bread

If you're looking for the best local and international cheeses in Chicago, then Pastoral is the place. In fact aside from just an artisanal neighborhood cheese shop, Pastoral is also an amazing wine store, with the layout of the wines in line with the cheeses they compliment, full body wines are across from the aged cheddars and parmesans, medium wines are across from the semi-soft cheeses and light body are across from the young fresh cheeses. On top of all this, add a genuine Midwestern friendliness that takes the snobbishness out of fine cheese, and Pastoral accomplishes what it set out to be, an artisanal neighborhood cheese shop. In November, Pastoral was recognized as a nominee for a Luxist Awards Readers' Choice Award for Best Gourmet Cheese shop.

As with any specialty cheese store, Pastoral has the staples in big name and international cheese, such as Cypress Grove's Humboldt Fog of Arcata, California, Neal's Yard Dairy Cheddars from Britain, and Bucheron from the Loire Valley, France. What truly sets Pastoral apart is the amazing selection of Midwestern cheese. Local farmstead cheese highlights include Prairie Fruit Farms' goat cheese in Champaign, Illinois, Capriole goat cheese from Southern Indiana, and Marieke's Gouda from Thorp, Wisconsin to name a few. Pastoral's relationship with some of these farms is so close that employees from the store will sometimes double as employees representing the farms at Chicago's Green City Market. Aside from selling to the public, Pastoral also supplies top Chicago restaurants such as, avec, Blackbird, The Publican and Perennial with their artisanal cheeses.

Gallery: More from Pastoral Artisan Cheese, Bread & Wine

Pastoral Locations:
Lakeview: 2945 N Broadway, Chicago, IL 60657
Loop: 53 E Lake Street, Chicago, IL 60601Chicago French Market: 131 N Clinton, Chicago, IL 60661

This post was contributed via Seed.com, AOL's new platform for freelance writers.

Metropolitan Bakery is a Luxist Award nominee in the Best Bread Bakery category.

The bakery opened its doors with the goal of bringing to Philadelphia the amazing breads, its owners, Wendy Smith Born and James Barrett, had tasted in Europe. With a single rack of fresh bread and a shoebox for a cash register, Born and Barrett launched Metropolitan Bakery in 1993. Fifteen years later, what began as an "experiment" between two friends-one a restaurant manager, the other a pastry chef-has grown into a Philadelphia institution.

The partners met while working at Philadelphia's legendary The White Dog Café, which was one of the pioneering institutions of the "buy local" movement. During their time at White Dog, the two friends often lamented how difficult it was to find breads of the quality they'd tasted in Europe. Indeed, the artisan baking process is a slow one. It takes up to two weeks for the natural yeast (made from fermented grapes and figs) to mature, and then another 48 hours for the dough to be mixed, shaped, pounded, left to rise in rye-dusted willow baskets, and then baked in steam-injected, stone-deck ovens. It's this painstaking process that produces the intense, earthy flavors, crackling crusts, and complex textures of artisanal breads.

Barrett's culinary training at the Culinary Institute of America and the Ecole Francaise de Boulangerie d'Aurillac in France, helped him refine the techniques of old-world baking. These experiences and years of trial and error impressed upon him the importance of natural ingredients, traditional methods, and above all, patience, in producing great breads.

In Philadelphia, Metropolitan Bakery has become more than just a great bakery. It is also part of the community. Its owners believe that jobs are the best way out of poverty. As a result, the bakery employs and trains recent parolees, mentors at-risk high school students, and is a co-sponsor of the new H.O.M.E. Page Café in the Free Library, which employs formerly homeless Philadelphians and raises money for Project H.O.M.E. The bakery also donates bread to shelters every week. And because supporting local farmers and purveyors is so important, Metropolitan's five Philadelphia shops offer locally made jams, cheeses, spreads and other specialties. Indeed, most of the products in its stores are made by local farmers, cheesemakers and chefs also trying to preserve artisan traditions. The 19th street store is a pick-up location for community-supported agriculture.

