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Gérard Rubaud: The Never-Ending Quest

Time has come for a return visit to the bakery on the hill and to the maestro whose life’s work is to charm wild yeasts out of plain bags of flour and grains and choreograph them into intricate ballets of flavors and aromas.

Save for the colors of the season, the landscape hasn’t changed: the pond still stares at the sky, the girl still dances on her bluff and the trees are as watchful as ever.

The dogs romp in the meadow, there is enough wood near the house to feed the oven for months on end… No, not much has changed indeed since my last visit to this corner of northern Vermont.

But the baker himself, ah, the baker remains a moving target. What he is seeking in his endless quest no one can really tell, maybe not even himself.
In the three years I have known Gérard (only three years and yet I feel as if I had known him all my life), he has changed almost everything in his formula, changed his levain, changed his methods, changed his timeline. The bread is indeed better than it ever was but that’s incidental. He will never get where he’s going but that’s fine. If he did, all light would fade away from life.
In this seemingly changeless environment, what keeps the baker going is change. Not change for change’s sake, mind you! Change because nothing actually ever stays the same: temperature and humidity go up and down, protein and enzymes differ from one bag of flour to the next, customers call and ask for big holes in the crumb, others request a denser crumb (“I don’t want to wear a bib when I eat my toast and marmalade”), others yet follow variations in the taste of the levain as sports fans follow a favorite team (“What did you do to your bread? I love it, keep it that way!” or “I liked last week’s better”), they ask for more whole grains, for less whole grains. They are a vocal bunch and bread to them is definitely not the squishy stuff that comes in a plastic bag on the supermarket shelf. Their bread carries Gérard’s signature and they like it that way. They queue up at the stores. Peter, the man in charge of the deliveries, says people wait in the parking lot for his van. They follow him into the store and wait while a price label is affixed to the bag, then they make their move.



The breads on the left haven’t been bagged yet as they are still too warm. They will be before they get to the store.

Gérard could sell much more bread that he currently does, except that he can’t because it would be physically impossible for him to bake much more than 150 loaves a day five days a week. He learned that lesson from the stroke that left him temporarily paralyzed and permanently disabled six years ago (he used to bake seven days a week). But as he sees it, the most important part of a baker’s job is making good bread every day for local customers (his “friends and neighbors” as he calls them). Never mind expanding…
Fame knocks at his door now and then but he sends it on its way. Gérard’s bread was recently featured in Saveur magazine’s round-up of the best breads in America and when I saw a picture of one of his loaves in the print version of the article (the online version is a crumb shot and I have no clue whether or not it is indeed his), I gasped and picked up the phone: “Gérard, what happened? The bread looks awful!” He chuckled: “Yes, they requested that bread be sent to them for a photoshoot but it arrived too late. The shots were done. So they asked my permission to use just any bread picture and I said, fine. I don’t care, I am not selling bread across America. My neighbors are whom I bake for and they know my bread”…



The crumb on Gérard’s bread on the day I arrived (a very hot and humid day)

What you’ll find below is a snapshot of Gérard’s current process and the thinking behind it. Consider it as a moment frozen in time. It will have changed again by the time I go back.

