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Greetings from Fat Gold:
During the harvest, we did something special. We crushed fresh BAY LEAVES with olives in the mill!
This is a first for Fat Gold, and it’s available now:
Here’s how this special oil came to be.
Last summer, at a dinner party, the conversation turned to olive oil—this always happens—and our friend Matt asked if we would ever consider making a flavored oil.
We said, maybe, but we’d want to do something new and different—not just another garlic or lemon oil.
We confessed that we didn’t have any brilliant ideas…
…but Matt did! He said: what I associate most with California is the smell of wild bay trees, in the baking heat of summer. The smell of a hike in golden hills.
Everyone around the table gasped and said, OMG! Bay leaf olive oil!
We decided, basically then and there, that this would be our first co-crush experiment.
Explanation: there are two kinds of flavored olive oil. One is an infusion, in which some flavoring—typically an essential oil—is added to an olive oil after it’s milled. The other is a co-crush, in which additional fresh ingredients go into the mill alongside the olives, right at the time of production.
The co-crush process captures the ingredient’s full, rich essence and preserves it in high-quality olive oil. It’s a natural way to extract and preserve the flavor of a season.
So: we wanted to crush fresh bay leaves along with some olives. Where do you get fresh bay leaves—not just a handful, but a truckload?
When Kathryn first moved to San Francisco, she signed up for a CSA box from Eatwell Farm in Dixon, just northeast of the Bay Area. CSA stands for community supported agriculture—it’s the original subscription box! This was the first one Kathryn had ever participated in, and it was an important part of her evolution as an eater and, eventually, a food producer. (Here we are today with our annual subscription program, sort of a CSA in its own way!)
The bay leaves of Matt’s hikes are California bay; the variety more often used in the kitchen is bay laurel, and we learned that Eatwell Farm grows these in abundance. Bay laurel it would be.
Bryan drove them down, arriving at the Fat Gold mill with a load of these bushy green bundles:
The milling process was straightforward. As koroneiki olives flowed into the hopper that feeds our crusher, Robin stood above, adding bay leaves by the fistful.
The aroma in the mill is always amazing—we wish we could share it with you, somehow—and on this particular day, it carried an extra eucalyptus-y oomph.
The oil that emerged is spicy and herbaceous, with notes of oregano and thyme, plus the pungent tang familiar to anyone who’s ever crushed a bay leaf between their fingers.
Mother’s Day is just around the corner, and if you’re looking for something legitimately special—as in, we only made one batch, on one day—we recommend our Mom’s Combo Pack:
The bay leaf oil is packaged in a tidy 250 ml tin, either alone or in the combo pack.
What’s the best use for this oil? Well, it’s common for a recipe to call for both olive oil AND a bay leaf or two—so just use our bay leaf oil instead! Kathryn will be using this oil to make a bay-scented olive oil cake for Mama T on Mother’s Day.
Honestly, we’re excited to hear what you do with it, and what you think of it. This oil was an experiment, something totally new for Fat Gold.
From the chatter of a dinner party to the roar of the Fat Gold mill, and now onward to your kitchen (or maybe your mom’s)—that’s how an idea grows.
Our bay leaf oil is in the shop now, and we’ll ship promptly on Monday:
Thanks, as always, for following along.
—Robin, Kathryn, and Bryan