Chuck Williams Museum in Napa

If you love looking at the tools for cooking and baking and kitchen tasks, you are going to love this post!

Along with a delightful visit with family from the East Coast and some from near Sacramento and Vallejo CA, the third week in February, we visited Napa and had lunch at Grace's Table, which I highly recommend. 

After lunch we went the fairly short distance to CIA at Coppia, a combination culinary school and museum. The whole building was fragrant with the smell of pizza baking, thanks to some of the students at the Culinary Institute of America class being held that afternoon. Upstairs, too, is the Chuck Williams Museum, which houses over 4,000 culinary items. Chuck Williams is one of the founders of Williams-Sonoma, a long time purveyor of all kinds of culinary tools and machines and some ingredients. My Kitchen Aide mixer was a purchase from them at a time when I really didn't have money for such an extravagant purchase, but I really needed that mixer to allow me to grow in my baking skills. It's been over 40 years and it still works and I still bake!

All of those 4,000 items seemed to be displayed either in the body of the museum space or in additional display cases in the hallways near the culinary academy and downstairs near the restaurant and wine bar.  It was a bit overwhelming! 

There were dozens of rolling pins, 

lower ones are embossed, for cookies

Hung one the wall are many dozens of tools to crimp dough and cut wavy lines of dough, even a double-wheeled one.

 Some had wooden handles, some metal and the shapes of the handles differed, too.  I wonder if the tops of some of the handles were used to shape pie dough. Looks like there are leaves and stars and maybe a fish.

Egg beaters were another set hung on the walls. There were also stand mixers, but I don't remember seeing one like mine...these were older ones.

One of the things that first catches your eye when you enter the museum is a wall hung with dozens and dozens of copper molds, many of them very intricate. I'm not sure how some of them would release the elaborate configurations on top. Many of them were probably used for gelatin and cold mousses, but even these would have been difficult to unmold. Bet there were tricks for removing the contents.

In cabinets around the room there were so many other items of interest, from toasters

and waffle irons

to casseroles and soufflé dishes

Sets were a big thing, from mezzalunas to pie plates

One of the things that I most enjoyed looking at were the various molds used for cake, or perhaps candy. They were so intricate and graphic and I could just imagine them making a statement at Easter, or Thanksgiving or Christmas or another special occasion.

Space was given to the items that would have been used on the hearth

and to show kitchen furniture and equipment like this Hoosier cabinet and tiled stove

as well as work horses like copper pots (including that monster one on the tiles stove)

and copper double boilers

Specialty items were plentiful, including an espresso machine, flour bin (that included a sifter!), dough crock, and large flour sifter, and a fascinating knife grinder that looked like it sharpened multiple knives at a time. The apple press could, of course, be used to press juice from other fruits, plus there are some lovely citrus juicers near by in another case.

                                        

I enjoyed seeing that some things, like cookie cutters and icing implements are very similar to ones that I used as a child and still use sometimes.

The ceramic tart pans stacked up here are also fairly modern looking even though they are fairly old.

When I was talking about sets of things I neglected to show you the mashers and grinders and churns and beaters, but they are sure an interesting group of tools.

As you might imagine, it became a bit overwhelming, all of these culinary tools and implements. A few that I took close ups of because I liked the way they looked as much as their use were some more molds. This collection has a large proportion of molds!

The first couple have a recipe right on the outside...pretty handy.

I love fish designs and really like this one

And as a baker I find this one charming

Last, but not least, is my favorite poster from the museum

After we left the museum and headed downstairs, I discovered another couple of cases outside the wine bar. One had this beautiful drinks cabinet and the second had the stunning cordial server.

This ends my virtual 'tour' of this wonderful museum of culinary delights. If you are in Napa, CA near the downtown, consider a visit yourself!

A Day Out

Still having fun with my youngest nephew, we decided to take in both the redwoods and the beach on his last day here. Sweetie drove as we headed west to Freestone and the Wildflour Bakery. This place is always busy when it's open, with a line up to the doorway where, post-pandemic, you order what you want and they bring it to the door and hand it through after you pay. To help you decide what to order, there is a six foot tall chalkboard that lists the day's offerings...all kinds of bread baked in the wood-fired oven, plenty of varieties of scones, amazing sticky buns and more. 