Flours
  • Gérard currently uses 12% freshly milled whole-grain flours in his everyday bread (as opposed to close to about 30% when I first met him). He says his customers have asked for a less rustic crumb
  • This whole grain consists entirely of spelt right now but he will switch to half-spelt and half- hard red winter wheat when the harvest is in and he can get Warthog wheat again from Vermont farmer Jack Lazor as the flavor of that wheat is simply extraordinary*
Levain
  • Gérard originally creates his levain from 50% wheat and 50% rye. After the very first feeding, he only uses all-purpose flour (AP)
  • He switched to an all-white levain because he wanted more elasticity. He had had some issues with his previous levain tearing and decided to give priority to texture over taste (not that the taste is any less complex and marvelous, just different)
  • He keeps it at 57% hydration
  • The smallest amount Gérard ever mixes (his old Hobart doesn’t take less) is: 700 g AP flour, 400 g water, 300 g levain and 6 g salt. That is the first build, always
  • Feeding a levain again as soon as it doubles helps create anywhere from 15 to 30% more wild yeast cells. In Gérard’s experience, the first time, the levain doubles in four hours, the second time 20 to 30 minutes faster and the third time, 40 minutes to one hour faster than the first time. That’s when the levain is at its peak
  • With such a levain, it is possible to make croissant dough with very little butter using whole grains
  • Currently the levain‘s schedule is as follows: first feed at 8:30 PM, second feed at 5:00 AM, third feed at 3:40 PM (for a 9:30 PM autolyse and a 10:15 PM mixing)
  • A baker who normally feeds his or her levain a percentage of whole grains must put it on an all-white diet before storing it in the fridge or it might ferment too much and develop unwanted acids
Autolyse
  • Uses all of the water in formula
  • Duration: 30 minutes at least and up to 6 hours if desired/necessary
  • Takes place at room temperature which, in Gérard’s case, is usually in the high 70’s
  • It takes a while to calculate dough hydration taking the texture of the levain into account. A levain that is too flexible will result in a dough that will need one or two folds to be strong enough
  • A six-hour autolyse only reduces later fermentation time by about 40 minutes but makes the dough silkier. An added benefit is that the dough can be mixed right away when the baker arrives at the bakery. Of course in a professional setting, it usually only works for the first batch as the mixer is needed for other doughs
  • Flour and water should be mixed for less than 3 minutes (first speed). Don’t mix until the dough becomes homogenous: you want unaggregated lumps that will not hamper gluten formation. The resulting crumb will be softer
  • Gluten will develop by itself over time. The baker’s role is to make sure that a maximum of water hydrates the amount of flour in the formula. Once the flour is hydrated, the mixing must stop immediately
Levain Incorporation
  • If the levain is flexible enough, it should incorporate in no time
Adding salt
  • Once the levain is fully incorporated and dough turns shiny (it takes less than 3 minutes), add the salt
Total Mixing Time: 9 minutes maximum
  • Mixing is always done in first speed (Gérard has disabled the second speed on his mixer to make sure it wouldn’t be used)
  • 3 minutes maximum for the autolyse
  • 3 minutes maximum to incorporate the levain
  • 3 minutes maximum to incorporate the salt
  • Ideally these times should be further reduced if possible
Bulk Fermentation
  • Once the levain and the salt are incorporated, the dough is transferred to the wooden fermentation box where it remains for a minimum of 4.5 hours (room temp: about 78°F)
Folding
  • Generally speaking Gérard only does one fold and it happens post-bulk fermentation after transferring the dough to his worktable (and if possible without overlapping the folds)
  • The exception is when the baker has over hydrated the dough thinking the flour was very high in protein when in fact the protein level was inferior or the quality of the protein poor. The resulting dough is runny and folding is a way of strengthening it

Dividing and Pre-Shaping

  • Gérard starts dividing the first batch at 3:30 AM
  • He scales at 800 g
  • He pre-shapes the divided dough and lets fermentation start again by allowing the dough to rest for at least 30 minutes and up to one hour (if room temperature is cool)
  • Gérard likes to keep the dough in its pre-shaped form for at least 45 minutes: he finds it easier to work with afterwards and gets better results
  • If room temperature is around 78 to 80°F, the ideal is to allow the pre-shaped dough to rest for one hour
  • This lengthy rest enables the baker to give the dough any shape he or she wants afterwards. It works better if the dough hasn’t been pre-shaped as a boule however: in boule form, fermentation would go too fast
  • A lengthy pre-shaped rest enables the baker to decrease proofing time

 
Shaping

  • After a 40-minute rest, Gérard gives the dough its final shape
  • The shaped dough is transferred to flour-dusted couches
Proofing
  • Proofing is the third stage in the fermentation process (levain + bulk + proofing)
  • A good way of knowing when proofing is done is to apply two fingers on the dough (with very little pressure). If the imprint of the fingers doesn’t bounce back and remains on the dough, proofing is done. If the imprint disappears right away, proofing isn’t over
  • Total fermentation time depends on the liveliness of the levain and the amount used in the formula: the less levain in the dough, the longer the total fermentation time. For a dough containing 25 to 30% levain, proofing lasts about two hours (the longer the dough rests in its pre-shaped form, the shorter the proofing)
  • Gérard no longer retard the proofing loaves (as he started doing last time I was there). He says he prefers to stay away from newfangled methods of making bread as the traditional way has always worked for him. Switching trays of bread from a warm room to a cold room and back to warm is also too physically demanding to make it worthwhile: Gérard currently has no help in the middle of the night. Peter only comes in in the morning to carry the trays of bread to the oven and back and to take care of bagging and delivering

Baking
  • The first batch of bread goes into the oven at 8:00-8:30 AM
  • Oven temperature is between 485 and 525°F
  • Gérard “power washes” the sole of the oven with water before he starts loading (in the winter when air is very dry he also adds steam). But his oven has no venting system and the thirty-six breads he bakes together lose 10 to 12% of their weight when baking, thus providing enough humidity
  • Gérard scores his bread holding his lame at a 30° angle. His cuts are very shallow and he never lifts the skin of the dough. What he’s shooting for is a very thin crust with hardly a grigne (grigne is French for an ear in the crust)
  • For an 800 g bread (raw dough), baking time is 35 minutes.
* Jack Lazor just harvested his Warthog wheat. He says that he brought in eighteen tons and that there will be plenty for Gérard.

Teff Mash Bread

Now that I know how to bake with teff, I would buy truckloads of it and make teff bread on a regular basis if it were not so expensive: not only is it very nutritious but the taste is unique and marvelous. How best to describe it for those of you who are not familiar with it? Think deeply caramelized black walnuts with a hint of raw dark cocoa and maybe, maybe a tiny whiff of the soul-warming spices used in African cooking. Think exotic, seductive and subtly addictive. Think “Wow! I can get all that flavor from just 10% of flour?” and you’ll have an idea of what teff is like.

