Can I get it C.O.D.?

One of the things that struck me about this year’s NRA was how little baking and pastry gear was on offer compared to the sheer quantity of pre-made, ready-to-ship bread and dessert. Every other aisle seemed to house a different par-baked bread company or fudgy dessert/cheesecake maker. This makes sense, of course, since there are very few restaurants out there that can afford full-time pastry staff. Yet it’s a testament as to why so many restaurant desserts taste so generic. To be fair, most of these companies are attempting to push the quality envelope as far as they can push it for a dessert that has to spend many days in the back of a truck (and let us not forget that even József Dobos, back in 1884, engineered his famous torte so that it would stay fresh for several weeks in a shipping box). Still, here’s hoping that as dessert becomes an increasingly important part of sit-down dining experiences, more restaurants see the light.