When it's our turn I mention that my nephew is a professional baker and ask if he can come into the oven area...which he does through the back door. He really enjoyed chatting with the bakers and seeing the production area and that oven. He said that there is a space at least five time larger than what can be seen from the door and that there were something like 80 bannetons for shaping bread all stacked up on benches in that area. It was the final bakery of the trip and a good way to end the bakery visits.

We headed down the Bohemian Highway to the Russian River and then to Armstrong Redwoods, not far outside of Guerneville. We'd been there before with him when he visited as a teen, but it never gets old.

 

It was still a bit foggy and damp but the sun was starting to come through and a brisk walk through the woods warmed us up. Here's a wood orchid we saw on a bank near the Forest Theater.

Once back in Guerneville, we headed west toward the ocean and eventually turned south near Goat Rock.

 We stopped there and a few other places along the coast as we headed to Bodega Bay. 

At Doran Beach we hit the sand and enjoyed the sea air. The tide was out and it was pretty windy but the day had brightened and warmed a bit.

Our last stop was at Blue Water Bistro just south of Doran 

where we had a fantastic lunch and a view of the bay, with plenty of local crab, which is great because it's crab season. I can't have crab...allergies...but enjoyed a wonderful salad.

It was a great day out! 

A Visit From Another Baker

I have lots of friends and family, but most of them are not bakers in the semi-obsessed way that I am. This past week I was lucky enough to spend time with my nephew who is a professional baker. He is even more obsessed than I am. To start out I recommended quite a few books from my collection and he plowed through a big stack of them over the six days he was here. One of his favorites was a book about the science of bread. He does a lot with sourdough at the bakery where he works, so he understands the importance of knowing how and why the yeasts work.

Of course we baked together (see 2/15/26 post) and on his second day here we ate at a local bakery, Sarmentine, where we enjoyed a trio of French inspired baguette sandwiches and a sweet, caramelized kouign amann. The most fun for me was on his next-to last day here when we did what Sweetie called a 'bakery crawl', starting at a bakery supply business in Petaluma, Keith Guisto Bakery Supply.  Central Milling is there, a business that mills a wide variety of grains. They even sell 10 lb bags of some of the flours in their retail store, along with select books and a wonderful selection of baking tools. That was followed by a visit to Della Fattoria Downtown Cafe and Bakery, also in Petaluma, where we bought some naturally fermented bread, including a cinnamon twist that we pulled apart with our hands as we sat outside in the sun...it was gone quickly.

After a peek at the pies in the Petaluma Pie Shop and a quick lunch at a wonderful Mexican place on Kentucky St., we headed to Santa Rosa. Our first stop was at Gougette, a French inspired bakery near Memorial Hospital. No meals or beverages here (although they do have ice cream), just amazing bread and pastries. We were able to see production baking as two of their bakers shaped dozens of baguettes, ready for proofing. We took home a selection of brioche pastries with fruit, and a baguette. Next up was Grossman's a restaurant with great Jewish deli offerings. At the back they have a retail area where we bought hamantaschen that had a savory sesame paste filling, topped with apricot jam and poppy seeds, and an everything bagel that filled the car with a wonderful onion fragrance. By the time we made it to Marla's further along in Railroad Square, it was just 3 pm and they were closing, so we were only able to purchase a baguette, but it was a great one and the owner chatted with us about baking, so it wasn't so bad.

The next stop was in Sebastopol at Patisserie Angelica, located near the movie theatre. We bought a flourless chocolate cake for my birthday (above), plus some baklava. The baker also gave my nephew some baguette ends so that he could taste theirs.

All in all, quite a wonderful day!

The following day we also stopped in Freestone at Wildflour Bakery for some of their famous Sticky Buns, three kinds of scones, and a loaf of their Superseedy Bread. Sweetie also purchased their cheese bread, but it wasn't our favorite. Our professional baker was allowed into the back where the baking happens and had a great time chatting with them about the wood fired ovens and such. As you might imagine, we are still working our way through all that bread (although the pastries and cookies are gone...and there is only a bit of the cake left). Unfortunately I didn't take photos as we went along, but check out the links and you are sure to see many of the things we bought and enjoyed.

Wildflour Bakery breads