Farine

Crazy for Bread

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London: E5 Bakehouse



I wish I could tell you more about E5 Bakehouse and its bakers but both the shop and the lab were so busy when we arrived that I didn’t dare interrupt by asking questions. We were welcome warmly though and when he heard I was a bread blogger, Jean Kearn, the French barista (a talented musician as I later learned) took me to the back for a quick hello.

The bakers were shaping the multigrain, working a mile a minute. We exchanged smiles and greetings. But there was no time for more. Next time I am in London, I’ll make sure to call ahead. Meanwhile this video I found on E5’s website will give you a glimpse of the bakery. I suppose the gleaming new Austrian mill I saw in the next room (the mill house) was acquired after the clip was shot since it isn’t mentioned.

I would love to talk to the miller (see here for info on the flours and grains). There were samples in a basket on the counter and I had a taste of the new country loaf, made with wheat milled in-house. It had a terrifically wild and rustic flavor and I fell in love all over again!

I had left a card with my email address and a few hours later I heard from Alexandre Bettler (in the blue shirt on the picture). Alexandre is French and his dream is to open a bakery in London. Towards that goal, he already operates in Clapton Today Bread, a micro-bakery where he does one bake a week with a focus on organic rye breads. The bread is delivered by bike locally both to shops and to subscribers. Yet another bakery to put on the list for the next visit…

London: Fabrique Bakery

Without a map or a working phone, it took us a while to find Fabrique Bakery, nestled as it is under Arch 385 of the Overground on Geffrye Street in Shoreditch (East London). But it was well worth the search as we found out to our ravenous delight when we sat down for a bite.


Cheese and fig jam sandwich on walnut bread

The bakers were finishing up in the lab. When they were done, Jens came and talked to us before settling down at his laptop to relax a while.

Jens trained as a pastry chef in his native Germany. He explains that Fabrique is a Swedish bakery, hence the gorgeous cardamom and cinnamon rolls and the aromatic cranberry-pumpkin seed rye.

Fabrique has eleven locations in Stockholm. The Shoreditch one is their first in London. Several more are planned to open within the next five years. Jens’ eyes shine with excitement. This is his first job as a bread baker and he clearly loves it. The breads are leavened with liquid levain. A hint of commercial yeast is added for a better lift. The best seller is the levain.

Most of the breads are humongous. You can buy the whole loaf, half the loaf or a third of it. Charmed to see work and coffee listed as ingredients, I buy one third of the 100% rye. It will keep well and make for a fine breakfast for our remaining few days in London.


Then, thanking Jens for his welcome, we cast one last look around…

  

…and fully revigorated, set out for our next bread encounter.

Meet the Baker: Matthias Arbion

Funny how things work in life. Back in May 2012, when I went to Victoria, British Columbia, to visit baker/farmer Diane Andiel for the purpose of a Meet the Baker post, I met her French “wwoofer” Matthias Arbion, a passionate environmentalist and indefatigable traveler. Matthias holds a masters degree in environmental studies from the University of Angers and another in land use planning from the University of Rennes. When we first met, he was roaming the world, looking for his calling. He liked working the land and tending farm animals but he was also deeply interested in making a difference on a larger scale by promoting careful stewardship of our planet’s limited resources. Due to the sheer immensity of the country he had thought there would be more opportunities in Canada than in much smaller France but either it didn’t turn out to be the case or seeing Diane bake and eating her bread every day sowed in him the seed of another vocation.
In any case, he had finished his “wwoofship” (don’t look up the word, I just made it up!) and already crossed Canada from British Columbia to Quebec mulling his options along the way when he recalled an article he had read months earlier about a guy who had switched tracks mid-career to become a baker. He had trained at École internationale de boulangerie in Provence, France. Something clicked. Matthias emailed the school director, Thomas Teffri-Chambelland. Thomas replied immediately. The month was November and the next training cycle started in January. Matthias lost no time in making up his mind. Figuratively speaking, he hopped on the next plane to France.
He trained for three weeks at the school in the organic artisan baker program (which focuses on baking with natural leaven and all organic flours and grains), interned for a month at La Conquête du pain in Montreuil, near Paris, then another six weeks in Montreux, Switzerland. There the flours were much stronger than the ones he had become accustomed to in France. He learned to work with and adjust for very different doughs. It was good training for the CAP de boulanger (certificate of professional ability) exam which he took and passed in short order as a candidat libre (independent candidate). Immediately afterwards, in September 2013, he received a call from Thomas asking if he would be interested in a job at La Fabrique à pains, the bakery he was opening at 4 Rue Pierre de Coubertin in Aix-en-Provence.


