Reading Local Seattle

There may be no occasion as telling of this neighborhood and its history over the past 35+ years as happens today with this visit by Piper Davis and Gwen Bassetti—ostensibly from across Main Street—as they are here with the much-awaited cookbook, The Grand Central Baking Book: Breakfast Pastries, Cookies, Pies, and Satisfying Savories from the Pacific Northwest's Celebrated Bakery (Ten Speed). Co-author and Grand Central cuisine manager Piper Davis will be joined by Gwen Bassetti—one of the original four partners in what was first known as The Bakery—who later would return and help develop the Grand Central's signature artisan breads. For some of us, those early days cinnamon rolls—laced with currants, served warm, with butter, on slips of brown wax paper, their smell wafting through the Grand Central Arcade—evoke Proustian memories, formative ones indeed. This should be fun ... and tasteful. Please join us.