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Baking with Whole Grains: a Jeff Hamelman workshop

…at the Baking Education Center in Norwich, Vermont.

I had been looking forward to this workshop for months and I wasn’t disappointed. Jeff is not only an amazing baker and a talented writer (which I knew already from his book Bread: a Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes) but also an excellent teacher. He is soft-spoken and kind and a pleasure to study with. But beware, his passion for good bread is catching. If you don’t have it when you arrive, you’ll be hooked by the time the workshop ends!
There were only five of us students which means that we had ample opportunities to ask questions and get answers and that we learned a lot not only from Jeff but from each other. What’s more, we had a lot of fun doing it.
We mixed and baked several formulas from the booklet we received upon arrival, such as…


Carrot Walnut Bread


Brown Rice Bread


Vollkornbrot

an all-rye bread for which we used this gorgeous starter:

(Jeff has had his rye starter for more than 26 years and during all this time, it has been fed twice a day, seven days a week. I wasn’t kidding when I said he was passionate about bread-making!)


Miche


Oatmeal Bread

..etc., as well as crackers and lavash (which I forgot to photograph) and Jeff gave us innumerable tips along the way such as:

  • How to check whether or not one has forgotten to put in the yeast (you take a little bit of your dough and you drop it in water. If it rises to the surface, the yeast is there)
  • How to calculate the friction factor for your mixer (click here for the answer)
  • What value should you give to the friction factor when you plan to do an autolyse (click here to find out)
  • How to determine if a preferment is ready or not (all preferments should dome and be about ready to collapse. If they are concave, then next time lower the water temperature, shorten the fermentation time, if possible, and/or use less yeast)
  • Never do an autolyse with a rye or a challah-type dough (rye dough wants to ferment quickly so the dough doesn’t over-acidify, hence an autolyse is unwarranted. And challah, an enriched and sweetened dough, wouldn’t benefit—it’s pretty highly mixed intentionally, so considerations about the carotenoids don’t apply)
  • How do you know when fresh yeast is really fresh (it should be crumbly and break open just as a fresh mushroom)
  • It is better to fold a weak dough (whole grain doughs are weak by definition) on the bench than inside a container (it gives it more strength), etc.

All this info is very valuable and I am glad to have it at hand but what I found personally most helpful is that, on the second day, Jeff had each of us devise a formula that would be used, on the third and final day, to mix and bake a 5 kg batch of dough.
We wrote out the formulas, made a list of ingredients and Michele (from the Baking Center) went shopping for us and brought back everything we needed. If you read this, Michele and Susan, thank you very much for your help as well as for the lovely meals!

Sandra made a beautiful pumpkin-sage bread…

Monesa’s contribution was a fragrant Roasted Red Pepper loaf…

Lori made lovely roasted butternut and onion loaves and rolls…

…and Bill contributed a scrumptious almond-cherry Celtic bread…

As for me, I baked a pear-cardamom-ginger bread…

…which I had made a few times before at home, always winging it (a pinch of this, a fistful of that) and which had always come out fine, maybe because I never made more than a 2-lb batch and knew exactly what to use and in what amount.
However writing down the formula was a different proposition and I am mortified to say that this time, the bread came out awful. We didn’t get to taste it at the Baking Center: since it was leavened with natural starter with no added yeast, it rose slowly and was baked last. Consequently it was still too hot to cut open when class ended and each of us just took a warm loaf home.
I don’t know what Jeff and the other students did with their loaves (I suspect they will be too kind to say) but I know mine went straight into the trashcan. It literally reeked of cardamom (a spice I normally love). When I make this bread at home, I use just one pinch but there, silly me, I went for 1%. I should have realized that it was way way too much but I didn’t stop to think.
What I like is that Jeff didn’t say: are you sure you are not going over with the percentage of ground cardamom? He didn’t even raise an eyebrow. He let me go on with the formula as I had written it and I am grateful that he did because now I know better than to eyeball percentages for assertive ingredients such as spices.
What I should have done is throw 5 pinches of cardamom in a bowl (since one pinch is fine for 5 times less dough), weigh the result, and then calculate the percentage. Believe me, next time I will. That bread is one of our favorites. I was planning to give it to the Man to take to the office when I got home and was very disappointed to have to throw it away (so was he, poor guy).
However I liked the way my miche Pointe-à-Callière came out. Small comfort, I know, but better than nothing…

And as soon as I am over the cardamom shock, I’ll make the bread again and post the recipe. It is really a good bread when you remember that your brain is one of the main ingredients!