We had kept in touch on Facebook all along and last fall, during a visit to family in Marseille, as we were planning a day trip to nearby Aix, I asked Matthias if I could go and visit him at work. And that’s how it happened that by an overcast November morning in Provence (yes, they do have them!), I pushed open the door.

The first thing you notice when you enter is how bright and open the space is: the only thing separating the shop from the lab is the bread counter. Then you see the bread. Which is beautiful and smells heavenly. I am sorry, Dior, Gucci, Chanel and the rest, I love fragrances as much as the next woman but  if I could take one scent and only one scent with me to the proverbial desert island, it would the aroma of freshly baked bread (although it would probably drive me bonkers if the scent wasn’t followed in short order by the actual fresh bread!).


Seeded baguettes

Tourte fermière (khorasan starter, 5% rye)

Baguettines aux olives (olive twist)

Pure Khorasan

Brioche

Tourte de seigle (100% rye)

Then you notice the people. The place is a beehive. Everyone is constantly moving, constantly working. Everyone seems to have an immediate purpose.




Pompe à huile (olive oil brioche)

When the bakers aren’t loading the oven with sheet pans of pompes à huile (a local brioche made with olive oil), they are sweeping the floor. When they aren’t dividing and scaling, they are mixing dough or helping customers. I ask Matthias how it all works and he says that in the morning, one person is in charge of the doughs and another of the oven while a third attends to customers. From 1 to 4 PM when customer traffic as slower, no one is specifically assigned to sales and everybody pitches in. Generally speaking, everyone gets a turn at everything, including cleaning although Matthias is mostly in charge of production. He also does the outdoor markets (the bakery does five markets a week, principally in Marseille but also in Aix and Aubagne.) He says he greatly enjoys the dual aspect of his working life: he loves production (especially mixing doughs and manning the oven for the campagne) but he also loves being out in the fresh air, freed from the constant constraint of ringing timers.

 



  
Petit-épeautre (einkorn)

Matthias went from apprentice to co-manager in a very short time (the bakery had barely been open a year at the time we visited) and it is clear that the passionate environmentalist and would-be steward of the land we had met in Canada two years earlier has found not only his calling but also an outlet for his powerful organizational skills. He has his formulas down pat, he documents everything. The others come to him with questions and get answers. He projects both competence and a quiet authority. He is in his element.





Brioche and brioche aux pépites (chocolate brioche)

An apprentice comes up to the bench. Matthias walks back to the mixer with him. I turn my attention to the shop. Business is brisk. I hear customers ask for du pain bien cuit (well-baked bread). Music to my ears because too often on this trip I have heard the opposite: pas trop cuit, le pain, s’il vous plaît (“on the lighter side please!”), a request that drives me nuts. I want to scream: “Don’t you know that a well-baked crust makes for a much more flavorful bread?.” But do they care? Probably not. Is blandness becoming the new taste? (Pounding my head against the keyboard right now!)


These big pans hold anywhere between 1800 and 2000 g of dough

An elderly gentleman walks in and inspects the offerings: Il est appétissant, votre pain! (“Your bread looks good.”) He walks out with two baguettes (bien cuites) and a brioche. Yay! There is hope yet.
Being a baker is hard. The job is physically demanding, sometimes exhausting but Matthias says he forgets it all when someone says: “You gave me back the taste of my childhood,” or “Thanks to you guys, I am eating bread again” or, as recently happened, “Your bread is extraordinary.” Customer satisfaction is a strong motivation. Another is the knowledge that a baker can work almost everywhere because everybody eats bread (especially in France), which means that the job is pretty much crisis-proof. It also offers plenty of room for creativity and épanouissement (self-fulfillment). Matthias thrives on being part of a team: “This is all teamwork. Everybody has a role to play. It is essential to stress this fundamental truth. I don’t know yet what the future has in store for me but because I love collaborating with others, I can’t see opening my own bakery anytime soon. I love teaching, working on different projects, and I can think of many exciting possibilities within the framework of my job here.”




