CRAFTKITCHEN DOES DINNER: AN AFTER-HOURS EVENT

We love (LOVE) making breakfast, lunch and pastries for our community everyday, but we recently got the chance to flex our dinner muscles and, we have to admit, it felt pretty good.  We were honored to host Bridor France and La Quercia in our private dining room for an after-hours affair, and we wanted to share all of the delicious details with you.

We played with some of our favorite winter flavors to create a custom menu for the event that warmed guests right up.

We’re not sure what we love more–a winter flavor palette or a winter color palette.

We love how this event turned out. While it was warm, welcoming and intimate, our glass french doors and oversized window gave the dinner an open feel as well. It made for the perfect after-hours private affair, and we had so much fun crafting up a custom menu. If you’re looking for a creative place to host your next event, we’d love to have you at CRAFT. Our PDR can hold up to 14-16 guests for a cozier affair, our entire space can hold up to 80 for a full-on par-tay.  You can make a reservation for the private dining room or call (702) 728-5828 to talk details.

‘TIS THE SEASON

We are so excited to be in the midst of our first holiday season here at CRAFTkitchen. Because our background lies in baking pastries from scratch, we love that the holidays are just another excuse to experiment with housemade danishes, desserts and all-around sweet treats. It’s that time of year where the cold makes every warm bite taste that much better and where the holiday pre-orders start rolling right in–making for a super busy (and happy) kitchen here at CRAFT.

One of the reasons we love our holiday orders (besides the fact that we get to feed people super cute reindeer cupcakes and Christmas-hued macarons) is that it allows our customers a tiny break from slaving away in the kitchen. When you’ve got a homemade main course to make, picking up desserts, breads and sweet-treat appetizers from us can be a great way to add a little color to your menu while keeping your sanity. (Because we bake everything from scratch (and we mean everything), you can also rest easy knowing you’re not feeding your family bread full of preservatives and or cupcakes full of chemicals.)

If you’re not using our holiday goodies for your own table, they also act as a great gift (especially for teachers and coworkers who might be hard to shop for). It’s a fun way to spread local love and, we may be biased, but we’re pretty sure there’s not a soul out there who wouldn’t want a box of our macarons or a bag of our white chocolate candy-cane bark. We’re also offering holiday baskets full of assorted CRAFT goodies to help eliminate the stress of picking out goodies (and wrapping). Make sure you pre-order these as far in advance as possible, as they’re going quickly.

Our pastry case is full of holiday treats this time of year, so feel free to stop in anytime if you’re just picking up some small items. If you want to guarantee larger items or quantities, however, calling ahead and pre-ordering is definitely the way to go:

• Call (702) 728-5828 to pre-order your items
• We’re open December 24 from 7-3 for holiday order pickup and dine-in
• We’ll be closed December 25 and will reopen December 26

Items you can pre-order include:

• Holiday Mini Cupcakes by the Dozen
• Holiday Tart Platter (eggnog, cheesecake, lemon meringue, chocolate, apple cranberry)
• Buche de Noel (serves 4 people)
• White Chocolate Candy Cane Bark Bag
• Chocolate Almond Brittle Bag
• Holiday Basket (loaded with CRAFT goodies)
• Cranberry White Chocolate Loaf
• Ciabatta Loaf
• Pretzel Rolls
• Assorted croissants, danishes, pastry-case desserts

THE BREAD DIFFERENCE: ALL’S WELL THAT BEGINS WELL

At CRAFTkitchen, we take pride in everything we feed our community, but one thing we pay extra special attention to is our bread. We’ve all bitten into a slice of sourdough that, from behind the pastry glass looks so good, but, for some reason, ends up disappointing when it comes to texture and flavor. This, my friends, is a total travesty, because, as we all know, food letdowns are the worst kind of letdowns.

On the flip side of that, we’ve all had that hunk of fresh bread that makes us weak in the knees. So, what’s the difference? What takes bread from a simple slice of substance that’s just there to keep your tuna salad in its place to a piece of holy goodness that we’re absolutely positive was sent down to us directly from the flour Gods above solely to make our lives worth living? Well, we would argue the starter. Just as all’s well that ends well, we believe all’s well that begins well. 

Today, then, we wanted to break down a bit about our starter. We’ll try really hard not to chef-geek out on you, but bear with us while we dabble in some oh-so-sweet science:

A starter is what, quite literally, starts a batch of dough that eventually turns into a big hunk of baked bread. (You “feed” a starter flour to begin making dough.) The humidity and moisture levels in the area where the starter originates make or break your final product. Where the starter comes from, then, makes all the difference. It’s the reason chicago pizza is, well, chicago pizza. It’s the reason the bagels in New Jersey are so damn good, and it’s the reason sourdough from The Bay tastes better than anything you’d get in a land-locked area. You can follow a classic Chicago pizza dough recipe to a T, but, if you start it using a Las Vegas starter, it just won’t taste the same. You follow? Good. 

That’s why we are so school-girl excited (we’re chef-geeking out pretty hard right now) that our starter comes from a company called Central Milling in the oh-so-moist Petaluma, California (just minutes from The Bay). Quite literally, we’re bringing a piece of The Bay home to Las Vegas…and we’re excited to say you’ll be able to taste it in our breads. We’re also feeding our starter Keith’s Best and Artisan Organic Wheat flour, and we plan to bake sourdough, ciabatta and pretzel bread daily. We are so thrilled to share a quality product that we’re oh-so proud of with our community. After all, you can take the starter out of The Bay, but you can’t take The Bay out of the starter. So swing by soon for some warm bread to help you get through this cold weather.