Meet the Baker: Kathy Andrews

Kathy at the Hillsborough Farmers Market

If I had to choose three words and three words only to characterize Kathy Andrews from Empty Nest Bakery in Hillsborough, NC, (and that would be a great pity because there is so much to be said about who she is and what she does), I would pick: “creativity, talent and determination”. Not only is she an accomplished baker but, in her other life, she is the chief designer for Storybook Metals, an ironwork business owned by her husband, George Barrett. No slouch himself, George, a blacksmith, functions as Empty Nest Bakery’s self-avowed “sous-chef” in his own other life. Talk about teamwork!

I met Kathy back in January at the San Francisco Baking Institute. We were fellow students in the Artisan I and Artisan II workshops and it didn’t take me long to realize that she was way ahead of most of us. The scores on her baguettes were invariably graceful…

…and her hand-mixed and hand-shaped sourdough miches looked like smaller versions of the six-pounders my great-grandmother used to bake every two weeks in southwestern France (not that I ever saw any of these loaves or set eyes on my great-grandmother for that matter but my Dad described them and her so often that the images are imprinted in my mind).

Like our forebears and many other artisan bakers throughout the world, Kathy bakes exclusively with wild yeast. You won’t catch a telltale red and white bag of instant yeast lurking in her cupboards and not a speck of baker’s yeast is to be seen anywhere in her bakery. All of her flours are organic and come from a nearby mill. She and George grow their own herbs and greens…

…and on the day of my visit, the figs and pears that went into the tartlets came from the trees which surround the house.

Kathy keeps a liquid starter (that’s where the wild yeast comes from) with an hydration rate of 80%. Since she bakes on Friday, she takes it out every Thursday and feeds it (with flour and water). Once the mixing is done, she feeds it again and it goes back to the refrigerator until the following week.


Kathy’s natural starter

From images of the medieval baker at work, such as this one, taken from Le Pain : le grain, le boulanger et la ronde des pains, an informative little book by François Isler on the history of bread, it is striking to see that, except for the electric mixers, the baker’s work has not changed much over the centuries:

Almost everything is homemade at Empty Nest Bakery, including the bakery itself which Kathy and George built in an attached porch, replacing the existing screens with windows, refinishing the walls, building furniture and, often, retooling equipment bought second-hand, except for the big mixer and the ovens which are brand-new.
But for about four years, before the porch was changed into a gorgeous home bakery, Kathy baked 85 to 100 loaves every Friday in her two home ovens. Each oven could only handle three “bâtards” (football-shaped breads) or four boules at a time and since the heat was inconsistent, each of these loaves had to be turned at half-time.
As dough doesn’t wait, she had to do her mixing by increments, staggering it so that the ovens would be available when the bread was ready to go in. It took many long hours (even without taking into consideration the innumerable rustic pastries and savories that Kathy was also baking) and an extraordinary level of determination but she did it! And George helped.

Then about a year ago, spanking new bakery ovens were ordered and delivered. Since they could not be taken through the house and were too heavy to be carried around it, they had to be lifted in. Watching them dangling over the house made for rather tense minutes as it crossed Kathy’s mind that they might tear loose and drop in place straight through the roof…
© Kathy Andrews (slideshow)

But they didn’t and they now lend the bakery an undeniably professional allure.