Of course the teff flour I am baking with here might taste different from the one to be found here in America but I have no way of knowing until I go home to the Northwest and actually buy a bag (as far as I know, there is none to be had for love or money where I am now). The one I have was brought to me from Ethiopia by a kindly colleague a few years ago.

I kept it in the freezer while we still lived back East and when we moved to the Northwest, since I was trying not to move everything cross-country, I brought it here to the little camp by the St-Lawrence River where we have been spending our summer vacations for the past twenty-six years.
Together with all the other grains, nuts and flours, I put it in a sturdy insect-, rodent- and waterproof trunk which weathered the winter under the cabin, sitting directly on the bedrock. Nothing like permafrost to keep everything fresh as I am sure the Native Americans who used to live here discovered ages before me.
Some people don’t like teff and I suspect that is because they only ever had it in injera form at Ethiopian restaurants. Injera is traditionally made from a teff starter that is left to ferment until it is quite acidic and some cooks make it more sour than others. I love injera and Ethiopian cuisine and injera is actually what I planned to make with the teff my colleague brought me since I had never had much success with teff bread before.
I learned why at WheatStalk: teff flour has the annoying habit of first absorbing water like crazy and then of releasing it sneakily when one least wishes it to do so. The trick is therefore not to use it dry but to make a mash of it before incorporating it into a dough. Soaking it in hot water sets both the protein and the starch, making it much more stable. In the words of Frank Sally’s (my instructor for the Baking with Ancient Grains lab), “baking with teff is a nightmare otherwise.” Good to know!
To make a mash

  1. Bring 100% water to a roiling boil
  2. Pour it over 100% flour
  3. Make a paste (it will be full of soft lumps)
  4. Let cool
  5. Add to the dough as a soaker

The mash should be made the morning of the mix. According to my instructor at WheatStalk, if you’d rather do it the day before, you need to make it, let it cool and then add it to your levain build.

For this bread, I didn’t want to use a WheatStalk formula: there might be copyright issues (I need to check into that) and anyway I didn’t have the necessary ingredients. So I made up my own recipe with what I had on hand here at camp and as you’ll see, it is fairly minimalistic. If you have all-purpose flour, a mature starter and a bit of teff flour, you are all set to go.

Ingredients: (for four loaves)

  • 890 g unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 200 g teff mash (100 g teff flour + 100 g hot water)
  • 555 g more water at warmish room temperature (or more or less according to the flours you use. Even if they are the same brand, they will always be different from mine. The consistency of your dough will always be a better guide than the amount of water used by the author of any recipe)
  • 535 g liquid starter @ 100% hydration (mine is currently fed with 40% whole grain – wheat, spelt and rye – but a white one -or better yet, a teff one – would work fine)
  • 27 g salt
Method: (This bread is made over two days. The dough was hand-mixed.)

  1. Make the teff mash using the method described above
  2. Mix all the other ingredients* (I used only 450 g water to start with) until incorporated and add the teff mash when lukewarm (I have developed a method for adding water which is really no-hassle: I first put in as much as needed to hydrate the flour, then I pour the rest (in this case, 105 g) into a spray-bottle and I spray the dough as I go, making sure to spray after each fold just before covering the bowl. The dough acts like a sponge as it relaxes and absorbs the water with minimal work on my part. Not that I don’t love folding the dough over and over. I actually do but my wrists have apparently remained French-ier than the rest of me:  they tend to go on strike at the drop of a hat…)
  3. Fold resulting dough onto itself several times, cover and let rest for 30 minutes
  4. Repeat three times at 30-minute intervals (more if necessary, judging from the dough consistency)
  5. Let ferment, covered, for another hour 
  6. Then refrigerate for 12 to 16 hours (make sure your fridge isn’t set on super cold)
  7. The day after, bring back to room temperature
  8. Turn on the oven to 475°F/246°C, making sure your baking stone is in it as well as a metal dish for steaming
  9. Transfer to a flour-dusted worktable
  10. Divide @ about 500 g, trying to keep the pieces as square as possible
  11. Shape (no pre-shaping) by pulling each piece of dough upwards (from the upper long side) then folding it upon itself once and closing the seam
  12. Transfer seam-side down to a sheet pan lined with semolina-dusted parchment paper
  13. Proof for one hour
  14. Dust with flour if desired and score shallowly down the middle holding the lame at an angle
  15. Bake with steam for 5 minutes at 475°F/246°C, then turn the oven temperature down to 450°F/232°C and bake another 35 to 40 minutes (the oven is old and quirky in this little cabin and I always turn the loaves 180° for the last ten minutes of baking)
  16. Cool on a rack
  17. Enjoy!

