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Baking with Locally Grown Grains

“Baking with Locally Grown Grains”, such was the title of the class I recently attended at the King Arthur Baking Education Center in Norwich, VT. Sponsored by the Bread Bakers Guild of America (BBGA), it was taught by Jeffrey Hamelman (whose Bread: A Baker’s Bok of Techniques and Recipes figures prominently on the shelves of most serious bakers I know). Attendees were mostly professional bakers but there were also a few home bakers like me, so I didn’t feel like the odd woman out. All of us were brought there by the common resolve to keep farms up and running where we live and work by spending our money in our community. As Hamelman aptly put it: “If you buy grain from the neighboring farmer, there is a good chance he’ll become a customer at your bakery”.
Many of us were also motivated by the desire to savor our terroir which, in this context, can roughly be defined as the taste of the place where we live. The flour used in the class came from grain grown in Vermont to which most of the participants wouldn’t have access once back home but grains purchased from small farmers elsewhere in the country share enough similar characteristics that we can take the knowledge back to our bakeries and adjust our baking techniques accordingly to obtain the best possible results (at least that was my hope when I registered for the class and happily I left with the information I had been looking for).
Local grain can be used for more than making bread. Intent on making the point, Hamelman started the class by preparing a vegetable pie for which the mock puff pastry dough had been made with equal parts of Vermont white whole wheat pastry flour and white flour (from Gleason Grains).
On the second day, we made scones from local white whole wheat pastry flour. Based on a recipe Hamelman brought back from Ireland many years ago, they were simply the flakiest and lightest I have ever had and it was hard to believe they didn’t contain a gram of all-purpose flour. I’ll try and make them when I get home using Fairhaven white whole wheat pastry flour (Fairhaven Mill being the only source for organic grains and flours that I have discovered so far in my neighborhood). I’ll post the recipe then. So stay tuned if you like pillowy scones!

Update November 20, 2011: the recipe can now be found here.