Campagne nature (high-extraction wheat on rye starter)

Khorasan (on left) and rye (on right) starters

Local flours from Moulin Pichard

Khorasan (kamut) on the left, petit-épeautre (einkorn) on the right

Petit-épeautre (einkorn)

Khorasan is one of Matthias’ favorites. It has a powerful fragrance. But my own delight is the einkorn. I have yet to taste back in the States an einkorn that “sings” the way einkorn from Provence does. Sadly I lack the words to describe its taste. I wish I had had Michael Kalanty’s tool at my disposal back when I visited. Maybe I would be more articulate. As it is, I can only say, relying on my memory, that Provence einkorn speaks of sun and wind and rocky hills and of a terroir like no other. The job of the baker is to let the soul of the grain shine through and, like Dame Farine in Marseille, La Fabrique does it exceedingly well. I could live on both bakeries’ petit-épeautre. The stuff of life.
I ask Matthias if he misses his environmental work. He doesn’t. His job is deeply satisfying on that level as well: “It may seem far-fetched but in fact there are similarities. We are closely associated with organic farming. Ninety-five percent of our ingredients are locally sourced. We know how they are produced. We work with a miller in Haute-Provence (Moulin Pichard), we get our olives from Nyons, our walnuts from Grenoble. We emphasize both terroir and quality which means we remain true to our values and our beliefs and we make the most of our skills.”
Who knew that sometimes you need to bounce around the world to find your inner baker?

Tourte fermière

Crumbs

  • La Fabrique uses all organic flours without any additive. All are locally sourced
  • Most bread are naturally leavened.  La Fabrique keeps three starters: khorasan (kamut), rye and rice (for gluten-free breads)
  • The starters are fed twice a day
  • Tourte fermière is made with young levain to cultivate a lactic aroma
  • The doughs are very hydrated (hydration is 110% for instance on the khorasan), which is why many of the breads are baked in pans
  • Autolyse: anywhere from 30 to 90 min (three hours for the baguettes)
  • Commercial yeast is used only for baguettes (2 or 3 g of fresh yeast per kilo of flour)
  • Baguette dough ferments for 24 hours (including an 18-hour old bulk fermentation)
  • Percentage of salt: 1.8% (in line with European recommendations)
  • Shaping is kept to a minimum.
  • Owner Thomas Teffri-Chambelland built his own mill where he mills riz de Camargue (rice from the Camargue area of Provence) for La Fabrique‘s rice-buckwheat bread. For more on Thomas, take a look at this video (in French).