*When mixing by hand here at camp, I often skip the autolyse. I  mix flour + salt + liquid levain + the bulk of the water until everything is hydrated, then I cover the bowl and let the dough rest anywhere from 20 minutes to half-an-hour before proceeding with the recipe from step 3 on. It is much easier on the wrists (less folding) and it yields excellent results. Of course it may have to do with the temperature and humidity which are both in the high range here in the summer. Back home in the cool Pacific Northwest, I’ll  probably need to hold the salt back until the end. I’ll still add in the levain with the water and the flour but I may experiment with much longer resting times (if you interested in fiddling with autolyse, you may want to read Teresa Greenway’s excellent posts on the subject: Experimenting with Autolyse #1 and Experimenting with Autolyse #2).

The Teff Mash Bread is going to Susan for this week’s issue of Yeastspotting. Thank you, Susan!

WheatStalk 2012


(image courtesy of BBGA)
Just back from a bread-baking whirlwind in Chicago and still under the spell, with visions of perfect loaves dancing in my head…
If you have been reading Farine for a while, you may remember previous posts about classes or events organized or co-sponsored by the Bread Bakers’ Guild of America (BBGA).  I try to attend as many of these gatherings as I possibly can: they are always interesting, informative and fun and they provide great opportunities to meet other bakers. With WheatStalk which took place last week at Kendall College in Chicago, the Guild (a non-profit organization whose core mission is education) has outdone itself, bringing together two hundred participants (professional bakers, home bakers, millers, farmers, scientists, industry suppliers, etc.), for three full days of  baking and learning.

There have been two other WheatStalk-like events in the Guild’s history: Camp Bread 2005 and Camp Bread 2007 (both of which took place in California) and those who attended (I have met quite a few since I joined BBGA in 2008) still talk about them with awe in their voice and stars in their eyes.
By all accounts, WheatStalk 2012 was pretty much in the Camp Bread tradition except that it was held in the Midwest so that even more people could attend (some participants even came from Canada and Central America). La fine fleur (literally the finest flour, more aptly translated as the cream of the crop) of America’s baking instructors was there to offer a wide array of hands-on classes (building a commercial brick oven, functional breads, easy rye breads, gluten-free breads, ancient grains the modern way, etc.), lectures (starting your own bakery, finding whole grain solutions for formula development, the science underlying bread baking, etc.) and demos (laminating with whole grains, bread showpieces and decorations, Team USA breads, etc.).
The level of energy, enthusiasm and good will was extraordinary. Master bakers attended classes alongside home bakers. Instructors switched sides, teaching one day, apprenticing the next, attesting a simple truth: “Dough makes us humble”. We can tweak it, coax it, cajole it, browbeat it, pamper it. In the end, it has a mind of its own although it definitely listens to some more readily than to others. So yes, indeed, knowledge matters and practice, practice, practice…


Jeffrey Yankellow and Mike Zakowski presenting Team USA’s breads
(photo courtesy of breadsong)

Participants had been requested to apply for their classes months ahead of time (giving their order of preference) and the organizers (who did a fantastic job of marshaling resources for the event) worked very hard to satisfy most requests. But even if all of one’s wishes were granted, there were so many equally desirable labs, demos and lectures that everybody had to make hard choices. I had selected two lectures (Day 1) and two all-day labs (Day 2 and 3), which means that, inevitably, I missed out on seventeen other all-day labs, ten other demos and four other lectures, almost all of which I would have loved to attend. So much too learn, so little time!
WheatStalk started on Wednesday night June 27th with a baker’s math review, taught by Jeff Yankellow, the current Chair of the Board of Directors for the Guild. The class was mostly intended for home bakers, especially those who like me are resolutely number-challenged (now I know that it wasn’t a smart idea to spend most of my math classes in high school practicing writing with my left hand. It is a pretty cool skill and useful all right but except for making it easy to switch hands when scoring, I can’t say it has helped me very much in my baking). I should have listened to my mom – who had been a math teacher… (Dr. Freud, where were you when I needed you?) when she said I would be sorry one day…

Jeff explained that baker’s percentage is a tool:

  • Combined with a fundamental knowledge of bread baking, it enables the baker to make any bread he or she wishes without having to go look for a formula in a book
  • Since it is a common language among bakers and in the industry, it makes it possible to look at a formula and know right away what it is about
  • It provides an easy way to scale a batch of dough up or down
  • It makes it much easier to identify and troubleshoot problems. 
  • Those who have trouble envisioning a dough with a 100% flour ratio can just replace the word percentage by the word “part” and it all becomes clearer.

The following day, Thursday June 28th, was the hottest day of the week in Chicago: outside temperature reached 101° F/38°C. My thoughts often wandered to the backyard where the wood fire oven was being put together (and where it was so hot that plastic cups left in the sun actually melted) and to the labs where the ovens were doing a good job of roasting everything and everyone in sight. As luck would have it, it was lecture day for me so I got to spend it in the relatively cool sixth-floor auditorium.
In the morning, Amy Scherber from Amy’s Bread in New York City and Leslie Mackie from Macrina Bakery & Café in Seattle held forth on the subject of starting a bakery. Albeit living and working on either side of the country, they have a lot in common and while they made a few different choices over the years, their stories were fundamentally similar. They clearly get along famously too!