How do you get from being a home baker who bakes for her family to a professional baker who sells on a farmers’ market? Well, in Kathy’s case, what did it was an attack of the empty nest syndrome. She had been a Nancy Silverton aficionada and a serious baker for years and was quite content to bake for her husband and their four kids.
But the kids grew up as kids tend to do. One by one, they left the house and all of a sudden she was left with only two mouths to feed and dancing fingers which itched to mix, shape, score and bake. There was no way George and she could eat all the breads she wanted to create.
So one day, without even notifying George of what she was about to do, she went and registered with the Hillsborough Farmers Market (which takes place once a week on Saturday in the Hillsborough Home Depot’s parking lot) and just like that, Empty Nest Bakery came into being.

When George came home that evening and heard the big news, he was flabbergasted. His reaction was : “Okay, I understand that’s what you need to do and I will support you. I will come help you set up the first few times but after that you are on your own. As you know, my Saturdays are for flying” (George is a fervent amateur pilot). “Fair enough”, replied Kathy, “bread is my thing and I’ll manage”. That was five years ago and George has yet to voluntarily skip a market. Just like Kathy, he is hooked.

Like her, he loves meeting new customers or chatting with the regulars. As aptly put by Steven Kaplan in his magnificent book, Good Bread is Back: A Contemporary History of French Bread, the Way It Is Made, and the People Who Make It, “like a sort of societal gluten, sources of bread constitute networks of sociability that structure daily life”.
Kathy says that being part of the Hillsborough Farmers’ Market has given them both of them a deep sense of community and one only has to watch her and George interact with their customers to understand that indeed, beyond the business relationship, they perform a social function. They anchor the client in space and time. They give him or her a sense of belonging, the sense that someone indeed notices when they don’t show up and wants to hear whether or not they went on a trip or were doing poorly or were too busy with kids or grand-kids to get out of the house. Someone cares about what they like and will try to provide it for them.
For instance Kathy doesn’t always bring scones to the market but on that particular Saturday an elderly couple who had been away for a couple of weeks was expected back and George reminded her they always liked to have a scone with their coffee. So she baked a batch.



Now let’s say that, just like me, you came to the market on this fall Saturday and stopped at the bakery for a chat and a bite. What struck your fancy? One of these tender cranberry-walnut scones?

A big chocolate chip cookie? A scrumptious pear caramel tartlet?

One of the afore-mentioned fig tartlets? Or if you are more into savories, maybe a mushroom quiche?

Or a flatbread? Some crackers? An empanada?

Or maybe, like me again, you came first and foremost for the bread. Then you had your pick of six different loaves: whole wheat, herb & garlic foccacia, country sourdough, ricotta sandwich bread, chili, cumin & cheddar and asiago & onion.

Kathy varies her weekly assortment according to her whim and to her customers’ requests, taking care to rotate the flavors: kalamata olives & rosemary, potato & chive or cheese, garlic & parsley, oatmeal, multigrain, sesame, etc. It is hard to predict what will sell most on a particular day but she tries to let her customers know ahead of time what she plans to offer the following week. On the day I was at the market, everything pretty much flew off the shelves as you can see from this picture taken towards the end of the morning:

I tasted all the breads and they were very good. I tend to gravitate towards whole wheat and I loved that particular loaf but the Asiago cheese one was hard to resist. Like a child who tastes the jelly until there is nothing left, I found myself coming back to it quite a few times! It is moist and fragrant and very popular. So popular in fact that Kathy agreed to share her formula with Farine readers. If you are interested in seeing her make it and/or in making it yourself, please click here.

When asked where she imagines taking the bakery in the future, Kathy says that she wouldn’t be happy doing production baking. Her reward is the customer response. It spurs on her own growth. She considers it an honor that the customer chooses to spend his or her dollar on her products and a privilege that she thus has an opportunity to explore new tastes and to artfully present them. She doesn’t see herself as having a goal but rather a pursuit which will change with time. When the economy and the market improve (she produces much less these days than in previous years), she might hire an assistant and pass on her knowledge and passion. When baking is no longer fun, it will be time to stop. Meanwhile she’s in for the ride and so is George. Good luck to both of them!
On a final note, after visiting Kathy and George at the Empty Nest Bakery, you may want to do as I did and stop by the neighboring booth for a taste of Becky Dicky’s cinnamon cream honey. I can’t imagine a more heartwarming treat on a crisp fall weekend morning than a slice of Kathy’s whole wheat or ricotta bread with some of that heavenly spread…