Buckwheat Love

So the other day, I bought a small bag of organic cracked buckwheat (marketed as “creamy buckwheat”) thinking I would make porridge for breakfast and use the rest in a rustic bread. Maybe because I grew up eating buckwheat crêpes regularly, I have a huge fondness for blé noir (literally black wheat) as my grandmother used to call it (the other name being sarrasin) and as it is still called in half of Brittany and I was looking forward to a new buckwheat experience.
Well, I was disappointed: not only did the cracked buckwheat boil into a solid clump but it had no taste at all. To the point that it ended up in our little dog’s food bowl (she didn’t seem to mind, maybe because I added a non-inconsiderable amount of shredded chicken and sweet potatoes). In any events it had a very positive effect on her innards which had been rather scrambled because of her unbridled passion for sand crabs (we walk her on the beach most days and she treats it not only as her personal race track -which is good- but also as an all-you-can-eat sushi bar -which is less beneficial to her health).
Anyway I had buckwheat on my mind in a generally dispirited sort of way when French chef and pastry chef Philippe Conticini was invited on On va déguster, one of my favorite French weekly food radio shows, and I heard him describe, among other things, a topping he makes with buckwheat and hazelnut meal. Unlike the other recipes the chef shared on that day, this one was pretty simple and I jotted down the reference, thinking it could come in handy.
A few days later I got an interesting oat chocolate crumble recipe in my mailbox from Smitten Kitchen, a blog I love not only for its food but for also the verve, energy, humor and otherwise sheer New-Yorkishness of its author, Deb Perelman.
The recipe called for pears. That caught my attention. A dozen big organic pears had been ripening on the counter for the better part of two weeks and I knew they were about ready to eat. I was idly trying to remember if we had any oat flakes left over from the last time I made granola when the Conticini buckweat topping popped into my mind. Bingo!
Next thing I knew, I was caramelizing pears and grinding cracked buckwheat into flour. When all the ingredients were ready, I put the caramelized pears in an oven dish, covered them with a layer of unsweetened frozen raspberries, added dark chocolate chips and a generous sprinkling of buckwheat topping, and into the oven it went for about thirty minutes. I won’t lie by saying it came out gorgeous. In my experience, melted chocolate always looks iffy under a toasted surface but it smelled divine and tasted even better, especially with a scoop of vanilla ice-cream.

For 5 or 6 people


Ingredients 


For the fruit base

  • 4 ripe pears, peeled, cored and diced
  • 60 g sugar
  • 60 butter
  • 200 g frozen raspberries
  • 1 teaspoon of corn starch

For the topping
(makes way more than you need for this recipe but can be refrigerated and used on other desserts or even on oatmeal or yogurt)

  • 100 g buckwheat flour
  •  50 g salted butter
  • 50 g brown sugar
  • 65 g hazelnut meal
  • 2 generous pinches of fleur de sel (or regular coarse sea sal

Since Deb explains in details how to make the fruit base and the process is pretty straightforward, I won’t go over it again. As suggested, I added a teaspoon of cornstarch to the caramelized pears to thicken up the juices a bit. If you do that, remember to mix the cornstarch with some cold liquid first. (I took two tablespoons of pear juice out of the pan, added an ice cube until cool, removed the ice cube, mixed in the starch and put the whole thing back in with the pears.)
The recipe for the buckwheat topping being given in French, I’ll run it by you in English: basically all you have to do is mix the buckwheat flour, butter, salt and hazelnut meal in the food processor until you get a finely granulated powder, toast it for a few minutes in a frying pan until satisfyingly blonde and fragrant. Et voilà, you have a dessert that’s both reasonably healthful and decidedly decadent. Enjoy!

About love

Love is when an eight-year old French girl decides to make a Pithiviers (an almond cake) for her family. She has baked Pithiviers before and is confident it will come out well. So confident that she forgets to use flour. Butter goes in and ground almonds and sugar and who can remember what else but what comes out of the oven is a flat disk. At the end of dinner that night, the so-called Pithiviers is solemnly brought out and sliced. But the smell and taste are off-putting (mushroomy in fact, probably because of the baking powder) and nobody is actually able to eat more than one bite of his or her share except the little girl’s dad who pronounces the sorry cake the best flourless Pithiviers he has ever had.
Love is when you bake a brioche for your Valentine and you make it a hundred percent whole wheat to compensate for all the butter you used that he shouldn’t be eating and you bungle the shaping because really you never learned how to make a brioche à tête like the ones you see all over Paris and because of the poor shaping, it doesn’t rise as well as it should but you bake it anyway and when you slice it open to reveal a somewhat under-baked center, your Valentine says there is nothing wrong with your brioche that a little browning in the toaster won’t fix.
Love is a lot like gluten in bread dough: it binds us together, yet leaves enough breathing space around each of us that we can grow and change and still be part of a whole. In the face of the relentless waves of violence, ugliness, intolerance, and plain old stupidity that are threatening to sweep us under, the humble metaphor is reason enough to keep on baking.
Happy Valentine’s Day everyone!