Hamelman reminded us that, in colonial times, Vermont was the breadbasket of America and that wheat, rye and barley grew in the Champlain Valley. But as nutrients were not put back in the soil, it took only 20 years for the land to be overfarmed. With the construction of the Erie canal, more agricultural land eventually opened to the West. Wheat growing became concentrated in the Midwest and in the Canadian prairies. At the same time, the invention of roller mills and the expansion of the railroads made it economically possible to bring the grain back East. One by one the small grist mills which had dotted the Vermont landscape (there had been one every three miles on every little river) became idle and disappeared. The Western farmers were not breeding for flavor but for yield per acre and for the ability to withstand hailstorms (which explains the preference for short stalks). Short stalk wheat was the main thrust of research and development in the wheat business for over 100 years and still is today.
But some local farmers are pushing back: Jack Lazor (from Butterworks Farm) is a case in point. (If you are curious to learn more about him and his wife, you may want to read this detailed article about them in Vermont’s Local Banquet.)
I visited the farm a couple of years ago with a friend who is a baker and a long-time customer of the Lazors’ and I was struck by their energy, dedication and inventiveness.
Anne Lazor offered us bottles of her kefir and it was so good that, ever since, the very first thing on my list whenever I get to Vermont is to find a coop and buy some. We bought bags of spelt and hard red winter wheat.
I brought my purchases home (back then, I still lived in the Northeast) and as soon as I started baking from it, I was hooked. There was simply no comparison, taste-wise, between the flours I could buy at the grocery stores and the flour I milled from Lazor’s grains. The explanation is to be found in the varieties Lazor chooses to grow, which are typically more flavorful (and richer in nutrients) than the ones grown on an industrial scale.
For more information on the renewal of grain growing in Vermont, you may want to listen to this Vermont Public Radio talk.
But nothing is ever simple, is it? Buying grain or flour directly from a farm is tempting but it can have its pitfalls. In Vermont, many of today’s old farmers were once fervent adepts of the back-to-the-land movement and they are still at it. Their philosophy is: “It’s organic and we grew it. So it’s good.” Their milling is empirical and they don’t sift, so that the flour isn’t necessarily tailored to the needs of the artisan baker. However when they realize they can attract more customers by sifting a bit and also use the resulting bran for other purposes, they are more likely to adjust to the new demand.
The Northern Grain Growers Association was created with the help of the extension staff at the University of Vermont to foster a dialogue between the growers and beyond that, between the growers and the bakers. Hamelman was the first baker to join. Today Vermont farmers have a better understanding of the impact of their choice of grain varieties and milling techniques on the baking product and bakers are learning about farming life. On a much smaller scale, when seeking to buy grain from a local farmer who doubles as a miller, it is a good idea to tell him or her the baking characteristics you are looking for.
Don’t hesitate to ask about grain health either. Lots of crops are susceptible to fusarium. Cereal grains are no exception. If infected, they get fusarium head blight which gives them a very distinct pinkish cast. They can neither be used as seeds nor turned into flour. Therefore Hamelman advises any baker buying directly from a farm to have a conversation with the farmer about testing for DON (deoxynivalenol). DON can develop in the field in most growing conditions in the United States. Any grain with a level of DON above one part per million (1 ppm) is considered unfit for human production. For more information about crop diseases, you may want to check your local library for a copy of Field Crop Diseases Handbook by Robert Nyvall.
If the farmer is also the miller, ask about the milling stones. Are they vertical or horizontal? Horizontal stones might be preferable to vertical ones (I forgot why but if you are interested, I can find out). Are the stones properly dressed? American hard red winter wheat tends to wear them out faster than other grains and very few artisans now have the required skills to maintain the stones.
But even flour skillfully milled from healthy grain can produce a poor loaf of bread. Weather conditions are a factor. If the weather is dry close to the harvest, then the crop will have a higher protein content. While some moisture is ideal to get things going, wet summers can lower the amount of protein in the grain.
All kind of enzymes can be found in cereal grains. Amylase is one of these enzymes. Its role is to convert starch into sugar. As bakers, we need ample amylase potential in our flour. If the flour lacks amylase, very little starch is converted into sugar, fermentation is very sluggish and the resulting bread will be poor. If it contains too much, the fermentation gallops along, too much sugar is produced, the dough is too wet and the crumb gummy.
There can be an excess of amylase when the weather is too wet (it can happen in the field before the harvest, so that the resulting crop is spoiled or contains so much amylase that no miller will take it). Labs use the falling number method to calculate the level of amylase.
There is an inverse relationship between the falling number and the quantity of amylase in the flour. Millers won’t buy a grain with a falling number of 200. The bull’s eye is 250. It is much more useful to know the falling number than the level of protein. When you buy your grain or your flour directly from the farmer, you have no clue what the amylase level is. If you buy from an organic mill, you can ask the miller. If using one of these 5-lb bags sold at the supermarket, you don’t need to worry about it because the test will have been done at the mill and any amylase issue fixed through the blending of grains of different origins and the use of barley malt.
The falling number is usually quite high in whole wheat flour but this flour contains so many fermentable nutrients that it isn’t a problem whereas a low falling number would be. Another thing to remember is that rye is even more susceptible to wetness and excess of amylase than wheat. If you need to know the exact characteristics of the grain or flour you are buying from a local source, you can always send a sample for testing to CII Laboratory Services in Kansas.
I mentioned taste before. Beyond the desire to save food miles and to help farmers survive in our community, pleasing our taste buds is often the main reason we turn to local flours (for which we usually pay a premium). For some of us though, access can be problematic. Jack Lazor mentions during the above-mentioned radio talk that he feels very fortunate to be living and farming in Vermont. He had recently been to North Dakota and there, in the land of wheat, there was almost nothing local to be had…
If you are lucky enough to have access to a local source of tasty grains and flours and eager to start baking, what should you watch for?
  • One of the main principles when using local grains is that you need to process things fast. With Vermont flours, Hamelman likes to go for a one-hour-long first fermentation with three folds and he pre-ferments up to 35% of the total flour in the formula to compensate for the shorter bulk fermentation;
  • Use a firm starter (to better control the fermentation process);
  • Do not retard overnight;
  • Don’t try to go for a supermacho 85% hydration dough. Local grains are often low in protein and won’t be able to absorb as much water as the store-bought flours you might be used to;
  • When scoring, don’t make a zillion cuts (it would flatten the bread);
  • Local grains may have to go in the oven a bit underproofed;
  • You may want to start them in a hotter than usual oven (470° to 480°F/243° to 249°C) and to lower the temperature progressively (receding oven technique);
  • Steam the oven copiously, load the bread, steam again. Five minutes later (no more), open the vents (or, if you are a home baker, remove the steam-generating device from the oven).
If your local grain lacks protein:
  • Do an autolyse;
  • Watch your pre-shaping;
  • Pay attention to the shaping;
  • Reduce the fermentation time;
  • Bake in a hotter oven.
Several of the bakers attending the class are already baking some of their breads with local flours but logistics frequently intervenes to prevent them from using more. There is no infrastructure for grain delivery in Vermont (taking advantage of his booming yogurt business, Jack Lazor couples his grain deliveries with his dairy deliveries and can thus supply King Arthur’s bakery and other bakers but other farmers do not have that option).
White flour represents 99% of the flour eaten in the United States. But white flour mills are hard to come by. A regional one would cost about $10 million. Even if the money were to be found, how would the grain get to the mill? The railroads have gone the way of the grist mills…
I obviously don’t know what the future holds for artisan bakers or for farmers. But I do know that I love the back-to local-food movement: when I was a child, my grandparents grew most of our fruit and vegetables and raised chicken, ducks and rabbits and I didn’t even know it was a huge privilege to be fed that way. I took it totally for granted and complained when we overdosed on asparagus, strawberries or salsify. I never imagined our way of living and eating would one day follow the grist mills and the railroads and almost disappear… Any thing I can do at my modest level to make it come back, I will!

