On "Good Bread"

 
fig. a: “good bread”?

fig. a: “good bread”?

“Good Bread,” an article that appeared in the April 13, 2020 issue of The New Yorker, is one in a slew of recent culinary dispatches from Bill Buford, the author of the best-selling Heat: An Amateur's Adventures as Kitchen Slave, Line Cook, Pasta-Maker, and Apprentice to a Dante-Quoting Butcher in Tuscany (2007), and in many ways, it’s an extension of that earlier project. In fact, I didn’t realize it at the time, but it turned out to be a teaser for his follow-up to Heat, another culinary Bildungsroman of sorts with a similarly questing title: Dirt: Adventures in Lyon as a Chef in Training, Father, and Sleuth Looking for the Secret of French Cooking.

The action takes place in the years immediately following the publication of Heat. Buford is no longer working the line for Mario Batali in New York City’s high-intensity fine dining scene. He’s no longer apprenticing with Dario Cecchini in the idyllic hills of Tuscany. As his title suggests, he and his family have moved to Lyon, and Buford has decided to study la grande cuisine—and to become “French-trained”—in the city many consider to be the very heart of French gastronomy. He’s hoping to learn in an actual restaurant—a leading one—but no restaurant is interested in taking him on. (His lack of French doesn’t help.) He eventually decides to go to cooking school in Lyon, but between his arrival and his enrolment at l’Institut Bocuse, Buford takes on a fateful apprenticeship with a mad genius baker named Bob, the central subject of “Good Bread.”

Buford’s article turns out to be rather poignant, it contains more than its fair share of narrative twists and turns (don’t worry—no spoilers here!—or, at least, not too many), and, not surprisingly, it has quite a lot to say about what makes “good bread”—and boulangerie baking, more generally—good.

What are the ingredients that make good bread good? Well, it has to do with a fanatical dedication to baking, at the expense of regular hours, sleep, and one’s appearance (after describing Bob’s physique as a cross between Fred Flinstone and Jackie Gleason, Buford observes the following: “HIs hair was brownish and shaggy and usually matted with flour. There was flour in his beard and on his clogs, his sweater, and his trousers... Bathing was not a priority.”).

It has to do with proper (ideally, historic) boulangerie spaces and with well-seasoned ovens (Jacques, Bob’s brother, is the one who first discovered the space for rent, and when he found a wood-burning oven marked “1802” on the premises, he summoned his brother and father. All it took was one look from the outside for Bob’s father to declare, “Yes, this is a good boulangerie.”).

It has to do with natural yeasts (“I knew enough about yeasts to know that, here, they were everywhere,” Buford writes), a sensitivity to temperature, and patience—a willingness to not rush things, to not try to speed up the process artificially, but instead to allow those yeasts the time to work their magic.

And of course, it has to do with technique, too. Bob, we’re told, has remarkable touch when he works, forms, and slashes his loaves.

But it’s also about flour. In his quest to discover Bob’s secret, the source of what makes his bread so superlative, Buford grills the master baker on one occasion. Yeasts? First rise? Final resting? Yes, it has to do with all of those things, Bob tells him, “These are the ABCs.” But then he brings up something Buford hadn’t considered: “Good bread comes from good flour. It’s the flour.” And in Bob’s case, his preference was for artisanal flour, made from locally raised wheat, milled in the traditional manner, from the Auvergne region to the west of Lyon.

While Buford’s article is certainly evocative, and there’s plenty there to inspire those of us who take our bread seriously, his conclusions on what makes good bread good might be disheartening to the amateur baker. You might be quite capable of developing the patience, the attention to detail (including the vagaries of temperature and humidity), and even the basic technique necessary to become a decent baker. You might even be entirely prepared to embrace the fanaticism of bread baking, at the expense of general cleanliness, healthy sleep habits, and even your personal grooming and hygiene (Bob-style!)—plenty of non-professionals have! But what if you don’t have the ideal baking space? Or the right oven? Or flour milled in the traditional manner from small-production, heirloom wheat? Will you ever be able to create “good bread” at home?

The final section of “Good Bread” involves Buford paying a pilgrimage to the region of Auvergne that produced Bob’s very favourite flour. There he visits a miller, Philippe Degrange, whose family has been milling locally grown, small-farm-raised wheat (“nothing over forty hectares”) since the early 18th century. Degrange’s flour—his entire operation—is a true product of the terroir, we’re told, and the notion of terroir that’s presented to us is environmental, but it’s also a matter of history and tradition. Through his flour, “le goût et les valeurs sont trasmis”—both taste and values are passed on, according to Degrange. In other words, the flavours one tastes when Degrange’s flour is turned into bread by an expert auvergnois bakery like Boulangerie Vincent are a complex affair because terroir (one sense of the “dirt” in Buford’s title) is a complex affair.

