Farine

Crazy for Bread

Kneading Conference West 2012

Don’t you love it when you find yourself in a crowd of people and experience an overwhelming feeling of togetherness and belonging? I know I do although it doesn’t happen to me very often because outside immediate circles of intimacy, love and friendship, I am usually an outsider looking in. Having now lived in the United States for as long as I have lived in France, I am truly bicultural. In practical terms it means that due to the twin sets of references I carry in my head and heart, I never completely blend in on either side of the Atlantic. Truth be told, I cherish (and maybe nurture) this internal divide: exile is very much my country of choice and I have come to rather enjoy the exquisite ache of nostalgia and longing, especially in today’s connected world where the other side is only a click away.

Still I love to belong as much as the next person and at the Kneading Conference West, this  year as last year, I found myself both part of a larger whole and at one with it. Loosely defined, the Conference (co-sponsored in part by the Bread Bakers Guild of America) is a gathering of bakers (both home bakers and professionals), millers, growers and brewers all interested in bringing local grains back to their communities. Last year we mostly talked about reviving cultures which had thrived in the Pacific Northwest since the nineteenth century before agribusiness decided it would be more profitable for these grains to be grown on a massive scale in the Midwest. This year, we discussed moving forward and finding ways to sustain the renaissance of local grains overtime, be it wheat, barley, rye or spelt, to name only a few.

Having grown up on local food (my grandparents grew, raised and foraged for a large part of what we ate, not to mention the hunting for small game that went on in the fall in the nearby woods), I have a deep respect for terroir and man’s connection to the land and I love it that there is a movement afoot in America away from industrial and processed food. I still remember my shock when we moved to New York in 1979 and I first saw baguettes at the supermarket. I picked one up from the bin where it stood, wrapped in plastic, among several other pale companions, I lifted it out. To my surprise and consternation, it bowed deeply forward and remained that way all the way home. Due to the then-prevalent preference for overmixing and fast fermentations, bread was generally mediocre in France at the time we moved, so it isn’t as if I had left behind a continent of fragrant and crusty loaves. Still I had never seen such pliable bread and it was depressing. It took many years, the publication of Nancy Silverton’s Breads of the La Bread Bakery and my discovery of levain before we had baguettes on the table again on a regular basis.

So the local theme is one which resonates with me but it wasn’t until keynotes speakers Andrew Whitley of Bread Matters and Naomi Duguid, co-author (among many other books) of Flatbreads & Flavors: A Baker’s Atlas – a book I own since 1997 and still always open with a sense of wonder – started talking about their experiences that it all coalesced in my mind. Nancy Silverton and many other talented bakers after her taught us traditional French methods of bread-baking focusing on gentle mixing and long fermentations. Such baking is mostly based on a type of flour that offers reasonably consistent results because it comes from a blend of grains chosen for their baking properties, that is to say commercial white flour.

If we want to use more local grains (and we do or we wouldn’t have been attending the Conference), we must accept the fact that our bread may not turn out exactly the same day after day. To get as close as possible to the crumb and crust we like, we need to learn how to compensate for the variability built in local wheat. The good news, as Scott Mangold cheerfully put it during his excellent workshop on test baking local whole wheat flours, is that, in the process, we will become better bakers. But growing to love the taste and texture of these local breads as much as those of the white baguette we may still hold as a gold standard will require keeping an open mind and educating both ourselves, our families and our friends (in the case of the home baker) and our customers (in case of the professional baker). As we slowly incorporate more local whole grains into our baking, the payoff will be huge however in terms of flavor, diversity, nutrition and the environment.

The way I suddenly understood it, our new role, as bakers, is to build upon our knowledge of traditional French bread-baking to help strengthen and sustain our communities here in America. What could possibly induce a deeper sense of finally belonging in this French woman who emigrated from her native Paris years and years ago and now bakes in the Pacific Northwest?