After a short presentation of their bakeries, they listed the twenty steps to follow to open a bakery or café on a small budget (they also made it clear that depending on the location, the “small budget” may in fact be quite large nowadays for an artisan baker looking to make it on his or her own).
The first step (“Dream a dream”) is the most enjoyable (and presents the added benefit of costing nothing). All the others are more arduous and demanding (tip: if you have deep pockets, hire someone to do the ground work for you).
The audience – among whom more than one self-described “baker trapped in the body of an accountant” (or a lawyer) – listened in rapt concentration and pored attentively over the printout of the forecast business model. In the end, once all the technical details and numbers were taken care of, the bakers’ advice boiled down to this: if you want to open a bakery, you need a lot of endurance, energy and stamina, both physically and mentally. So if you are serious about it, prepare yourself: eat healthy foods and get exercise!

The afternoon lecture was devoted to food photography. It was taught by Eric Futran, a food and culinary photographer who started his career as a photojournalist and is currently the staff photographer for Kendall College. His delivery was fast, efficient and very entertaining. The class consisted in:

  • A two-hour presentation of the main trends in food photography and a close “reading”/deconstruction of various food shots borrowed either from books by well-known photographers or from Eric’s own portfolio
  • A two-hour photoshoot of whatever we liked (he had brought some fruit, bread and vegetables as well as various backgrounds and a series of tripods). 

Sorry for the greenish screen.
I exposed on the slides because the room had been darkened and that’s how it came out! 

Since the eye spontaneously moves from top to bottom and from left to right, you want to help it travel across the shot at a diagonal:

  • Tangents are really pleasing and angles are everything
  • Never center anything!
  • Light should come from behind (to create texture) 
  • But it must be reflected by a fill card or a piece of foil so that one can see through the shadow it creates towards the camera.

On the technical side, Eric recommended:

  • Shooting food on a tripod  (to reduce camera shake)
  • Or using a high ISO setting (useful tip in the field when no tripod is available)
  • Setting the white balance (the color temperature) to shade or cloudy when shooting bread (if the camera allows it). 

I didn’t use a tripod for the two shots below but I bumped up the ISO. (At home I would definitely have used a tripod). Both were shot using the light coming in through the window. In the first picture, I left the white balance on automatic and forgot to use a fill card. For the second one, I set the white balance  to shade and I did use the fill card. Notice how much more light there is in the foreground in the second shot and how much more golden and inviting the bread looks. In the end though, color temperature is a matter of taste and style. I usually set the white balance on daylight when shooting at home but I will definitely experiment with the other settings.


The very same night, at the beer and cheese tasting the Guild had organized at a nearby brewpub, I started practicing what I had learned that day (even without a tripod or fill card). I set the white balance on automatic (an easy way out when there is a mix of natural and artificial light and you don’t really know what color temperature to pick). Notice how the focus is on the beer and cheese and the bread is just a prop. Well, they always say a picture is worth a thousand words. What would you say was first and foremost on my mind when I took this one? Hint: it was deliciously refreshing!

Friday was my first all-day lab: four hours in the morning and four hours in the afternoon with a one-hour break for lunch if the bread allowed. I had chosen to attend the gluten-free baking lab, partly because I had zero experience in the matter and wanted to learn and partly because it was taught by Michel Suas, the President of the San Francisco Baking Institute (SFBI) and I knew SFBI had done extensive research on the subject over the past few years.

The class was brilliant: Michel started by having us mix and bake tiny batches of thirteen different gluten-free flours and one of all-purpose flour (which was the control). All of the flours were pre-soaked with the same amount of water, so that we would have an idea of the various absorption rates. Then they were mixed with cornstarch, xanthan gum, salt and yeast (adding more water if/as needed to obtain the same medium-soft consistency) and set to proof.


Next came the baking and the tasting.

The truth of the matter is that they all tasted pretty awful (or, at best, bland) but that was to be expected since we hadn’t really made a bread, just pieces of dough. The flour that absorbed the most water was the oat and the one which absorbed the least the light millet. Some of these little “breads” were so sticky it was impossible to slice them and we had to tear them apart. All this taught us a great deal, much more than I have space here to write about (I hope to do it in a later post after I get my hands on some of the needed ingredients, not an easy task since I am spending most of the summer at our little camp on the river where baking supplies are mostly limited to all-purpose and whole wheat). 
In a nutshell, sorghum seems to be the way to go since it offers the closest texture to regular bread flour (plus it is cheap and has great nutritional value. Just remember never to sprout sorghum grains as they would turn poisonous). Teff is really good also (tasty and very nutritious but, alas, very expensive) and koda is the best rice flour to work with (the others tend to be gooey).
We proceeded to make seven gluten- (and sometimes egg-)free products: four breads, orange biscotti, a lemon poundcake and blueberry muffins. Of all of the breads, the poolish “baguette” below was the one with the best crumb structure.


