Cellar Door Provisions - a new take on bread and butter
CHICAGO (WLS) -- There are few things as humble as bread and butter, and yet those two items can also be incredibly complex, if you take the time to make each from scratch. A tiny cafe in Logan Square is quietly elevating both of them, along with a menu of pastries and lunch items.
Most bakeries are content with cranking out some pastries and a few loaves of bread each day. But Cellar Door Provisions is different in that the bread and pastries form the backbone of their operations, along with a quiche that is the best of its kind in Chicago.
"We like to use really good grain. We buy some of our grain from Molly Breslin, who's got a farm a couple hours south of here in Ottawa, Illinois," said co-owner Tony Bezsylko.
The dough is naturally leavened using a sourdough culture they make in-house. It ferments for four to six hours, then gets gently placed into flour-lined baskets before rising in a refrigerator for two nights. A wetter-than-normal dough is key.
"80 to 87 percent of the flour weight is water, that helps us get a nice texture, nice crust and crumb texture and open crumb," Bezsylko said.
The chewy, slightly tangy bread is made even more spectacular with Kilgus Farm Creamery butter topped with sea salt. But there's a lot more than bread here, including French pastries like canele and madelines, plus delicate macarons and a number of laminated doughs such as flaky croissants and chocolate-filled versions.
"There is kouign-amann, which is a slightly sweeter croissant dough made with a little bit of orange blossom water," Bezsylko said.
A small lunch menu features simple fare but also hearty bowls of sauerkraut soup featuring root vegetables and tender beef brisket. Plus, it features the city's best quiche, made by blending eggs, milk and cream, then pouring it over soft onions, slowly-cooked in butter, all housed in a flaky, delicate, homemade crust.
"A lot of that has to do with the fact that we use very good eggs, very good milk, very good cream and we blend it before we fill it," Bezsylko said.
Cellar Door Provisions
3025 W. Diversey Ave
(773) 697-8337