Of course I am lucky to live in a part of the country where (although much remains to be done), grains are already being grown, milled and made accessible to local bakers and brewers. If such is not the case where you live but you have access to a spot where you can grow what you like, you may want to read Growing Small Grains in Your Garden by Bob Van Veldhuizen. “A summation of many years of agronomic research into growing grains in Alaska scaled down to the typical home garden,” it might give you some ideas on ways to get your family to kick off the white flour habit, even if you only have a balcony and your crop yields one tiny loaf… Should you decide to embark on that particular project, you may also want to read William Alexander’s 52 Loaves, the lively account of a home grower/miller/baker’s odyssey.

This year as last year, the Conference took place on the charmingly bucolic grounds of Western Washington State University Mount Vernon Research and Extension Center. Chaired by Stephen Jones, the Center’s Director, it offered many different lectures, classes and workshops, not to mention evening tastings of local beers and ciders and, on the very last afternoon, a tour of the Hedlin Family Farm, BreadFarm Bakery and Fairhaven Organic Flour Mill. I didn’t do the tour but I took as many classes and attended as many lectures as possible and I will report here on what I saw and heard. So please stay tuned!

Related Farine posts: 
Andrew Whitley: Bread Matters (keynote address)
Naomi Duguid: Bread Over Time (keynote address)
Kneading Conference West 2011
Scott Mangold: Test Baking with Local Wheats for Home and Bakery
Finnish Barley Bread (ohrarieska) (a Naomi Duguid recipe)


Other related posts:
By breadsong : Kneading Conference West – Day 1, Day 2 & Day 3
By Floyd Mann (The Fresh Loaf): Kneading Conference West – Part 1 & Part 2
By Naomi Duguid: Notes from the Skagit Valley
By Rhona McAdam: Kneading with a k
By Teresa Greenway: Kneading Conference West – Part 1 & Part 2

After I throw in a couple of flatbread and cracker recipes, not to mention the formula for the powerfully seductive barley-cheese-and-aged cheddar bread baked at the Conference by Andrew Ross from a British recipe adapted by Hannah Warren, my hope is that you too will want to answer Naomi Duguid’s call to bakers: “Go back to your home or bakery and add at least two products than contain whole grains to your repertoire as well as at least one item made largely with a grain other than wheat”… It may not sound like much but if we all do it and buy our grain locally, seeds of change will germinate in our communities and grow to make a real difference.

A Toronto Baker Discovers French Boulangeries

David Aplin, co-owner of Cliffside Hearth Bread Company with Camelia Proulx, his wife and business partner, recently sent me this lively (and deliciously vivid) account of his tour of French bakeries during a summer trip to France with his family. I so enjoyed reading it that I asked him if I could post the story. He kindly agreed and even sent me some pictures.
I have yet to meet David and his wife or to taste their bread but, as he recently wrote on facebook, he bakes “with wild yeast and love” and the ingredients listed on the bakery’s homepage (flour, whole grains, water and salt) are so straightforward that I am already hugely interested. If I ever make it to Toronto and if David and Camelia don’t mind a visit from a nosy bread blogger, Cliffside Hearth Bread Company will be at the top of my list!


Ze miche

Boulangeries, boulangeries and more boulangeries:
A Baker’s Vacation

My wife and son and I just returned from our first trip to France.
It was supposed to be a vacation, but we combined pleasure with business and visited as many boulangeries as was possible.
France in general was a lot of fun, but specifically it was a real eye opener to visit the bakeries. There were as many differences between them as there were similarities.
At each stop we tried to purchase at least a baguette traditionelle, a pain aux céréales, and some sort of méteil or seigle as we are rye bread lovers. We realized that almost every boulangerie had an outstanding looking pâtisserie display so added to the bread purchases were various tartes: lemon, apple, raspberry, etc.
We stayed on Rue Chapon and Boulangerie Julien was less than three minutes away, however it being August they were closed. Many people told us not to visit Paris or France during August as “everything is closed”, however as we are also bakery owners it was the only time for us to consider a visit. Yes, there were many places closed, but we had no trouble at all finding places that were open.
Besides making the obligatory pilgrimage Chez Poilâne on Rue du Cherche-Midi, we checked out Maison Kayser, Dominique Saibron and many places whose names I forget. We also visited some of the boulangeries under the Banette moniker, franchise places with very average offerings.
At the more prestigious places it was hit and miss. Chez Kayser, brand maintenance was obvious, bread suffered. Saibron was simply outstanding, beat Kayser hands down. Poilâne was excellent, what I expected, we lived on that miche for the rest of the day as we hiked around Paris.
We passed a Paul shop but didn’t go in…the line was too long! The bakers were out at the side having a smoke break. I peered inside and saw the wonderful sight of an Artofex mixer full of dough, set on first gear and slowly turning, the arms gently lifting and folding the wet dough. A sight I will never forget.
There were some unexpected surprises too, we bought an amazing pain aux céréales from a Bio-Marché supermarket, it was cut from a giant sized loaf the size of a small car. We asked the counter girl who supplied them with their bread, but between our lack of French and her lack of enthusiasm we never found out.
There was also a tiny place on the Ile beyond the Notre-Dame cathedral. An old baker wearing a blue and white striped cardigan and looking every bit the typical Frenchman had baguettes traditionnelles that were flat and curved, not much to look at, but amazing flavour and texture.