Kneading Conference West 2011

I am lucky enough to have spent the last three days immersed in local flavors and bread talk at the Kneading Conference West, held at the Northwestern Washington Research and Extension Center of Washington State University in Mt Vernon, Washington. The Conference was an extraordinary opportunity to encounter world-known researchers and bakers and to meet with bread people of all kinds:

There were also several hands-on workshops: the basics of artisan bread, sourdough bread at home, pizza baking in a wood-fired oven, malting, earth-oven construction, baking with fresh-milled grains, baking with barley, preferments, etc., as well as presentations and panel discussions.

Located in the Skagit Valley and set against the misty blue background of the Cascade mountains, the Center is surrounded by fields, gardens, meadows and orchards. The Conference took place partly in the main building and partly under the big white tents which dotted the meadow. The food was local, healthful and delicious. We had an opportunity to taste magnificent cheeses, hard ciders and beers, not to mention breads and pastries which were so good they defy description.
And we were kept busy from morning to night. Steve Jones, Director of the Research and Extension Center, showed maps illustrating the centralization of wheat growing in the Midwest over the past 100 years for reasons that had to do with economies of scale and big business, not the quality of the soil. He said that the renewed focus on local has as much to do with flavor and terroir as with helping farmers make a living wage in our communities. He showcased Ebey’s Prairie on nearby Whidbey Island, a farm which produced 119 bushels an acre on its land 100 years ago (a world record) to be compared with the current Midwestern yield of 45 bushels an acre. He explained that the main challenge today for the local farmer was the lack of infrastructure: combines, mills, silos (he showed us a picture of the local silo, now a café) and money for research: for instance the Perennial Grain Project is no longer funded at the federal level.
George DePasquale (The Essential Baking Company) remembered visiting the ruins of Pompeii near Naples on a trip to reconnect with his family roots in Southern Italy: looking at the ancient bakery, he felt he was standing in a river of history and tradition and suddenly understood that his responsibility as a baker was to keep this river moving forward.
Jeffrey Hamelman (King Arthur Flour Company) had everybody laughing when he recounted his beginnings as a bumbling baker in Massachusetts but held the audience’s rapt attention when he read an excerpt from The Nature and Art of Workmanship by David Pye: the author distinguishes between the workmanship of certainty and the workmanship of risk. For Hamelman, bakers (and farmers) are very involved in the workmanship of risk. The concept is central to how they organize their life since they can’t possibly make identical products time after time. Yet they perform fundamental work for society by providing its nutritional foundation. They are public servants (although not in the same sense as the ones in Washington).
Quoting Pablo Neruda’s Nobel lecture, Hamelman concluded: “I have often maintained that the best poet is he who prepares our daily bread: the nearest baker who does not imagine himself to be a god. He does his majestic and unpretentious work of kneading the dough, consigning it to the oven, baking it in golden colours and handing us our daily bread as a duty of fellowship. And, if the poet succeeds in achieving this simple consciousness, this too will be transformed into an element in an immense activity, in a simple or complicated structure which constitutes the building of a community, the changing of the conditions which surround mankind, the handing over of mankind’s products: bread, truth, wine, dreams.”
Like the original Kneading Conference held every summer in Maine, the Kneading Conference West constituted one more step towards changing the conditions in which we live, work and dream. And that, my friends, was its whole purpose.