The company has locations in Chestnut Hill, University City, Old City, Rittenhouse Square, and the Reading Terminal Market. It also offers its homemade whole grain granola, coffee chocolate chip granola, pomegranate cinnamon granola, French berry rolls and more for purchase on its website.

Vote now for what you believe is the best of breed in Gourmet Foods. Readers' Choice Awards for Food will be announced on November 30th.

Gallery: More from Metropolitan Bakery

La Brea Bakery is nominated for a Luxist Award in the Best Bread Bakery category.

Beginning in 1989, La Brea Bakery changed the way people ate bread. The beautiful artisan loaves that had been hand-made and hearth-baked for centuries in Europe had yet to make their way to North America. La Brea Bakery's founder Chef Nancy Silverton was making plans to open the restaurant Campanile with two partners in Los Angeles, CA. She soon discovered that if they wanted to serve the kind of authentic hearth-baked bread that embodied the quality reflected in the restaurant's menu, Chef Silverton would have to bake the bread herself.

It was then that Silverton embarked upon the journey of learning the ancient art of bread baking. Having mastered her craft, she opened a tiny storefront bakery to sell her renowned breads. While the original bakeshop still exists today, La Brea Bakery now operates three state of the art artisan bakeries in the U.S. and delivers over 150 par-baked bread varieties to grocery retail and restaurants across the entire U.S. and throughout Europe and Asia. La Brea Bakery has never compromised our founder's original craftsmanship or dedication to quality. From holiday-time crouton stuffing mix to special occasion breads and bake-at-home frozen breads, La Brea Bakery is continuously rated as the most preferred brand of artisan bread in the U.S.

The company now has locations in Anaheim, Van Nuys and Los Angeles. Its artisan breads are also available for retail purchase across the country.

Vote now for what you believe is the best of breed in Gourmet Foods. Readers' Choice Awards for Food will be announced on November 30th.

Gallery: More from La Brea Bakery

Zingerman's Mail Order has been nominated for a Luxist Award in the Best Online Gourmet Food category. The original Zingerman's Delicatessen was started in Ann Arbor, Michigan in 1982 by Paul Saginaw and Ari Weinzweig. It offered a combination of specialty foods, traditional Jewish dishes, and a few sandwiches.

Over the years Zingerman's grew steadily, adding (among others) a bakery, a creamery, a couple of restaurants, and a mail order business to sell it all. Zingerman's Mail Order offers a little bit of everything, all wrapped up in personal touches like excellent customer service and a website that displays everything in charming artistic renditions of reality.

Zingerman's focuses mostly on traditionally made foods, plus a few extras that they deem worthy, but overall the selection is intentionally kept "tight and focused" so people can find what they're looking for more efficiently. They carry goods from all the Zingerman's businesses and this time of year is an especially good time to shop their Thanksgiving selection that includes goodies like Spiced Pecans, Crespone Salami, and their "Turkey Rescue Kit" for making the best of all the seasonal leftovers.

Shop online at Zingermans.com or request a paper catalog by mail here.

Vote now for what you believe is the best of breed in Gourmet Foods. Readers' Choice Awards for Food will be announced on November 30th.

• 1-2 days French and Italian loaves
• 2-3 days White, Wheat, and Sourdough
• 3-5 days Rye breads

• Breads with a hard, crispy crust should be stored in paper.
• Breads with a softer crust and more moisture should be kept in a plastic bag or other airtight container.
• All bread should be kept in a cool, dry place.
• Bread should never be kept in the refrigerator (actually makes it go stale faster)
• Bread should be allowed to sit in the open until completely cool or mold growth will be accelerated
• Bread can be frozen and will keep for several months. Just wrap tightly in plastic and freeze.

I use a large, serrated knife to slice bread and it works particularly well with crusty loaves, where the bread might be more inclined to crack or crumble at the crust than to slice cleanly. The design of the Astuto Baguette Slicer is new to me, though the original design was made in the early 1900s, but since it is designed with the sole purpose of cutting up crispy, crusty baguettes, it seems like it would be a better choice than my favorite knife. The tool is made of cast iron and has a pine wood tray that cradles the bread as it is sliced with a sharp blade. Price: $178.