We left Paris after only four days, I could spend a decade wandering the streets and visiting different boulangeries.


Le Pont du Gard

We went south to Avignon and stayed at a mas in the country outside Chateaurenard. From there we made day trips to various places, again with varying degrees of success. There was a good place in Chateaurenard called Festival des Pains, good baguette and a pain aux céréales cut like a ciabatta, almost a meter in length. In Rognonas we found two places both with very good baguettes traditionelles.


In Rognonas

However, the best boulangerie we had the pleasure of visiting was Le Farinoman Fou in Aix-de-Provence. A very impressive bakery. Bread only, no pâtisserie of any kind, no drinks or coffee, no bread slicer…just like our place:  A temple of bread.


At the Farinoman’s

We left with a bag of stuff, two “Olympic”-sized baguettes, a demi-miche, a pain aux céréales and a seigle. The baguettes were devoured in a few short minutes as we browsed the weekly marché nearby, we went back and bought two more.
Crispy and chewy, these were baguettes on another level. The flavors were incomparable and nuanced: dried fruit, honey, roasted grains, mild fruit acidity. Simply outstanding.
The shop is very small, perhaps less than 500 sq. feet. Our place is 740 sq. feet and we’re always moaning about how small it is, but Farinoman (as most other french bakeries) is tiny. Small in size but big in quality and flavour, as I said the breads were outstanding, falling in that delicious zone between light and heavy, everything had a good crust but the crumb structure on all of the breads was…voluptuous, chewy but not in the Poilane style at all.

***

Don’t you wish you could drop everything and hop on a plane? I sure do… Thanks, David!