Flour : Enzymatic Activity

As indicated in the last post, Didier Rosada talked at length about flour during last month’s Artisan III workshop, detailing the testing process by which the miller determines the ash content, the protein content and the enzymatic activity.
An enzyme is a big protein molecule which can catalyze a biochemical reaction when activated with water. Since enzymes are needed to transform complex sugars into simple ones which the yeast cells can process, the baker needs to know if a given flour contains enough enzymes to make bread. Enzymes are naturally present in the flour; they can also be added at the mill to give the baker better control of the fermentation activity.
When wheat arrives at the end of its maturation, it starts getting ready for the new cycle of life (sprouting process) and within the kernel, enzymes – generally activated by heavy rains – start degrading complex molecules of starch as food for the germ. That’s why farmers are so stressed out when rain is forecast and the combine they have booked for the harvest has yet to arrive: they risk losing one whole year of work.
The miller tests the wheat when it arrives at the mill using the falling number method which “…measures the time taken for a plunger to fall to the bottom of a precision bore glass tube filled with a heated paste of wheat meal and water… The time taken (in seconds) for the plunger to fall is known as the falling number, and is 62 seconds for badly sprouted wheat.” (Carl L. German, Understanding the Falling Number Wheat Quality Test).
A falling number between 250 and 300 seconds indicates a flour with well-balanced enzyme activity. Most of the time, the falling number is equal or superior to 400, denoting low enzyme activity.
If a miller receives wheat with a low falling number (indicating high enzyme activity), he knows that the sprouting process is well underway and that the quality of the flour will be poor for baking purposes. It might even be impossible to make bread with it. Sometimes bread can still be made but the dough may be very sticky, lack strength and rise poorly, fermentation may be too fast and/or crust color may be off. He then rejects that wheat or buys it at a much lower price for a different purpose (animal food for example).
The miller boosts the baking properties of the flour by adding enzymes to it, most often malt. It is thus very important for the home baker to read the flour label. If it says “malted barley flour”, you know the miller has added what is needed to make bread. If no indication is given, the only way to find out is to actually make bread. If fermentation is very slow and the crust remains pale, you need to add diastatic malt (.5% to 1%) to your next batch.
Some millers also use fungal amylase (measured by a different test) to boost enzymatic activity. Fungal amylase isn’t available to home bakers as it needs to be used in such minute quantities that it would be impossible for them to weigh it.

Flour: Protein Content

Didier Rosada talked at length about flour during last week’s Artisan III workshop, detailing the testing process by which the miller determines the ash content, the protein content and the level of enzymes.
Proteins are organic substances made of carbon, oxygen, hydrogen, nitrogen and minerals. Wheat proteins are diverse and complex. 80% of them are insoluble in water and, when hydrated, link together in chains to form the gluten. In other words, water-insoluble proteins are what provides elasticity to the dough.
Gluten is mostly protein and protein can absorb up to 250% of its weight in water but it does it much slower than starch. That’s why it is essential not to switch to second speed too fast when mixing. Since starch – which fills the space between the gluten structure – gets hydrated first, the fact that dough is formed doesn’t mean that the gluten has been fully developed.
There are two ways of measuring the protein content of a given flour, near-infrared technology (NIR), a very fast and fairly precise method and nitrogen combustion, a much lengthier but much more precise process. NIR is most frequently used.
Some countries also measure the proportion of soluble and insoluble protein in the flour using a machine called the Glucomatic.
Protein plays a big role in the wheat market and high-gluten wheat is always more expensive.
However protein isn’t measured in the same way around the world. In the US for instance, the percentage of protein is determined based on a 14% moisture content while in France the moisture is removed before testing and 100% dry matter is used. In other words, a 11.5% protein flour in the US would contain less than 10% protein if measured the French way.
For the purpose of artisan baking, a flour made from low-protein hard wheat is best because of its high tolerance to long fermentation while industrial bakers – who make mostly pan breads and want to develop the gluten to the maximum in order to get a tight crumb – favor protein-rich hard spring wheat. Hard winter wheat spends more time in the ground which boosts the quality of the protein by making it very resistant to protease, an enzyme whose role is to break down protein.
What role do proteins play in bread making?
Water-soluble proteins participate in enzymatic activity and contribute to the nutritional value of the bread. Water-insoluble proteins form the gluten network, giving the dough its elasticity, extensibility and tenacity.
Rye contains less protein than wheat (8 to 12 % as opposed to 10 to 14%) and a large part (30 to 50%) of this protein is water-soluble, which means that it doesn’t help form a gluten network. However this can be partially compensated by using lowering the pH of the dough (using an acidic agent such as a sourdough starter). More about rye in a future post. Stay tuned!