Buford is gifted a 10-kilo bag of flour by Degrange before he leaves Auvergne and returns home to New York. When he and his family finish the boule he brought back from Boulangerie Vincent, he begins to bake again in honour of Bob and Degrange using his auvergnois flour. While his bread is not quite to the standards of Boulangerie Vincent, the loaves he bakes are exceptional: “[they] had fruit and complexity and a feeling of nutritiousness.” But when Degrange’s flour runs out, he quits. He stops baking bread. What’s the point?, Buford is suggesting. After all, as Degrange once told him—echoing Bob—“It’s all about the flour.”

—————

The good news is that while there’s no question that flour matters, when it comes to baking good bread, it’s not “all about the flour.” It couldn’t possibly be. Imagine great flour used by a terrible baker, or just a terribly distracted one. The flour wouldn’t matter. In fact, the end result might actually be worse than if it had been made with conventional flour. It would be an abomination.

Yes, flour matters. And, yes, there’s a lot to be said for small farming practices, and the cultivation of heirloom varietals, and the importance of healthy land, and tradition. But what if the flour that resulted from this process sat on a shelf for months and even years? Would it still have its goût? Would it still have any life in it at all? In other words, there’s more to flour than just its provenance.

Serious bakers have always been concerned not only with the quality of their flour, but also with its freshness. And it’s become clear to many bakers—myself included—that the freshness of one’s flour—how recently it was milled—might actually be of much greater significance than was previously realized, affecting not only the taste of the bread produced, but also its nutritional value and its digestibility. But, again, all of this would be beside the point if this exceptional, freshly milled flour was handled by a lousy baker. The results would be disastrous.

The reason a bakery like Vermont’s highly acclaimed Elmore Mountain Bread matters—and it does!—and the reason they’ve become pioneers of the the fresh-milled movement, is not because they are working with local producers, it’s not because they bake in a wood-fired oven, it’s not even because they only work with flour that’s been milled in the last 24 hours (!). Yes, all those factors matter a great deal, they’re all part of the reason their bread is so flavourful, and it would be hard to be a leading force in today’s “grainiac” community if you were actually using conventional, mass-produced flour (especially if it was stale, too). But the primary reason their bread is so good—the reason the public has taken notice—is because they know what to do with their carefully sourced, freshly milled flour. They are also expert at both making bread and baking bread. As a wise man once put it, “It don’t mean a thing, if it ain’t got that swing.”

fig. b:  good bread!:  country loaf with sesame seeds

fig. b: good bread!: country loaf with sesame seeds

What I’m trying to get at is that there are primary factors that result in good bread, and then there are secondary factors.

Primary factors:

  • time—Yes, “time heals all wounds,” “time is an ocean, but it is not the shore,” and “time is a construct”, but for our purposes, time is what allows your leavener, and especially your natural leavener, to work some real magic.

  • patience—If you want your loaves to bake successfully, and you want to create bread that ranks high when it comes to flavour and digestibility, patience is your friend. This means starting your baking process early enough that you won’t be tempted to rush things and cut corners at any point. One of the biggest mistakes you can make as a novice baker is to look at a recipe for, say, a sourdough country loaf, and see that the author recommends mixing the the batch of leaven you’ll need “the night before” you plan to assemble your dough, and to interpret that as, “1:00 or 2:00 AM is still ‘the night before, right?,” and then hope to have a nice, bubbly batch of leaven at 9:00 AM when you roll out of bed eager to mix some dough and bake some loaves. If you happened to make that rookie mistake, it’s not the end of the world. You’d just have to be patient and adjust your schedule accordingly. Your leaven will become nice and bubbly eventually. And eventually you’d be able to make great bread with it, if you were patient. Get it?

  • sensitivity to one’s baking environment (temperature, humidity, etc.)—If you’re going to be baking in a fully climate-controlled environment, your results are pretty predictable. If, however, you’re going to be baking in an environment that’s subject to heat and humidity in the summer months and cold drafts and chilly air in the fall, winter, and possibly even the spring, you’ll have to learn to “read your room” and make the necessary adjustments to continue to bake successfully. Sometimes, when the weather is particularly turbulent, these adjustments can be quite elaborate. Sure, such conditions can be a challenge, and they might even result in failure. But if you manage to succeed, if you manage to ride that wave somehow, and produce great loaves of bread in spite of it all, the glory is all the greater.

  • technique—Bread baking can be remarkably forgiving, but there’s nothing like technique to get you out of a jam (see “sensitivity to one’s baking environment” above), or to create not just “good” but exceptional bread.

Secondary factors:

  • baking spaces—Of course, it’s wonderful to have an ideal space for bread baking, but “good,” even great bread, can be produced in even the tightest and most awkward of spaces.