Chad Robertson’s Danish Rye Bread

I see my quest for Danish rye bread as a Proustian endeavor (if Proust could conjure a bygone world from a morsel of madeleine dunked into lime-flower tea, why couldn’t I bring back to life a beloved chunk of the past with a slice of bread?) but as such, of course, it might be doomed: Proust himself knew from experience that long-ago days cannot be summoned at will and that involuntary memory alone has the power to revive them.
Still, he wrote this which I hold to be true:  “When from a long-distant past nothing subsists, after the people are dead, after the things are broken and scattered, still, alone, more unsubstantial, more persistent, more faithful, taste and smell alone, more fragile but more enduring, more immaterial, more persistent, more faithful, remain poised a long time, like souls, remembering, waiting, hoping, amid the ruins of all the rest; and bear unflinchingly, in the tiny and almost impalpable drop of their essence, the vast structure of recollection.” 
I would so love to access forgotten memories of the summers spent in Denmark in the 60’s and early 70’s with my mother-in-law Sigrid and her stepmom, Bebbe, back when we still lived in France. Our kids were barely out of babyhood (our youngest wasn’t even born yet) and we split our time between a tiny wooden cabin at the beach, lost among heather and pines, and Bebbe’s apartment in an old and quiet neighborhood near Copenhagen.
I don’t have many photos of these days (we were on a tight budget and film developing was expensive) and the few I have are mainly of people. So most of the images are in my head: the silvery wings of an old windmill against a deep blue sky, fields of wheat undulating in the sea breeze, a feisty dachshund jumping up and stealing our two-year’s old’s round lollipop as we walked home from the grocery store, a tiny courtyard full of flowers and an even tinier kitchen with a white-painted half-door through which Bebbe could be seen frying endless platters of frikadelle (meatballs), pickling gherkins (syltede asier) which we loved to eat with almost everything, making rabarber grød (a buttermilk-based cold rhubarb soup) and generally doing her best to keep us well fed and happy.
I can still see the apartment with the high-back dark red velvet Victorian couch, the finches waiting for crumbs on the leafy balcony, Bebbe herself in her old-fashioned silk dress and lace collar, the evening tea we drank in tall china cups and the endless rounds of rummy we played at night once the kids were in bed.
Bebbe lived to be 103 and kept her wits to the end. She credited the iced shot of aquavit she had with lunch every day for her general good health. That, and her daily pint of room-temperature dark ale as well as the rye bread that accompanied every meal.
I was never one for hard liquor and I didn’t appreciate beer back then. So I don’t have any taste or smell memories associated either with the aquavit or with the ale but Bebbe’s house is where I discovered rye bread. Of course I had had some in France, mostly on festive occasions when oysters appeared on the table. But that French pain de seigle had in no way prepared me for the chewy, grainy and fragrant dark marvel that formed the base of the open shrimp sandwich (smørrebrød) Bebbe had prepared for my very first lunch in Denmark. It was love at first taste.
Whether at the beach or in the city, she had a favorite bakery where she always bought her bread. I knew nothing about bread then and certainly didn’t have the slightlest inkling that one day I would be into making my own, or I would have taken pictures, interviewed the bakers, asked to see their surdejg (sourdough), jotted down recipes and bought rye berries to bring back to France. But I could identify artisan rye bread with my eyes closed just from the smell of the slowly fermented grain. Supermarket bread (which we tried once when we ran out and the bakery was closed) didn’t even come close.

I haven’t been back to Denmark in ages and of course everything would be different anyway if I visited again. So making a rugbrød that would, à la Proust, revive the taste and smell of these Danish summers and maybe recall the voices of the two women who lovingly wove these memories together for us seems like the only way back…

While I have yet to find a rye bread that quite does the trick, Chad Robertson’s Danish rye bread comes close. We had friends from France staying with us when I made open sandwiches with it. Both are well traveled and have been to Scandinavia and immediately after taking a bite, they exclaimed: “Danish rye bread!”. So the taste is definitely there. Sort of. Although the bread isn’t nearly as fragrant as the one I recall. It may be because Chad uses a wheat levain. I am pretty sure the rye bread we had in those long ago summers was made with a rye levain. I’ll try making it again and see.

Still, with a bit of smoked wild Alaskan salmon, a dollop of crème fraîche from British Columbia (brought to me the other day by my friend breadsong  and easily the best I have ever had on this continent) and a spray of fresh dill, Chad’s Dansk rugbrød makes a lovely smørrebrød. It doesn’t awaken old memories but it makes me smile as I imagine Bebbe giving it a try and pronouncing it americansk but good before methodically downing her aquavit.

On the technical side, I was a bit worried that the rye berries wouldn’t be soft enough to incorporate in the dough if simply soaked overnight, so I soaked them for 24 hours before draining and rinsing them. Since I had an unexpected scheduling conflict and couldn’t mix and bake as planned, I put them in the fridge for another 24 hours. When I looked at them, they had started to sprout. Knowing I wouldn’t have time to bake for another couple of days, I put them in the freezer. I took them out the night before I mixed the dough. I made sure all the ingredients were at room temperature when I started, even the buttermilk and the beer.
My 9 x 5.5 ” bread pans were a bit too small for the amount of dough the recipe yielded. The breads clearly wanted to rise higher and couldn’t. Next time I should probably make two and a half loaves. Although maybe I should first see if I get the same rise out of an all-rye starter…
Chad Robertson’s Danish Rye Bread is going to Susan for this week’s issue of Yeastspotting.