Larry’s Buckwheat Batons

A few years ago, as I was visiting my Mom in Paris in her retirement home not far from the Eiffel Tower, I decided to take advantage of the fact she had to leave for her physical therapy session to go and check out the nearest Eric Kayser bakery. I had read a lot about Kayser and his bread on the Internet but hadn’t actually seen any of his bakeries. I knew he had one in the 15th arrondissement.
I set out at a brisk pace and 15 minutes later arrived 79 rue du Commerce. The store was sleek and elegant (for an idea of what it looks like, click on “Where are we?” on Maison Kayser’s website, then on “Paris”). The salespersons were a bit harried since it was around lunch time and it didn’t look like they would be available to chat, so I took a quick look at the breads (which were all gorgeous) and asked for a “baguette Paline” (which I knew to be a buckwheat bread).
(I don’t know why Kayser named this bread Paline but, in case you are wondering, he certainly didn’t do it after the former governor of Alaska. His buckwheat bread came into being way before Ms. Palin found her way into mainstream American – not to mention French – consciousness.)
I paid and two minutes later I was back on the sidewalk with, under my arm, a dark brown baguette sticking out of a paper bag. Being pretty hungry I broke off a piece and bit into it. Instant disappointment… The crust was not crunchy enough, the crumb greyish and too tight. I love buckwheat, having been raised on the buckwheat “galettes” (i.e. savory crêpes) with which my paternal grandmother – who was from the Southwest of France – always accompanied her divine rabbit or hare stews but the Paline triggered no Proustian memory. It tasted dull. I was crushed. So much for buckwheat bread if even a master baker couldn’t produce a tastier loaf…
Now I had read good things about Kayser’s Paline, so my disappointment may have stemmed from the combined facts that I had high expectations and that I tried it on a bad day. I will check it again next time I go to France (which sadly is less often now that my Mom passed away) and report back .
Anyway, fast forward to the first time I saw Tree-Top Baking’s spread at the Bayview’s Farmers’ Market on Whidbey Island, Washington. There, among scores of baguettes, rye loaves, levain miches, challahs, etc. I caught sight of luscious batards sporting a burnished look. Getting closer, I read the labels: Buckwheat Batons!
I bought one and was charmed. The crust crackled. The crumb was on the dark side but open and the taste delicate: earthy but not overly so, showcasing the flavor of the buckwheat but also the complex aromas of the levain. I was hooked! That baton was everything I had hoped a Paline would be. Whidbey residents clearly share my enthusiasm. Larry bakes these loaves every week and they always sell out.
Of course I asked for the recipe and that’s how I learned it was actually based on a Kayser formula as demonstrated to Larry by Boris Villatte, a hugely talented young French baker he had met at SFBI. Villatte had worked for Kayser for many years and helped open several Maison Kayser bakeries around the world.
Kayser has published several of his recipes, including in his book 100% pain: La saga du pain enveloppée de 60 recettes croustillantes (summarily translated, the title means: “100% bread. The saga of bread, wrapped in 60 crusty recipes”.) I don’t own it and have no access to it but the author of La Table de Mamou, a French blog, says she has successfully baked several recipes from 100% pain, including baguette Paline. I checked Kayser’s recipe as posted on her blog and noticed that it differed considerably from Boris’: among other things, it called for much more buckwheat. Interestingly while Mamou writes that she liked the taste, she also says that the crumb was too tight and that the next time she would use less buckwheat. In his book Local Breads, Daniel Leader gives another recipe for the Paline and he too uses less buckwheat (although he calls for buckwheat levain). The recipe below is the one which Boris has shared with Larry.
You will note that it flies in the face of everything we have been taught about gently mixing the dough and promoting good fermentation by maintaining it at warmish room temperature. Here the dough gets literally whipped around in the mixer at the highest possible speed until it comes together and then it is shocked into the fridge until ready to bring to room temperature, divide and shape.
The first time I made the batons, it was a total failure. I thought it was because I had used all-purpose flour while Larry uses bread flour (which contains more gluten). But that wasn’t the reason: I have made it several times since with all-purpose flour and consistently gotten excellent results.
No, the sad truth is that this dough is a masochist. The first time I hadn’t dared yield to my inner sadist and beat it enough. So it just sat there and did absolutely nothing. I had to throw it away. I went back to Whidbey and Larry showed me how to punish it into action (see first part of the video below). Now I get it right every time.