Meet the Baker: Lumi Cirstea

No one embodies the American dream more vividly than Luminita Cirstea. She is a living testimony to the fact that, in this country, if given a chance and if talented and determined enough (two big if’s), you can become what you want to be.
Born in the small city of Vilcea-Dragasani in Romania to a history teacher and a landscape designer, Lumi always dreamed of working in the food industry. But her parents believed that a career as a baker would be a surefire ticket to long hours and low pay. So she became a telecommunications engineer in Sibiu, a medieval town in Transylvania.
The years passed. She excelled at what she was doing, was sent abroad for further training, and even got promoted, but her heart wasn’t in her career. Each evening she had to set three alarm clocks to make sure she would wake up in the morning, and every morning she had to drag herself out of bed.
The dream hadn’t died, however. Only now it was focused on relocating to the United States, a country where she was convinced it could come true. So, seven years in a row, she tried her luck at the annual Green Card Lottery and in 2001, she hit the jackpot. She won permanent residency and was given one month to wrap up her life in Romania and move to the US.
Lumi said her goodbyes and bought a one-way ticket to Chicago. Why Chicago? When interviewed for her visa by a staff member at the American Consulate, she was asked to choose a port of entry. Her interviewer was from Chicago and told her it was a beautiful city. She picked Chicago.
When she arrived at O’Hare International Airport, Lumi knew exactly three words of English: “okay” “exit” and “thank you.” (Should you be curious to discover what it feels like to arrive in a country where you understand nobody and nobody understands you, click here for The Bridge to a Dream, Lumi’s story of her first hours on American soil.)
Her mom had helped her to pack four enormous suitcases. By the time she was done with the formalities and issued her papers, these four cases were the only ones left on the carousel in the baggage claim area. Nobody was in sight, and she could not read the instructions on how to get a luggage cart. Since she couldn’t possibly carry all of her bags, she picked two at random, removed the tags from the other ones, and left them behind. It was a heartbreak and to this day, she hasn’t had the courage to tell her mother.
The taxi driver took $100 to drive her and her two suitcases to a nearby motel where she stayed until she found her first job. Her telecom experience was of no value since the technologies she had learned in Romania had long ago become obsolete in the US. Through an agency that primarily placed immigrants, she was hired by a wealthy family in the suburbs of Chicago as a live-in dog sitter and housekeeper. In exchange for room and board and a modest stipend, she walked the dogs, prepared their meals, and cleaned the house.
Knowing that she needed to learn English, she asked her employer to help her arrange for lessons which she would pay for out of her own pocket. After a while, she was ready to find a new job where she could practice her English. She was hired for the holiday season at Piron Belgian Chocolatier, and afterwards worked at a variety of jobs that ranged from waitress to veterinary assistant.
She continued to improve her English, attending free ESL (English as a second language) classes at night at a local high school. Once she knew enough English to get by, she enrolled in evening classes in grammar, punctuation and speech at a local community college. She became an American citizen on April 18, 2006, one of the “proudest days of [her] life”.
The next step was to get into culinary school. She applied to and was accepted by the School of Culinary Arts at Kendall College in Chicago. In her mind, food was love and she wanted to make people happy through the dishes she would create.
To support herself while in school, she worked full time in a seafood company where she had secured a sales job. She also received from Les Dames d’Escoffier of Chicago a generous fellowship which helped pay her tuition.
One of the requirements for the year-long program in Professional Cookery was to take a Baking & Pastry class. That class changed her life forever. She decided to continue her education for two more years by working towards an Associate’s Degree in Baking & Pastry and discovered in Chef Melina Kelson-Podolsky’s class that her greatest passion was making artisan bread.
After three years at Kendall, she graduated with an A.A. degree in Baking & Pastry and a Certificate in Professional Cookery. She was selected as the student speaker at the commencement ceremony where she was given the Escoffier Award as well as the George Bay Award for Baking & Pastry Excellence. (For the text of her colorful graduation speech, click here.)

