We've gushed before about etsy.com, the site for the handmade and artisanal from quirky to serious. One local artisan, Jackie Johnson, is selling his wooden rolling pins, plus honey drippers and biscuit cutters on etsy. (The photo isn't cooperating in the upload process, so click the link to see his work.)
French rolling pins are basic and wonderful. French pins are just sticks, so they have no moving parts to go wrong. You can bear down hard on them and not worry about bending the crappy Chinese handles. Wood Elements' rolling pins are 19 inches long — about 9 inches longer than the work area of a standard American rolling pin. That means you serious cooks can roll out big strudels or vast sheets of phyllo in one single stroke.
Buy from his etsy page, or click the "contact" link and find out if you can get it locally without paying shipping. His work was recently featured in The Food Section, the e-newsletter of the New York Times food section.