Apple-Blueberry Spelt Bread with Chia Seeds

Blueberry season is upon us and we have been picking and freezing, picking and freezing… The good thing about blueberries is that they grow on thornless bushes which means you can take kids along and they don’t complain. They just pick and eat, pick and eat. Some berries even make it to their baskets.
One of my five-year old grandsons picked three pounds the other day without even noticing that his small basket – the very wooden basket my grandfather made for me ages ago so that I could go foraging with him in the fields and woods near their home – was getting seriously heavy. He said that he needed to pick a lot to have enough for the winter (he eats them frozen) and in the same breath, he confided that winter was his favorite season because it rained a lot and it got dark really early and he could stay inside and play videogames and watch movies. The blueberries were clearly meant to be part of the good time to come. Good for him!

As for me my thoughts naturally turned to bread and since I had tasty memories of an apple-blueberry bread I once posted to my now-retired French blog, I decided to bake a blueberry bread for breakfast. I thought I was being creative with that recipe, relying on spelt to provide a hint of a honey flavor, adding unsweetened applesauce as a counterpoint to the berries and chia seeds for crunch and improved nutrition. But just to be on the safe side, I searched Farine to see what blueberry recipes I might have already posted over the years and that’s when I discovered two things about myself, one bad, one good.

Bad news first: I had made (and posted) a very similar bread (Blueberry Bread with Spelt Starter) three summers ago and didn’t have the slightest recollection of having done so… A very senior moment which is probably a sign of incipient mental degeneration. Oh well! 
As for the good news, it is that I am pretty consistent. That 2009 blueberry bread was already levain, spelt- and applesauce-based! There is some degree of comfort in knowing that if one’s mind is starting to go, at least it is going in one piece and one direction…
This recipe is better than the old one: it foregoes the almond oil and instant yeast, uses levain as the only leavening agent and relies on baker’s dry milk for tenderness and improved conservation (spelt tends to dry out faster than wheat).
I love the taste (there is something in the apple-blueberry combination that I find particularly enticing) and the texture is surprisingly smooth and mellow (I credit the baker’s milk). It keeps very well indeed (after six days of sitting on the kitchen counter in a brown paper bag, the test loaf was still fresh, which is a first in my experience for a bread that is 100% spelt).
We now have a gazillion blueberries in the freezer. Does this mean I will be making this bread year-round? No, it doesn’t. I don’t believe the dough would take kindly to the addition of frozen anything and folding in soggy thawed berries doesn’t seem appealing. This is and shall remain a bread of summer.
If you do try to make it at home, make sure you taste your berries first. You want them sweet and ripe. If the only berries available to you are on the sour side, the bread may not turn out as well. You could try sweetening the dough a bit though. Honey comes to mind as it pairs very well with spelt (it also helps with the shelf life).
Because our berries are so sweet however, I prefer honey in a jar on the breakfast table. My garden is full of lavender right now. So, naturally, I would go for lavender honey. Blackberry honey would work too. Both honeys are produced in our neighborhood.

As a Parisian (born and raised) whose parents maintained a keen interest and deep love throughout their lives for the regional food which had shaped their own childhoods (both were born and raised in Southern France, my Mom in the Southeast and my Dad in the Southwest), I witnessed first-hand the strength of the bonds which tie us to the land and the structuring role of what we call terroir (the term used to apply only to wine but is more widely used now).
Were they still alive and with us today, my parents – who were earth wanderers at heart – would tirelessly explore the tastes of this new world and seek to weave them into our everyday lives.  With this bread – made of all things Washington: spelt, apples, berries, water and even the levain whose wild yeast cells were originally captured by my friend Teresa in the San Juan Islands – I know I am following in their footsteps, an ocean and a continent away, and doing something that mattered enormously to them: setting up roots where we live without forgetting where we came from, thus helping the younger generations develop and maintain a sense of continuity and belonging.
Of course since I am not (yet) completely delusional, I  know that in itself, a loaf or two won’t make much of a difference in anybody’s life. Still baking the landscape and sharing it with family and friends is a step towards making it truly our own. At the very least it provides me with a strong feeling of connectedness both to those who came before me and to those who are coming after. Never mind the fact that right now, the young generation prefers its berries frozen and its landscapes in 3-D…