Once you get the whipping part, this dough is easy to make and very flexible. It adapts readily to your schedule (how often can you say that with bread?). You can autolyse all day or all night in the fridge and mix in early morning. Or you can have a 45 minute autolyse and go right on to mixing. You can mix the dough and refrigerate it for as little as a couple of hours and then bring it back to room temp before dividing, or you can leave it in the fridge all day or overnight. I have done all of this with equal success. As Larry says, you don’t necessarily get exactly the same bread but it’s always good.

Ingredients (for 4 batons)

  • 940 g unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 60 g buckwheat flour (I milled buckwheat groats for this but store-bought buckwheat flour works fine)
  • 800 g water
  • 25 g salt
  • 2 g instant yeast
  • 120 g mature levain (hydration: 100%)

Method (requires a stand mixer):
TIP: Didier Rosada says in Breadlines vol. 19 no.2 that if using a vertical mixer or a mixer without a bowl-reverse option, to avoid having flour stuck in the bottom of the bowl without being incorporated into the dough it is a good idea to add half of the water first, then all of the flour, then the rest of the water as needed to achieve the desired dough consistency. I tried it and it worked to perfection. No more scraping the sides of the bowl for me!
  1. Mix water and flours until combined (see tip above). Refrigerate 45 minutes to one hour (Larry says he has successfully autolysed the dough anywhere from 5 to 9 hours)
  2. Take the dough out of the refrigerator, add levain, salt and yeast , starting slowly but moving quickly to high speed (using first the paddle, then the hook) until the dough comes together away from the sides of the bowl (see above video). When ready, the dough must be tacky but not sticky. Desired dough temperature is 75-77°F/24-25°C
  3. Transfer the dough to an oiled container and put it back in the refrigerator for 9 to 12 hours
  4. Take it out and bring it to room temperature (Larry puts it in the proofbox for 2 to 3 hours)
  5. Divide at around 500 g, pre-shape as a cylinder, shape as a baguette taking care to leave a lip of dough along the loaf (see above video)
  6. Flatten this lip using the flat of your hand, then flap it over the bread
  7. Proof the loaves, flap down, on a heavily floured couche for 45 minutes to one hour
  8. While the bread is proofing, pre-heat the oven to 470°F/243°C after placing in it a baking stone (on middle shelf) and a metal oven dish (on the lowest shelf)
  9. Bake for 10 minutes at 470° F/243° C (with steam) , then lower the oven temperature to 450°F/232° C and bake another 20 minutes
  10. Cool on a rack.

Larry’s Buckwheat Batons go to Susan from Wild Yeast for this week’s issue of Yeastspotting.

