In Search of the Perfect Loaf: A Home Baker's Odyssey (28 page)

I was curious about the origins of the idea. I mean, why even test sourdough for its ability to degrade gluten? “The idea for this research actually came from my father, who said and still says that the sourdough bread made by his grandmother was much better than the bread we eat today,” Gobbetti told me. I refrained from interjecting that his father must be a smart man. “In some instances, when he had digestive problems, he felt better by eating this bread. Obviously, the observation was anecdotal. But that’s where the idea came from.” I almost laughed. Of course, the source of this scientific inquiry arose from bread made by an Italian grandmother!

At the beginning, Gobbetti thought nothing would come of the work, but he went ahead nonetheless. The results turned out to be surprising. Not only was his lab able to use this specially prepared sourdough cocktail to degrade gluten to below the EU “gluten-free” standard of twenty parts per million, they also fed bread made with gluten-degraded flour to celiac patients who in short-term studies
showed no adverse
reaction. Baker’s yeast, the lab found, had no such properties. The researchers in Gobbetti’s lab recognized this difference explicitly, noting that the
fast fermentations common in industrial breads
weren’t doing anything to reduce the disease-related cereal proteins in wheat. Maybe, I asked Gobbetti, the historical loss of sourdough-fermented breads made people in general more vulnerable to celiac disease? He admitted that was an interesting hypothesis but it hadn’t been substantiated in any epidemiological studies. Those types of studies would be difficult to conduct unless you could find a population of people who exclusively ate sourdough bread.

When I asked him whether the sourdough I used in my own kitchen would have a similar gluten-degrading effect, he stressed that his lab had identified a special team of lactic acid bacteria. “What we do with these bacteria to break down gluten
cannot be done at home
,” he said, stressing the last part of his statement. Still, I pressed, thinking that even my sourdough would have some power over gluten, even if minimally. After all, wasn’t it his father’s folk wisdom that set him down this path in the first place—that his grandmother’s sourdough bread was easier to digest? Gobbetti eventually did concede that my sourdough might have some slight effect on gluten, it was just uncertain how much. Maybe it was 0.1 percent, maybe 10 percent, of what they were achieving in the lab; it was all speculative and depended on those little microbes I had in residence, how long my fermentations lasted, and even the type of wheat I used. Overall, he stressed, “Don’t try this at home.” Homemade sourdough will not produce gluten-free bread, though I do accept the anecdotal evidence that it may be easier for some to digest.

All of this research makes clear that sourdough microbes can alter the nutritional profile of bread. The more I looked, the more I found. Studies have shown that
sourdough fermentation can maintain
the level of thiamine (vitamin B
₁
) found in whole wheat bread, even after baking.
Certain strains of lactic acid bacteria
can boost the level of riboflavin (vitamin B
₂
) by two to three times. As if that weren’t enough,
sourdough breaks down phytic acid
, which is concentrated in the innermost layer of bran and blocks the body from absorbing beneficial minerals also found there, such as iron, calcium, magnesium, and zinc. Yeast and baking powder lack this power to neutralize phytic acid, which means mineral absorption declines when you make whole wheat bread with these methods. (
Mineral deficiencies
aren’t a problem in wealthier parts of the world, but in poorer countries they constitute a major health problem.) Now, I’m not knocking your morning bran muffin made with a leavening agent such as baking powder, because you still get the intestinal benefit of fiber. But with sourdough-fermented whole grains, the bacteria neutralizes much of the phytic acid in the bran and frees these essential minerals to be absorbed by the body.

White flour, of course, lacks many of these benefits. Because milling removes the bran and the germ, vitamin E, vitamin K, and a range of minerals—calcium, magnesium, phosphorus, potassium, zinc, copper, manganese, and selenium—are depleted as well.
A few nutrients
, such as iron, thiamin, riboflavin, niacin, and folate, are added to white flour through “enrichment,” but even these additions don’t make up for the wide range lost in the bran and germ. Add in zippy yeast fermentation and the result is a loaf as devoid of taste as it is of the many nutritional benefits I’ve just described.

One day, Heinz Weichardt was talking to me about the nutritional superiority of using freshly ground whole grains and Backferment in making bread. In retrospect, there was quite a bit to support what he was saying. But Weichardt didn’t need a nutritional label or a health claim to persuade customers to buy a loaf. Customers were not seeking a colonic aid, or a fiber boost. They were just buying bread.
Roggenweizenbrot
may have had a whole range of health benefits from its freshly milled whole rye and wheat grains, but at the end of the day it was just a good loaf: dense, yes, but almost addictive once you started eating it. At its apogee, food should sustain the organism, by tasting good, by feeling good in the mouth, by satisfying you, and by giving you sustained energy. Weichardt’s bread scored on all those counts.

Sadly, such loaves are still few and far between in the United States. As I visited San Francisco’s Tartine bakery over the course of a couple of years, Chad Robertson was moving more assertively into whole grains, influenced by rye bread he had encountered in Denmark. His bakers were constantly experimenting with grains like barley and emmer and his cooks at Bar Tartine had built a menu around thinly sliced grainy rye, known as Danish
Rugbrød
. Yet, when I visited the restaurant for lunch, there weren’t yet lines out the door. Those could be found around the corner at the Tartine bakery, where people were clamoring for the country loaves, made with sourdough and the more familiar white flour. But maybe that will soon change. I’ve come across a handful of bakers in various parts of the country making eastern European–style loaves. One in Brooklyn makes Latvian-style ryes. Another in New York makes Finnish Ruis loaves that are grainy and quite good. In New Haven, WholeG sells terrific German-style ryes at the farmers’ market, but truthfully, these whole grain bakers are few and far between. Hopefully, like heirloom tomatoes in the 1980s, they will soon have their day.