  • ovens—There’s no reason to be hung up on baking bread in an expensive, tricked-out oven, or in a beautifully crafted wood-fired oven (especially a historic one stamped “1802,” or something to that effect). Even your most basic home unit is capable of producing fantastic bread.

  • leaveners—Many of us are devoted to sourdough baking, but if creating and maintaining your sourdough seems like too much of a hassle, even supermarket varieties of instant yeast can be used to produce delicious bread—possibly even “good bread”—especially if you’re willing to work with time and exhibit patience (see “time” and “patience” above).

  • even flour—Of course, try to source the very finest flour you can find, preferably locally or regionally produced and organic, and as freshly milled as possible. But if your options are limited (including your budget), try to at least buy unbleached flour, and try to bake with flour that’s reasonably fresh.*

This should be a relief to the amateur baker. All of the primary factors are fully within your grasp. Even the technique needed to produce exceptional homemade sourdough is something that can be easily picked up over time. Mixing and folding your bread is very straightforward. Baking it requires a little care, but is not particularly difficult. The trickiest part really has to do with forming your loaves properly.

We can’t all have a ramshackle, bohemian bakery in Lyon, or even visit one—especially now, given the situation. We can’t all source our freshly milled flour from the terroir of Auvergne. But we can certainly all make good bread—perhaps even great bread.

aj

  • Flour is volatile. It can go rancid and/or become infested if it’s not properly stored and it isn’t used quickly enough. This is important to remember if you’re shopping in pandemic mode. Buying large quantities of flour only really makes sense if you have optimum storage conditions or, even better, if you’re going work through such quantities of flour in relatively short order.

Today's Menu: December 13, 2020, rev. ed.

 
fig. a:  Russian Black Bread, whole

fig. a: Russian Black Bread, whole

Russian Black Bread

50% rye flour

50% bread flour

15% levain

30% coffee

15% molasses

10% honey

30% water

2.5% sea salt

1 tbsp cocoa powder

2 tbsp poppy seeds

2 1/2 tsp fennel seeds, cracked

2 tsp caraway seeds, toasted

1 1/2 tsp nigella seeds


fig. b:  Russian Black Bread, crumb

fig. b: Russian Black Bread, crumb

fig. c:  Russian Black Bread, slices

fig. c: Russian Black Bread, slices

fig. d:  Russian Black Bread with smoked salmon

fig. d: Russian Black Bread with smoked salmon

This recipe was heavily inspired by the one for Russian Black Bread in Michelle Polzine’s excellent Baking at The 20th Century Cafe: Iconic European Desserts From Linzer Torte to Honey Cake. I adapted it according to my modified Chad Robertson method, and the results were terrific.

aj

Bread & Tomatoes

 
fig. a:  Sunday morning loaves

fig. a: Sunday morning loaves

Semolina-Sesame Loaf

20% semolina (preferably semola rimacinata, an extra-fine “re-milled” or twice-milled Italian variety)

80% bread flour

15% levain

85% water

2.5% sea salt

3.0% toasted sesame seeds

fig. b:  levain landscape

fig. b: levain landscape

This semolina-sesame loaf has been my latest obsession over the last couple of weeks. It was inspired by the semolina loaves that were a specialty of some of the truly old-school Italian-American bakeries of New Jersey back in the day. For a while, I worked in a wine store in Northern Virginia that used to import dozens of loaves of bread from Jersey every Thursday. I got pretty hooked on the flavour at the time. Those loaves tended to have sesame seeds generously sprinkled on top. In this case, I put an especially generous amount of toasted sesame seeds inside the loaf.

Yesterday, I celebrated the arrival of my latest batch of semolina-sesame bread by making a somewhat old-school spaghetti dinner with lots of garlic and a couple of anchovies in the sauce. I wanted to have something that was saucy and savoury, something that would need some sopping up, something that was just begging for a freshly baked loaf of crusty bread.

This time of year, fresh tomatoes that have any flavour to them are a little hard to find, for reasons that should be obvious. Therefore, from the tail end of fall until the early days of summer, I tend to seek out the tastiest canned tomatoes I can find for many of my home cooking projects, including the making of tomato-based pasta sauces. Without being ridiculous, use the best tomatoes you can afford. Spending a few bucks on a can of tomatoes might seem extravagant to some, but, unless you grow your own, the best fresh tomatoes can also be pricey (rightfully so, in most cases), and a good can of tomatoes packs a lot of potential into its tight, tinned confines.

If you happen to be in the States, keep your eyes open for these sweet, delicious Stanislaus 74-40 tomato filets from California. (They’re worth buying for their anti-Brand X propaganda alone!).

fig. c: 74-40 or bust!

fig. c: 74-40 or bust!

If you’re in Montreal, it’s nice to see that Bianco DiNapoli’s phenomenal canned tomatoes—also from California, but this time organic, too!—are readily available.