“Baguette” made with a sorghum, koda rice and brown rice poolish
My second all-day lab, on Saturday, was Ancient Grains the Modern Way. The instructor was Frank Sally (with whom I had taken Artisan I and II at SFBI a few years ago). It was excellent and I will write about it in more details at a later time. Today I’ll just share a few pointers:


Dough made with kamut levain
  • Don’t go too wet on spelt as it gets soupy
  • For a same dough consistency, white kamut requires way more water than white spelt
  • You may want to add gluten to spelt as it doesn’t have much of a push
  • Sorghum doesn’t hold water very well: don’t use sorghum flour dry (see tip below)
  • The best way to incorporate sorghum, barley, teff or millet flours into any dough is to soak the flour: using 100% flour and 100% water, pour water at 120°F/49°C (neither cold nor hot) over the flour and make a paste, let cool and use. It helps set the protein and the starch and makes the flour more stable
  • Make this soaker the morning of the mix (don’t hold it overnight)
  • Sprouting ancient wheats like kamut, spelt, emmer or einkorn and baking them with levain is a good idea: it makes the bread more digestible, it unlocks the mineral contents of the grain and it has a sweet flavor.
We made seven breads on that day (kamut levain, kamut with wheat germ, sprouted spelt, spelt levain,   sorghum with kamut and pumpkin seeds, teff with sunflower seeds, millet with toasted pecans) and by the time the afternoon was over, I was ready to drop! But we did really well and most of these breads were  breads I would be interested in making at home (which means that some of them might appear on Farine sooner or later). The teff ciabatta was especially gorgeous.


Now WheatStalk is over but the fever and the fervor have not abated. I have been in touch with other participants and judging from their one-track conversation, their brain is still in full fermenting mode! I know mine is. I have so much to process and so much to try. I did bring back a few formulas but more importantly I came back with tools, tools which will help me grow as a baker and be more confident and avoid mistakes that I would have made otherwise. For this I am grateful to the Guild and to each and everyone of the staff and volunteers who made WheatStalk possible as well as to Kendall College, its faculty and students for hosting the event. Thank you all! 

Barley Bread

For as long as I can remember, I have been a barley girl. Of course it helped that in France when I was a kid,  a sucre d’orge (literally candy made with barley sugar) was a treat. Tubular and fashionably skinny, always tightly wrapped, most often in cellophane but occasionally in shiny silver paper which gave no clue to the flavor inside, known for having soothed many of life’s minor woes and pains for generations of children, it held a mysterious appeal.
By contrast, the plump sucette (lollipop), always clad in revealing colors and coiffed with a bouffant paper twist, seemed resolutely modern. Probably thanks to its down-to-earth chubbiness, it was often a kid’s first choice at the boulangerie-confiserie (bakery-candy store) but not mine.
Since I spent a large part of my childhood reading and re-reading the books which had belonged to my dad and my uncle in their youth (they had won them at school for being top students), I kept solid footing in an enchanted other world (of which the black and white illustrations offered tantalizing glimpses) and, in my own, I looked for and cherished surviving signs of a vanishing past. Sucres d’orge (thus called because barley water -soon to be replaced by glucose- was the original sweetener) were therefore my favorites and I spent many a drizzly or blustery Sunday afternoon with my nose in one of the characteristic red books and a sucre d’orge in my pocket (my parents were not liberal with candy but since I never had a sweet tooth,  looking at it afforded me more pleasure than eating it and a single one went a long way).

Many years and a move across the ocean later, I discovered that orge (barley) could actually appear on the table in a soup or a barlotto (a risotto made with barley instead of rice) or simply as a grain and when I did, I fell in love all over again.  So when a Baking With Barley class was offered last year at Kneading Conference West, I knew I wanted to attend.
The class was taught jointly by Leslie Mackie (owner of Macrina Bakery in Seattle) and Andrew Ross, a cereal chemist at Oregon State University (OSU). Leslie has been experimenting with barley from the time she first started Macrina:  she liked using locally grown grain and, at the time, that meant mostly barley. She now puts it in monkey bread (for an added touch of sweetness), in Francese bread and in Pugliese bread (an exceptionally tasty miche for which she was in the process of developing a formula).
As for Andrew – who is not only a scientist but also a passionate baker – he has developed formulas for various barley breads within the framework of the barley project: he brought barley baguettes and barley miches to the class and demonstrated barley pitas and bretzels. I was hooked (especially when I discovered that my local mill made a beautiful whole grain barley flour).
I was hoping to be able to go and observe Andrew at work at OSU in Corvalis and to do a full Meet the Baker post on him afterwards. But it didn’t work out according to plan. He was unexpectedly swamped with work when we showed up at the agreed-upon date last month and there was no way he could fit baking into his schedule on that particular day. As for us, we were traveling through Corvalis on our way back home from the coast and we couldn’t possibly come back later in the week. He very kindly showed me his beautiful lab/bakery and answered the questions I had prepared but I made it quick as I knew he had to go back to work.  I would still love to see him bake and also to hear more about the relationship between the University and the local farmer though but it will have to wait. Maybe the stars will align better on another visit to Oregon!
Meanwhile Andrew gave me a few useful infos and pointers on baking with barley:

