How Potter Jane Herold Solved Betony's Soba Noodle Problem With Ash Water
At Betony in New York, executive chef Bryce Shuman had an epiphany: to make chewier, springier soba noodles the way he wanted, he would need a whole lot of alkaline water to bind them. Where would he find gallons of water with a pH above 7.0? Turns out Jane Herold, the potter who handmade all of the dishes in Betony's dining room, has tubs of it at her studio. The water is soapy, silky, and sort of caustic. It's also leftover from the process of making the plates on which the diners eat the noodle dish (whoaaaaaa). What does that process entail exactly? And what makes ash water perfect for making noodles?
Alex Lau1/14Welcome to Wonderland
Jane Herold's studio/home/log cabin/lush garden is only 30 minutes away from New York City, but you'd never know it. It's basically paradise, featuring a wooden cabin she and her husband built themselves; plants ranging from apples and raspberries to sage, lavender, and wood sorrel; and a wood-firing kiln she built with her own two hands. The showroom (pictured) is where those wood-fired ceramics live.
Alex Lau2/14How Restaurant Work Influenced Her Style
"Before I started doing the restaurant stuff, my own pots were more heavily decorated. But very simple pots work nicely with food. Though it actually takes a lot of restraint not to decorate everything," she said.
Alex Lau3/14Where the Magic Happens
Herold knew she wanted to be a potter when she graduated from Sarah Lawrence College in 1977. She wanted to apprentice with one man only: Michael Cardew. She wrote him letters to no avail, before she just bought a one-way ticket to the British Isles to track him down. "I walked the Norfolk Coastal Path, through the Lake District, through Scotland. And I'd call him every two weeks," she remembered. Her persistence drove him to take her on as an apprentice. But she's been a professional potter ever since.
Alex Lau4/14A Lump of Clay Becomes a Pitcher
"Pottery is meditative from start to finish," said Herold. "The thing about pottery is that it records how you are. If you're not focused, you'll have a permanent record of your distraction. There's a little wiggle or a wobble, let's say."
Alex Lau5/14A Lively Pot
"You can only control everything so much," Herold explained. "I embrace ways of working that are more likely to give you a lively pot, as opposed to methods that give you cool, sleek, sterile looking things. To me, my work has a lot of life in it. There's no doubt when you look at this that it's not a machine-made thing."
Alex Lau6/14Put the Coconut on the Clay and Smooth It All Out
In Herold's eyes, people don't realize how much life comes from irregularity. Which is why she uses a kickwheel, which moves slower and more rhythmically than an electric wheel: "It's not smooth and antiseptic. I don't know why people make handmade pottery to look as if it was never touched by human hands. Machines are already good at that." She doesn't normally smooth edges, but when she does, she uses a broken coconut shell.
Alex Lau7/14Fire It Up
This is the kiln where Herold fires up restaurant dishes two to three times a week. "When I'm making plates for Bryce or other chefs, the plate is a canvas and they're going to paint on it," Herold said of her many restaurant clients, which include Semilla, Bâtard, Navy, Aska, Boka, and Centrolina, among many others. For instance, restaurant sauces are less likely to run, so Herold makes their plates flatter.
Alex Lau8/14It's Jane's World and We're Just Eating in It
The chef comes to this corner of the workshop to talk through form and function with Herold, and the process is a two-way street. "It's like an infinity symbol: The restaurant work pushes me one direction, and I push it back." An example? Even though restaurants love of-the-moment flat dishes with a straight, perpendicular rim, she advises against it. A slightly bowed-out rim is easier to stack during meal service, and a whole lot less likely to break. "I can't tell you how many chefs I've had to talk out of that shape," she said.
Alex Lau9/14In the Mood for Sifting Ash
These are ashes from the wood that's left in the base of the kiln after firing the pots. Next, Herold takes the ashes and begins to sieve. "I spend an inordinate amount of time doing this. For every bucket of glaze, the ashes need to be sieved," she explained. "You have to be in the right mood for it: you know, when you're not feeling well enough to do something that'll be permanently be recorded in clay. That feeling when you're tired but still want to be productive."
Alex Lau10/14Ashes to Ashes
There's the water that gets siphoned off, and then there's the ash. The water goes to Shuman, the ash stays for the glaze. The whole process? "I let the ash settle, I siphon off the water, I fill it up again, let it settle, siphon, rinse," she said. She does it four times. The water siphoned off at the third rinse is the water Shuman takes. The ash leftover from the fourth rinse is left out to dry, as shown here, and then used for glazing pots.
Alex Lau11/14Keep It Moving
Ash glaze settles very quickly, so Herold has to keep stirring while she's dipping. Each type of glaze—crystalline, silk, ash—has a different character. Ash glazes allow her to scratch the decorating itch without the finished pots looking too, er, decorated.
Alex Lau12/14We've Got the Whole Cup in Our Hands
"You don't want to leave fingerprints all over it," Herold explained. "So you want to find a way to hold it that won't be conspicuous."
Alex Lau13/14Love Is a Plate
What a finished black ash glaze plate looks like. The way she glazes them peels back the curtain on how they were made: The glaze pools in certain parts and is thinner in others, based on the way she dipped them.
Alex Lau14/14The Final Dish
"Being a celebrity potter never appealed to me," Herold said. "I always wanted to be the village potter that made dishes people ate from, that didn't just sit on tohe shelf. In some crazy, wild way I've become the village potter. It just happens that my village is New York and the people are at top restuarants." Here, one of her plates is the canvas for Shuman's cold soba noodle salad. The soba noodles gain their chewy, springy texture from the ash water siphoned off from Herold's ash glaze process.