I like breaking open an extra-large can like the one you see above and then parceling its contents in a variety of ways for a variety of different projects, at least one of which will usually be a pasta sauce of some kind. The one I made yesterday was quick, easy, and super-satisfying:

Simple Umami-Rich Pasta Sauce

1 28-ounce can canned tomatoes (or equivalent), crushed by hand in a bowl

a generous glug of extra-virgin olive oil

1-2 oil-packed anchovies (preferably packed in olive oil)

1-2 medium to large cloves garlic, minced

1 generous pinch crushed chile flakes

salt to taste

Heat your olive oil over medium-low heat. When your olive oil is warm, add the anchovies and stir with spoon until they have broken down and melded with the olive oil. Add the chile flakes and cook 15-30 seconds, until aromatic. Add the garlic and cook for another 15-30 seconds, until the garlic becomes aromatic and it takes on a hint of golden colour. Add the tomatoes with all their juices and simmer for 20-30 minutes over low heat. Season to taste with salt before serving.

Serve over spaghetti, with freshly grated Parmesan, some garlicky homemade breadcrumbs (if you got ‘em!), and some freshly torn basil leaves.

When you serve this sauce with pasta, don’t be stingy. There should be a little sauce left in the bottom of the bowl that’s calling out for a crusty bread.

Of course, crust isn’t everything. There’s also something to be said for structure, and for a tender, flavourful crumb, like these two specimens:

fig. d:  semolina-sesame crumb #1

fig. d: semolina-sesame crumb #1

fig. e:  semolina-sesame crumb #2

fig. e: semolina-sesame crumb #2

Using semola rimacinata instead of standard semolina is one of the big reasons the crumb on this loaf is particularly tender and fine. Plus, semola rimacinata is a great product to have around the house—it’s fantastic for making homemade pasta.

Anyway, although they’re hard to see, there’s plenty of flavour-packed toasted sesame seeds in this loaf, which only add to the taste sensation. I used to toast my sesame seeds myself, but it was a bit of a hassle, especially because sesame seeds are delicate and easily scorched if you don’t watch them carefully. These days I just buy large bags of Japanese toasted sesame seeds—we use them all the time when we cook Japanese dishes, and they’re perfect for bread baking.

This bread is delicious on its own, phenomenal with butter, and simply crazy with red sauce.

aj

From Apple Jam to Crabapple Jelly

We've been listening to George Harrison's All Things Must Pass a lot recently, including its largely improvisatory Apple Jam sides ("Out of the Blue"!).

fig. a:  apple jam

fig. a:  apple jam

But, when it comes to making tasty jams (or jellies, as the case may be) of our own, we've been focused on crabapples.

 fig. b:  crabapples

 fig. b:  crabapples

In part, that's because there's nothing quite like crabapple jelly:  that colour, that tartness, that natural set.  Most other jellies are either notoriously finicky, or they're just not as gorgeous.

But, mainly, it's because we've had access to a particularly fruitful crabapple tree--when the wild turkeys haven't been shaking it down, we've been free to harvest this tree to our hearts' delight.

 fig. c:  crabapple tree

 fig. c:  crabapple tree

 fig. d:  freshly picked crabapples

 fig. d:  freshly picked crabapples

At work, Michelle makes large quantities of crabapple jelly to serve with terrines, mousses, and pâtés.  With these crabapples, she makes small batches of jelly to spread on our toast.  Either way, the method is essentially the same.

Crabapple Jelly à la Michelle

Stem, clean and sort through the crabapples, removing any that are rotten.

Place in a medium/large pot, depending on how many apples you have.

Just barely cover with water.  You should be able to press down on them, getting the water to cover them when you do.

Cook for 20-25 minutes at a simmer until your crabapples are falling apart and fragrant.

Pour through a chinois and let drip.*

For every 10 parts juice, add 6-7 parts sugar, depending on the tartness of your crabapples.

Place the juice and sugar in an appropiately sized pot, bring to a simmer, and cook at a simmer until you reach the gel stage.

A drop of liquid should come off the spoon in a sheet rather than a droplet.

Place in sterilized jars and seal according to proper canning procedures. Or simply pour into any clean glass container and let set, then store in the fridge.   

Voilà!

* You can also use a jelly bag for this step, but Michelle prefers to use a chinois because it speeds up the process.

And, either way, the results are beautiful--to the eye, and to the palate.

fig. e:  crabapple jelly for breakfast 1

fig. e:  crabapple jelly for breakfast 1

fig. f:  crabapple jelly for breakfast 2

fig. f:  crabapple jelly for breakfast 2

Of course, it pays to have homemade bread on hand to enjoy your jelly with,

fig. g:  pain de campagne

fig. g:  pain de campagne

but that's another story.

Act fast:  crabapple season is already in full swing.

 

aj