Meet the Baker: Larry Lowary

As his partner Gerry Betz likes to remind him (rather teasingly and usually in the middle of the busiest pre-market nights when sleep is in short supply), Larry Lowary is a man who is living his dream.
A journalist by trade (he is a graduate of the prestigious Missouri School of Journalism at the University of Missouri), he came rather late to baking despite the fact that his grandfather was a baker. Growing up in Chicago, he spent a big part of his childhood in and around bakeries and even though he loved journalism to the point of once acquiring and running his own newspaper (The Big Timber Pioneer) in the town of Big Timber, Montana, ultimately when his passion for reporting started to subside and he began looking for a profession that would bring him back to the basics and allow him to actually make a product that people would come and buy, he saw himself at work in his own bakery baking bread.
Today the dream has come true. So much so that life is a bit hectic during the baking months of the year. But that’s in part because Larry brings to his new profession the same curiosity that drove him to the old one: he is constantly on the lookout for new tastes, new techniques, new recipes, new master bakers.
Endearingly, like many bakers I have met and despite years of experience, Larry doesn’t think he knows best: every day brings opportunities for learning, whereas from books (he has all the books I covet and more), from baking classes and fellow students (as I could see first hand when I met him at a San Francisco Baking Institute weeklong workshop) or from tasting trips (what he and Gerry call “tasty travels”). The result is that he is never bored (except by repetitive tasks that no longer offer a challenge) and, more importantly, neither are his customers who flock to the Saturday Bayview Farmers’ Market where he and Gerry have been selling their baked goods from May to October since 2007. Larry bakes the bread and Gerry makes the cakes (he’s a pastry chef).
Now how did Larry get from Big Timber, Montana to Whidbey Island, Washington? Well, by the time he decided to become a baker, he was working in Oakland, California. He took his training at the Dunwoody Industrial Institute in Minneapolis, then a trading school for bakers underwritten by General Mills, today Dunwoody College of Technology. As luck would have it, Gerry, a native Californian, had trained at the same school, albeit years before. A baking convention coincided with a class reunion. They met. After a stint working together for a German baker in San Francisco, they hit the road in the best American tradition and explored their options. The trip took them from California to the Southwest then back north to the Midwest and finally to Seattle where they settled and worked for several years as bakery managers in an upscale family-operated grocery store. At one point, they bought what they thought would be a weekend house on Whidbey Island and started spending their free time there.
But the lure of island life proved irresistible. After some extensive and much necessary remodeling, they moved in. They had a building built on the property. A couple of years later, an oven was put in and they started to bake for the market. The rest is history.
Now I said Larry was living his dream. But did I mention that he does so in a place that many bakers can only dream of? For those of you who live a world away or are just unfamiliar with the Puget Sound area, let me take you on a short trip: coming from Seattle, the shortest way to get to Whidbey is on a ferry.
Leaving on the ferry from Mukilteo

Sailing towards Whidbey Island
A short crossing and a maze of tree-lined country roads later…
…you are at Tree-Top Baking.
First go in and visit the bakery , then check out its website. Like me, you’ll probably be amazed at the impressive array of baked goods Larry and Gerry manage to produce each week in such a small space.
Last time I was there they were recuperating from a market day where they had sold most of the 728 items they had brought with them, including more than 200 loaves of bread: Bayview baguettes, seeded baguettes, herb pain rustique, challah, white chocolate orange viennois, five-seed multigrain, Genzano bread, flaxseed rye, cracked wheat sourdough, buckwheat baton, barbecue buns, etc. (see complete list).
As we all know, baking is hard work involving long hours, short nights and back-breaking chores. Artisan bakers are usually not in it for the money. Larry and Gerry are no exceptions. In-between market days and during the winter months, they take in orders for various private customers, coffee-shops and restaurants. They deliver each week a large number of muffins, scones and cookies and other pastries as well as the occasional festive cupcake, not to mention wedding cakes. Sometimes they get tired. They’d like to be able to go away more, to have a more normal life but as Gerry put it, if we stop doing it, then these families and businesses would have no choice but to opt for buying, freezing and reheating warehouse baking products. They see their work as contributing to the quality of life on the island. I couldn’t agree more. I like bakers with a social conscience…
Now I have tasted many of Larry’s breads and fell in love with more than one, including his sprouted wheat or spelt breads which are to die for. But the one I would like to showcase this time is his intriguing Buckwheat Baton.

Making croissants and other delightful viennoiseries

I want to make it clear that I am not the author of this video. I found it on YouTube through a posting on the Bread Bakers Guild of America forum (a fantastic resource by the way) and as I greatly enjoyed watching it (even though I don’t think laminated dough is in my future), I thought you might too.