Ingredients: (for one boule and two bâtards)
  • 485 g white spelt flour
  • 323 g freshly milled whole spelt flour
  • 242 g mature wheat levain at 100% hydration (a spelt levain would be even better)
  • 565 g water (more as needed)
  • 80 g non-fat dry milk (I used Baker’s Special Dry Milk from King Arthur’s)
  • 242 g fresh blueberries at room temperature
  • 242 g smoothly pureed applesauce (no sugar added)
  • 80 g chia seeds, unsoaked
  • 18 g salt
Method: (this bread was hand-mixed and made over two days)
  1. Add the chia seeds and the dry milk to the flours. Whisk together
  2. Add levain and water and fold until the dry ingredients are well hydrated (adding more water as needed: I use a spray bottle which makes incremental hydration increases very easy)
  3. Let rest for 30 minutes, covered (mock autolyse)
  4. Add applesauce and blueberries and fold until incorporated
  5. Add salt and adjust hydration
  6. Fold a few times again
  7. Let rest for 30 minutes, covered
  8. Repeat step 6 three or four times, adding water again as needed to obtain medium soft consistency
  9. Refrigerate overnight or for up to 10-12 hours, covered (I put the dough in the little wine refrigerator that came with our house. Since we never use it, I removed a couple of shelves and set the bottom part to 50°F/10°C. The less cold the refrigerator, the less acidic the dough is likely to be)
  10. The next day, bring back to room temperature, divide as desired (I made one large bread and two smaller ones) and pre-shape. Let rest 15 minutes, covered
  11. Shape as desired (in my case, one boule and two bâtards) and set to proof, covered, in linen-lined and generously-floured baskets (I used a mixture of wheat and rice flour since the dough was rather wet and I was afraid it was going to stick)
  12. Pre-heat oven to 470°F/243°C
  13. When dough is ready (a gentle pressure with two fingers yields a small indentation that doesn’t bounce back) (with spelt fermentation happens rather fast so it is best to start checking after 40 minutes or so), gently invert on a parchment paper-lined, semolina-dusted half-sheet pan, stencil and score as desired and bake with steam for the first five minutes, decreasing oven temperature to 450°F/232°C after 5 minutes
  14. Rotate the loaves as needed after 20 minutes and continue baking for a total of 30-35 minutes for the smaller loaves, 40 minutes for the larger one or until the bread yields a hollow sound when tapped on the bottom
  15. Cool on a rack
  16. Enjoy!

The Apple-Blueberry Spelt Bread is going to Susan for Yeastpotting. Thank you, Susan!

Risotto Bread with Basil

Now this is what I call a lazy post! The only thing I need to do is post pictures: the recipe is already all written up (with many photographs) on my friend breadsong’s beautiful and creative blog. I didn’t change anything to her formula (which is based on Jan Hedh’s Risotto Bread from his book Artisan Breads), except adding a tad more water to the dough (it was a hot day and the flour was thirsty). Otherwise she made buns and I made a loaf although I did make the one bun, so that I could show you the crumb.
I froze the loaf for when our visitors from France arrive at the end of the month. Grilled or toasted, topped with roasted peppers and/or roasted tomatoes, basil and fresh mozzarella (and finished off with a balsamic reduction), it will make wonderful sandwiches. Whatever is left will be roasted as croûtons for a late summer gazpacho.

For the risotto, I used leftovers from Mark Bittman’s zucchini risotto recipe using both green and yellow zucchini (hence the green and yellow specks you see in the crumb). The rice was short-grain brown. The basil was freshly picked and combined with the yogurt and the parmesan cheese, it gave the dough a very enticing aroma. The beautiful golden durum flour was a present from… breadsong when she came and visited. This was my first time baking with it and what a pleasure it was!
Thank you for everything, breadsong! For the flour, for the adapted and illustrated recipe and for the marvelous idea of stenciling with basil leaves. I would never have thought of it! 




The Risotto Bread with Basil is going to Susan from Wild Yeast for this week’s issue of Yeastspotting.