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R.I.P. Gérard Rubaud (1941-2018)

Gérard Rubaud

Gérard Rubaud passed away yesterday. He hadn’t been well for a while but he was on the mend. He sounded very upbeat the last time we spoke, which was two weeks ago before I left on my trip.

He hadn’t started production again since he came back from the hospital: he just didn’t have the energy for it yet but he was building a new levain (starter), playing with grains, temperatures and percentages as a musician would play music and he was already dreaming of future fournées (batches.) I know he planned to start small but I can’t remember if  he said thirty or one hundred loaves. Either way it sounded like a huge step on the slow path to recovery.

It wasn’t to be.

Today Gérard’s levain is orphaned. The oven is cold. And the world has lost a great baker. Someone who lived and breathed bread and could follow the baking process in his head from A to Z as a true fan would watch a game on TV. He had almost a symbiotic relationship with dough.

I will never forget the sight of him bent over the bench in his old bakery, his light the only one around in the darkness of Vermont nights. A flicker of his wrist, a cloud of flour, the dull shine of his bench knife and the balls of dough filling up tray after tray waiting to be shaped.

When he was baking he slept in 12-minutes increments. On a wooden bench near the window when he knew a visitor might come. Otherwise right there on the floor in front of his oven. His favorite spot. Don’t ask why 12 minutes, it was one of his pet theories and it worked for him.

We lived on opposite coasts but we were close. I will miss our weekly talks. I will miss his saying: “Formidable! (Never better!)” each time I asked how he was doing. It always made me laugh. Gérard wasn’t one for self-pity, that’s for sure.

Rest in peace, my friend. My only comfort today is knowing that you got your wish: you died in your little home over the bakery and you were spared the anguish of living the last of your days in a faraway place with no mill, no mixer, no dough trough and no wood-fired oven.

I will sorely miss you.

Au revoir, Gérard!

Gérard Rubaud’s Apprentice Loaf

The Apprentice Loaf is Gérard Rubaud‘s teaching bread. He has developed the formula in collaboration with two of his former apprentices, Trenton and Justin, largely in response to customers’ request for more whole grains. It is still a work in progress (what isn’t with Gérard anyway?): his parting recommendation to me when I left was to adjust the hydration down.
The picture above is of one of the loaves I made at home based on the formula. Gérard wouldn’t have given it his quality control stamp as he doesn’t do grignes (the ears in the crust): his customers eat his bread mostly for breakfast and in sandwiches and grignes get in the way. Plus he himself doesn’t like the hard bite or the concentrated taste. So he always scores his bread shallowly and at a sharp angle. I am the opposite: I adore anything crusty: grignes, quignons (bread endings), etc. Since my only “customers” are family and friends, there is enough of both textures in any given loaf to satisfy everybody!
To my mortification, I forgot to take a picture of the loaves Justin kindly gave me for my grandchildren  (they were not to be sold and he had enough for himself and his friends). When I reached my daughter’s house, the kids -who are huge bread fans- were so happy to see my load of loaves (and hopefully me as well) that I forgot all about photography! When I remembered the day after, there was still a half-loaf left and I took this shot of the crumb.

Neither Justin nor Gérard were satisfied with this batch: the loaves were overhydrated and as you can see, they didn’t get enough of an oven rise. I used a tad less water and my crumb came out a bit tight (see shot below). 

I’ll keep working on it until I get it right. Meanwhile my little grandkids pronounced my loaves to be even better than the apprentice’s (Sorry, Justin! They are seven- and five year-old and a fiercely loyal bunch. I am sure that if they had met you, they would have said both our breads were equally good.). As it is, the seven-year old granddaughter said: “Wow! This is so good. The best bread ever. As good as an artichoke!”. Since artichokes are her favorite food in the world, I consider it a huge compliment.
And truly the bread is good. Spelt tastes endearingly sweet almost as if a dollop of fragrant honey had been added to the dough during the mixing, a practice which Gérard (who despises adding to bread dough anything but the -very- occasional walnut, olive or flax seed) definitely wouldn’t condone.
Gérard’s Apprentice Loaf Formula

  • 76% unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 24% freshly milled whole spelt
  • 82% water (to be adjusted as needed)
  • 2 to 2.6% salt (according to taste)
  • 17% levain at 58% hydration (percentage to be increased in the winter as needed)

My adaptation of the formula



Ingredients: (for four loaves scaled raw at 627 g) 

  • 1028 g unbleached all-purpose flour
  • 252 g whole spelt (I used freshly milled as does Gérard)
  • 972 g water (Gérard uses all of the water for the autolyse but I like to reserve about 50 g in order to adjust the hydration later as needed. So I used about 900 g+ for the autolyse and added the rest as I mixed. This may vary each time I make the bread as it depends on the flours, the weather, the temperature, etc.)
  • 31 g salt
  • 253 g mature levain at 58% hydration

Method: (this dough was mixed by hand)