After graduation, Lumi worked at Bennison’s Bakery in Evanston, Illinois where she had earlier completed an internship. She learned to move fast and to be “a dough doctor” (when dough isn’t behaving as expected in a bakery, there is no time to google the issue or peruse through a book). She learned a lot from the owner of the bakery, Jory Downer, winner of the Gold Cup at the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie (Bread World Cup) in 2005, as well as from his hard-working and talented team.

Chef Downer recommended that she become a Certified Journey Baker. She passed the test in 2008. Always ready to challenge herself, she went one step further the next year and took another exam (both written and hands-on) to become a Certified Baker. Again, she passed.
Meanwhile, in 2008, Lumi competed in the first ever California Raisin Bread Contest with a rye/raisin formula she had spent two months perfecting while working at Bennison’s.

Lumi’s Grand-Prize Winning Rye Raisin Bread

Since her twenty competitors were experienced and well-known bakers from all over the country, she had no expectations to win and simply went for the experience. When her name was called as a Co-Grand Prize Winner (with Lionel Vatinet) in the Artisan Bread category, she became all choked up. (For a look at her formula, click here)

The California Raisin Board awarded all of the winners a tour of California raisin country, various vineyards in the Napa Valley, Yosemite National Park, and the San Francisco Bay area in late March 2009.


At Yosemite

By that time Lumi had left Benisson’s where she had been working full-time since her graduation. She had decided to do some “graduate work” in baking & pastry by taking classes with such master bakers as Didier Rosada and Jeff Hamelman as well as by attending workshops with Paco Torreblanco as well as with Stephan Glacier (with whom she will perfect the making of French macaroons this coming October).


With Jeff Hamelman

She also traveled to work in bakeries under the excellent supervision of Tim Foley at the Bit of Swiss in Michigan and Solveig Tofte at the Turtle Bakery in Minneapolis. Never shy of learning something new, she helped build a brick-oven at Kendall College (for pictures of this experience, click here).
Earlier this year, Lumi also signed up for the “Draft”, a two-day hands-on workshop for bakers hoping to participate in the next Coupe du Monde. She created and then painstakingly tested formulas for six different breads for nearly four months.
At the workshop which took place at the San Francisco Culinary Institute in June, she met “fabulous bakers”, such as John Tredgold (aka J.T.) from Semifreddi’s, Ben Hershberger from the Phoenician, and Matt McDonald from Bouchon Bakery to mention only a few. Working alongside “these stars of the American baking world”, Lumi felt she was once again living a dream.


With J.T.

Today, impatient for each new day to start, she no longer needs three alarm clocks to wake up. She actually wakes up before the alarm goes off. She is eager “to give back what [she] has received, to help make other people passionate about bread, to put [her] fingerprints somewhere” (her own words). And so she will, for sure! Meanwhile keep your eyes peeled for her name! One day you may see it in the list of champion bakers who represent the United States at the Coupe du monde…

I had the good fortune to meet Lumi last spring at SFBI’s Whole Grains Workshop with Didier Rosada. We met again this summer at Artisan III, again with Didier Rosada. True to what her name evokes (“lumen” means “light” in Latin), Lumi has a glow about her. She radiates warmth and generosity and when you hear her story, you can’t help being awed and deeply moved. So let’s give her a solid round of applause and wish her the very best! Lumi, we are honored that you chose to come and live in this country.