trip to Paris, I ate croissants that almost made me cry, they were so flaky and buttery and tender. I came back with a vow to make ours just as amazing. I'm happy to say that as of tomorrow, the croissants that we are making are ones that you'd be proud to offer to a Parisian. For those of you who've had our croissants in the past and not been wowed, we urge you to try again and hopefully we'll change your mind!

Previously you had to work at Flour in order to enjoy the guilty pleasure of eating raw Flour chocolate chip cookie dough. Now we extend that indulgence to all of our customers by selling our cookie dough in containers-to-go. We've got baking instructions right on the container; each one kilogram container of dough makes about 20-24 cookies and sells for $14. Currently we're offering chocolate chip and oatmeal. If you want others just let us know. Please note that the dough does contain raw eggs so if you are avoiding raw eggs you should bake the dough off as cookies.

The new dinner format means that we'll be able to introduce several new pastry items a week to be sold in the afternoon and evening crowd. Lately we've been in love with making sweet pizzas - tender slightly chewy pizza dough topped with various sweet toppings. We've done chocolate and hazelnut; and roasted pear, ricotta, walnut and honey. We hope to offer a new pizza every few weeks or so. Check it out!

V. Upcoming events
Project Place is a neighborhood non-profit that is dedicated to helping homeless individuals lead self-sufficient lives. They do an incredible job of working one-on-one with clients training them on how to get a job and find housing. Several times a year they host various fundraising events to help raise money for their efforts. On February 5 they'll be hosting their annual Gospel Brunch at the Fairmont Copley Hotel. Flour Bakery, along with a number of area restaurants, is donating brunch items; 2-3 gospel groups will perform; a grand time will be had by all. It's always a very popular event and attendees always return the following year. For more information and to purchase tickets ($60 in advance/$70 at the door) please contact Elizabeth Mullaly at 617-262-3740. Hope to see you there!

On February 9 Flour Bakery will be participating in a fundraiser for the Asian American Civic Association. The AACA is developing a new civic center on 87 Tyler Street and proceeds from this event will go towards this effort. We will join Ming Tsai and other chefs in providing samplings of our menus; a cultural entertainment program is also planned. For more information contact Mary Chin at
marychin@aaca-boston.org.

Finally February 14 is Valentine's Day; don’t forget your honey! We will be offering cupcakes and desserts and especially our famous sweetheart cookies. Each cookie is hand-frosted and decorated with a special message ranging from "Be Mine" and "True Love Always" to much more X-rated messages. Please come visit us and take a look!


As always, if you have any questions, feedback, or suggestions to this newsletter or to anything we do at Flour, please don't hesitate to write to Joanne at
joanne@flourbakery.com or Aaron our manager at aaron@flourbakery.com. Thank you and happy new year!

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