  • The preferred barley is a hulless variety, also called naked barley (the hull falls off when the grain is harvested): it has the best nutritional profile
  • Barley contains a soluble fiber called beta-glucan which has been shown to slow glucose absorption and is thought to help lower blood cholesterol
  • People with celiac disease or high sensitivity to gluten should not eat barley: it contains protases which are very close to gluten
  • A 100% barley starter yields a very acidic bread. Not pleasant
  • The higher the percentage of barley in relation to wheat, the less extensible the dough
  • For a better crumb, it is best to use barley flour in conjunction with high-gluten flour
  • Using a stiff starter also helps compensate for the lesser amount of gluten in the dough
  • To keep the dough from sticking, use more water or flour than you normally would 
  • Increase dough hydration by 5 to 10% if making a 50% barley-50% wheat bread
  • If using a high tpercentage of barley, it is best to underproof a little
  • A good rule of thumb for flavor, nutrition and extensibility is to use a total of 20 to 30% of barley in the  dough
  • Barley flat breads and tortillas are much easier to make than raised breads.
For this barley bread, I used the Whey Sourdough recipe from Emmanuel Hadjiandreou’s How to Make Bread, a book I already blogged about here and here. At Emmanuel’s suggestion (when we talked on the phone back in April after I found an error in one of the recipes), I substituted half Greek yogurt and half milk for the whey (which I didn’t have) and, mindful of Andrew’s recommendation, I replaced 20% of the white flour by whole grain barley flour (hulless variety).  The resulting bread was delicate and flavorful with a slightly fermented taste (very different from regular sourdough) which I find utterly seductive. Not a memory-trigger like the old-fashioned sucre d’orge but definitely a keeper and maybe a memory-maker for the kids and grand-kids in our life! What could be sweeter than that?

Ingredients:

  • 160 g white sourdough starter
  • 150 g milk (I used 2% milkfat)
  • 150 g plain Greek yogurt (mine was 0% fat but regular fullfat Greek yogurt would work fine)
  • 200 g all-purpose unbleached flour (Hadjiandreou uses bread flour with a higher gluten percentage but I had none on hand. I might have gotten a more open crumb if I had used that)
  • 120 g  all-purpose unbleached flour (again he uses bread flour)
  • 100 g barley flour
  • 10 g salt (Hadjiandreou uses 8 g)

Method: (adapted from the book)

  1. In a large mixing bowl, mix starter, yogurt and milk with a wooden spoon until well combined
  2. Add 200 g of all-purpose flour and mix well. Cover and let ferment overnight in a cool place (it should show tiny bubbles 12 hours later when ready)
  3. In a smaller bowl, mix 120 g of all-purpose flour, the barley flour and the salt
  4. Add to fermented mix and mix by hand until it comes together
  5. Cover and let stand for 10 minutes
  6. After 10 minutes, stretch and fold the dough inside the bowl by going twice around the bowl with four stretches and foldings at each 90° turn (8 stretches/foldings in all)
  7. Let rest 10 minutes again, covered. Repeat twice
  8. Complete a fourth stretch and fold cycle and let the dough rest one hour, covered
  9. Ligthly flour a work surgace and put the dough on it
  10. Shape into a smooth, rounded disc
  11. Dust a proofing basket with flour and lay the dough inside
  12. Let it rise until double the size (which will take between 3 and 6 hours)
  13. When ready, transfer dough to a non-preheated Dutch oven (using a large piece of parchment paper as a sling to carry the dough) and replace the lid on the Dutch oven
  14. Bake in non-preheated oven set at 475°F/246°C for 35 minutes
  15. Remove Dutch oven from oven and bread from Dutch oven (exercising caution as both will be very hot)
  16. Replace bread in oven, turn oven temperature down to 435°F/224°C and bake for another 20 minutes or so, until the boule is golden and makes a satisfying hollow sound when thumped on the bottom
  17. Enjoy!

The Barley Bread can also be baked the usual way in a hot oven. I just find the unheated Dutch oven/oven method works wonders with boules and it saves having to preheat the oven for an extended length of time.

The Barley Bread is going to Susan for this week’s issue of Yeastspotting.

50% Whole Red Fife Wheat Bread


I made these two rustic looking loaves with the Red Fife wheat flours I brought back from my visit to Cliff Leir’s Fol Épi Bakery in Victoria, BC (see related post Meet the Baker: Cliff Leir).

