makes 1 dozen small rolls
Every year, Danny Meyer—perhaps New York’s most renowned restaurateur—puts on the Autumn Harvest Dinner, a culinary blowout and fundraiser to fight childhood hunger. Michael Anthony, the chef at Gramercy Tavern (one of Danny’s restaurants), is renowned for his passion for peak-season local ingredients, and I’ve been baking bread for him since Bien Cuit’s early days. One year, just after Labor Day, he called and asked if I could create a roll for the Harvest Dinner. Given Mike’s reputation for serving whatever is in the market on any given day, I knew I had to come up with something that reflected the season. I wanted to evoke the flavor of corn and the brandy-like aroma of fermenting grapes that hits you on a visit to a winery during the crush. The roll that was born of this impulse was a big hit, as was the dinner. I even had the opportunity to taste a shmear of foie gras on one of these rolls when I delivered the order, and I have to say: If you have a tin of foie gras that you’ve been saving for a special occasion, now’s the time to have at it.
Grape must is the mixture of grape skins, flesh, seeds, and juice that you get when you crush grapes in the wine-making process. Syrup is simply the reduced liquid of the must.