reality bites with artist Lexie Smith
on her top baking cookbooks & go-to bread in NYC
Lexie Smith is an artist and baker presently based in upstate New York who spends a lot of time researching, thinking about, and making bread. She runs the online resource center Bread on Earth, which explores bread’s “potential as a social, political, economic, and ecological barometer.” Through her early love of snacks and a penchant for going to cafes with her twin sister during adolescence in suburban New York, Lexie took an interest in food as a way of exercising control.
These days, Lexie can be hard to spot as she’s usually in her studio in Ancramdale, NY, where the whole “downtown” consists of one intersection with a post office, a deli, and the studio building she shares with two other people. When she visits New York City, you might see her in the Periodicals Room at the Stephen Schwarzman branch of the NYPL, or playing with her son at Tompkins Square Park. Below, she shares her favorite spots for pastries, bagels, and loaves in New York City, as well as a variety of books and resources for learning more about bread and grains.
I think nutrition is much more than the nutrient density of your food. It’s whether or not what you eat makes you feel whole and comfortable and known to yourself. It’s whether or not it makes it easier or harder for you to get up in the morning. These things can be the result of community and culture or can build them. I don’t feel much of a relationship to my ancestral cuisine. The food that feels important to me is what I have made the most for the people I love, what I have seen bring the people I love the most joy and sustenance. This is what I will keep making.
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