  1. Mix both flours with the water until the flour is completely hydrated and let rest, covered, for about 40 minutes
  2. Add levain to the autolysed dough and hand mix until incorporated (Gérard recommends pulling long filaments off the levain instead of cutting off chunks as they incorporate much more easily. Not only did I follow his recommendation but I placed these long pieces of levain on top of the dough during the autolyse, so that everything would be exactly at the same temperature. It worked beautifully but I got a surprise: the dough actually swelled up as it usually never does in the absence of a leavening agent and I can only think that some of the wild yeasts from the levain transferred to it even without mixing. Which means that it wasn’t a real autolyse…)
  3. Add the salt
  4. Mix until incorporated and adjust the hydration as needed
  5. Cover and leave to ferment for 4 to 6 hours or more (depending on room temperature), giving the dough a few folds as needed
  6. Scale at 627 g and pre-shape as a boule
  7. Let rest, covered, for 20 to 30 minutes (again depending on room temperature)
  8. Shape as a batard
  9. Let proof about one hour or until the dough stops bouncing back under the gentle pressure of two fingers
  10. Bake with steam in pre-heated oven (470°F/243°C for 10 minutes then lower the oven temperature to 450°F/232°C and continue baking for another 20 to 25 minutes, turning the loaves half-way through to ensure even baking (again these temperatures are given solely as an indication. I am spending the summer in a little cabin where the oven is small, very old and rather weak and I have to crank it up to the max to get a rise out of my bread. I actually set it on 500°F+  for the initial 10 minutes and on 470°F for the remaining 20 minutes or so but, from past experience with my regular home oven, I would say 470° F and 450°F should do the trick. If your oven is very efficient however, these temperatures might need to be adjusted down).
  11. Cool on a rack.
  12. Enjoy!

Gérard Rubaud’s Apprentice Loaf is going to Susan from Wild Yeast for her weekly edition of Yeastspotting.

Related posts:

Gérard Rubaud

Ask the Baker: Gérard Rubaud
Meet the Baker: Gérard Rubaud
Revisiting Gérard Rubaud
Gérard Rubaud: The Never-Ending Quest
Gérard Rubaud: The Movie (October 2011)
Baguette/batard shaping: Gérard’s method
Building a levain à la Gérard: step 1
Building a levain à la Gérard: step 2 & 3…
Gérard Rubaud on working the levain
Troubleshooting dough hydration: a trick “à la Gérard”
Gérard Rubaud and the Three-Speed Levain
Gérard Rubaud’s Apprenticeship Program (revised)
Gérard Rubaud’s Apprentice Loaf

Gérard Rubaud and the Three-Speed Levain


Gérard’s regular levain, fermented on second speed, initially (left) and six hours later (right)
What baker hasn’t wished his or her levain would ferment a little faster so that mixing can start? Gérard who runs a one-man show on a very tight schedule has devised a method that gives him more control on how fast or how slowly his levain will develop.
He doesn’t advocate using this method all the time as he isn’t sure of what actually happens within the levain when it ferments faster: does it develop undesirable acids or aromas? He hasn’t been able to tell just from tasting the resulting bread. Still he finds it a handy tool to have as it makes for more flexibility.
As for me, when we did the experience described below, since we didn’t bake with any of these three pieces of levain, I can’t vouch for the taste but I can tell you one thing: the levain fermented on third speed had aromas which were heady enough to make a grown woman swoon. Plus it ended up so round and fluffy I wished I could have used it that night as a pillow. Forget about cloud nine! I’ll take cloud three anytime…

Three-speed levain demo



Pictures taken before the start of the experiment
#3 may look a bit bigger than #2 to start with but it is an optical effect. 
All three levains weigh exactly the same.
  • Shortly before 8:00 AM, Gérard feeds his regular levain and scales off three 1,650 g pieces which he calls #1, #2 and #3 respectively. Please note that he keeps his levain at 57% hydration and always salts it
  • He rounds the three pieces gently
  • At 8:20 AM, he places #1 in a plastic box, loosely covered, and puts the box on its side (to make later comparisons easier) (this is first speed)
  • He places #2 next to #1 and loosely covers it with a sheet of clear plastic (this is second speed)
  • He places #3 next to #2 on a clear sheet of plastic which he loosely wraps around it (this is third speed). 
  • When wrapping the levain for third speed, it is important to leave it room to expand as its volume will triple
  • The three levains are then left to ferment side-by-side at room temperature (about 78°F) for about six hours
  • At 2:20 PM, Gérard uncovers the three levains simultaneously
  • Significant differences in sizes can be observed between them, ranging from #1 (the smallest) to #3 (the largest)


  • #3 has obviously reached a more advanced stage of fermentation (Gérard’s theory is that wild yeast cell counts shoot up when the levain is completely sheltered from ambient air)
  • #3’s fluffiness makes it much easier to incorporate into an autolysed dough: there is no risk that some pieces of it might remain firm and unincorporated
  • For the sake of the side-by-side photo comparisons, Gérard has made all three levains into boules today but when he actually uses the third speed in a production setting, he shapes the levain into a long sausage before wrapping it. The fermentation is even faster that way.
Gérard says he uses second speed routinely and third speed only when he really needs to rescue his production schedule. 

Other Gérard Rubaud stories may be found on this page.

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.