Cliff’s formula and timeline for Fol Épi’s 50% whole wheat bread 

  • 2:30 PM: first build of the levain: 7% starter + 100% white flour + 100% water. The build goes into the fridge (Cliff explained that some of the oil present in the bran gets smeared on the white flour during the milling. For that reason the starter moves very fast and needs to be refrigerated for this first long fermentation)
  • 6:00 AM: second build: 72% starter (the whole first build) + 100% white flour + 100% water. No fridge this time
  • 11:00 AM: final dough: 50% whole wheat flour + 48% white flour + 2% whole rye flour + 11.5% starter (the whole second build) + 75% water + 2% salt. Mix on first speed. Autolyse: 20 min (no salt, no starter). Final mix: add salt and water. Mix 6 minutes (same slow speed). Dough cooled to 50°F/10°C. Rest until 12 AM
  • 12 AM: dough allowed to warm up to 72°F/22°C (depending on the weather or other conditions, it might need to be retarded some more at this point)
  • 5:00 AM: one fold
  • 7:00 AM: divided @ 750 g – preshaped (20 minutes rest) – rolled into a batard shape – final proof: 45 minutes on couche dusted with white flour
  • Bake for 35 minutes 445-465° F @ 230-240°C

I like how the bread turned out when I made it at home: the flavor of the grain shone through, there was no acidity whatsoever and the crumb was wonderfully mellow. 


My version of Cliff’s 50% whole wheat bread

But, as can be seen from the two pictures (the one above and the one below), I didn’t get as good as oven spring as Cliff.


Cliff’s own 50% whole wheat bread

I used the formula that Cliff had so generously shared with me and did my best to follow his guidelines as to timing and temperatures but in a home environment, life (and sleep) sometimes intervene. Once again the grain is only half of the story, fermentation control is just as important. I didn’t have the means of cooling the dough to 50°F/10°C right after mixing. The best I could do was to put it in the garage when the temperature hovered around 62°F/17°C, leave it there and check it periodically to make sure it wasn’t fermenting too fast. I didn’t want to put it in the fridge which would have been too cold.
The dough behaved in unexpected ways both during mixing and during fermentation: you know how it is hammered in our heads as apprentice bakers that you can’t ever follow a recipe exactly because there are such variations in the flours from one manufacturer to the next (and even from one batch of flour to the next from the same manufacturer) that the percentage of water must be adjusted each time?
Well, I thought that I had that angle covered. I was  using flours milled by Cliff, the dates of the milling were indicated on both bags, I was well within the two-three week period (actually much closer to two) and I figured I could safely go ahead and hydrate at 75% as he does. I didn’t put in all the water in one shot but still I was less cautious with it than I usually am and soon found myself in a spot.
I was mixing by hand (at the bakery, Cliff uses a very slow and gentle old mixer equipped with two “arms” that mimic the rythmic gestures of an artisan baker). The dough was gobbling up the water beautifully but almost as soon as I stopped folding it over itself, it sneakily relaxed to the point of slackness. I now wonder if it could be because I forgot to use filtered water and just used tap water (we have city water and it is chlorinated although not heavily so).


As it were, I thought it just needed more folds and I must have folded it half-a-dozen times but every time I went back to check on it, it had spread again. That being said, it later lent itself rather gracefully to being divided and shaped. I set the batards to proof on a flour-dusted couche making sure I secured the edges on both sides so that they wouldn’t morph into ciabattas behind my back. Still when I put them in the oven, they were a bit flattish and I was definitely not hopeful…
So I was pleasantly surprised to see that the breads did get get some oven rise and turned out acceptable looks-wise. Flavor-wise, they were fragrant and wonderfully evocative of sun-drenched wheat fields (although not quite as complex-tasting as Cliff’s). I don’t have any more flour to try again but Cliff also kindly gave me some Red Fife grain. I am storing it in the fridge for now. I will try milling it to see if I can reproduce the two loaves I made with his flours and this time I will remember to use filtered water!



Ingredients (for two loaves scaled at 980 g):
Levain: first build
  • 1.5 g mature white starter (at 100% hydration)
  • 18 g white Red Fife flour
  • 18 g water
Levain: second build
  • 38 g starter (all of the first build)
  • 51 g white Red Fife flour
  • 51 g water

Final dough

  • 600 g whole Red Fife flour
  • 576 g white Red Fife flour
  • 24 g organic dark rye flour
  • 900 g water
  • 138 g starter (all of the second build)
  • 24 g salt
Method: 

As indicated above, I forgot Cliff’s recommendation regarding filtered water and it may have made a big difference in the way the dough behaved. Also the second build of the levain took forever to ferment and I had to delay mixing by eight hours (a whole night) because I wanted it to be fairly bursting with singing bubbles before putting it to work.
Otherwise I did my best to follow his guidelines in trying to make this amazing bread at home and I am happy to have this opportunity to thank Cliff and all the other bakers I have met so far for their generosity in sharing their knowledge and resources. Seeing the pros at work is truly the best way to learn and I love the fact that these artisans care enough about their product to help a bread enthusiast make better bread. I know no better way to thank them than to support artisan bakeries wherever we go. Truth be told, that’s my favorite kind of shopping spree!
The 50% Whole Red Fife Wheat Bread is going to Susan for this week’s Yeastpotting.