 • • • 

S
o, in Berlin, did I find that dense, rich, dark rye bread I ate as a kid in New York? I would have to say no. These German breads were different, with far more rye than I think I’ve ever encountered and also greater variety, but they were a distant echo of what I had eaten. There were other unexpected connections with my Jewish culinary roots, like the braided
Zopf
I made with Karl. If you didn’t know better and were visiting Weichardt Brot on a Friday, you might mistake it for challah. Then, walking through Prenzlauer Berg in East Berlin one Saturday morning, I came across a crowded farmers’ market where several stands were selling smoked and pickled fish. I associate these foods with Russ & Daughters on New York’s Lower East Side, Zabar’s on the Upper West Side, and the Sunday brunches of my childhood with my family in Brooklyn.
Sprotten
, a bite-size smoked whitefish that you eat whole, and the pickled herring would have made any Jewish appetizing store in New York proud. Another day, I visited the famous KaDeWe department store and rode the elevator up to the giant food emporium. I stood in line behind a modestly dressed working man who bought a pickled herring sandwich and I swear inhaled it. I went for the smoked mackerel, which was quite rich, oily, and oddly familiar.

All these delicacies were virtually identical to ones I associated with New York Jewish food—the food my dad loved. But what I didn’t expect was to hear his words. One day, when I was standing in the bakery with a few of the bakers, Mucke Weichardt said in the midst of a conversation, “
Verstehst du?
” as in, “Understand?” I picked out the word because the pronunciation sounded so much like the Yiddish my dad would use:
“Farshteyn?”
With one word, an entire world came rushing in, for I hadn’t thought about the way he used that phrase in years. And then I began recalling a few of the Yiddish words he would use. I mentioned this to Karl and we began trading Yiddish and German equivalents. And so here I was braiding
Zopf
, not challah, listening to German, not Yiddish, and eating pickled herring in Berlin, not New York. I had this overwhelming sense of connection to my past, in Berlin of all places, with its profusion of Holocaust memorials. It turned out to be the most surprising thing about the trip.

 • • • 

B
y now you can probably guess what happened. I came home and began working on rye bread. The first problem I ran into, though, was the coarse rye flour. Most whole rye is pretty finely ground, but I knew that I wanted a mixture of coarse and fine flours. The only brand I found that came close to coarsely milled was from Hodgson Mill. I also bought a grain mill attachment for my KitchenAid mixer that could easily produce
Schrot
—the grainy flour. Finally, I needed loaf pans, since the short-fat ones I had on hand were better suited for zucchini bread than rye. I found some Pullman loaf pans in a King Arthur catalog that when filled halfway took about a kilo of dough. This was a big change for me, for I had never baked pan loaves. In fact, I’d looked down on them for years. But I realized it’s not really about the pan, it’s about the bread. And you can make terrific rye bread in a pan because the shape helps support weak doughs like rye.

As for Backferment, I did get a package through the mail from Karl, and it tasted quite mild in flavor just as it did in the bakery. But I liked my own sourdough, too, so I used both, at different times for the rye breads, and probably ended up with an amalgam of microbes—who knows? The final over-the-edge step, several months into baking with rye, was to buy a small countertop stone mill, so I could mill all the flour I needed, not just the
Schrot
. (Of course, I ended up buying a German-made KoMo stone mill, which while sporting an iPad-like price tag will hopefully last ten years or more—and unlike an iPad, will never need an upgrade.)

With all of these elements in place, I began working on my loaf, a mixture of 70 percent rye and 30 percent whole wheat. It came together pretty quickly and was far easier than the baguette. I kept in mind the lessons about easy mixing and relied on my hands to do the work. I found that if I continually moistened my hands in water, the surface of the dough would remain slippery, not sticky. So I took to mixing and folding the dough in a bowl by the sink, wetting my hands under the faucet and then shaking off the excess so I didn’t incorporate too much. I still used the fold-and-rest method, though since gluten wasn’t involved, I didn’t stretch it out. I would mix every five minutes or so, for a minute or two. After three or four rounds, the dough seemed fine. Since ryes ferment so quickly, the first rise usually took forty-five minutes to an hour, then I’d form the loaf as best I could using the method I learned at Weichardt and drop it into the oiled loaf pan, dusting the top with a good coating of rye flour. Even if it was misshapen, it would invariably flatten out, fill the pan, and rise evenly. While the dough filled only one half of the pan going in, within an hour, sometimes less, it was at the top. At that point, the floured surface would begin to crack open like ice. I’d then bake it, first at a high temperature with steam, then at a lower temperature, just as they did at Weichardt, for a total of sixty or seventy minutes.

Now the important part: once it was done baking, I’d let the loaf rest for at least twenty-four hours, though the interior of the crumb really improved after thirty-six hours. It takes that long for all the starch to fully set. Karl had told me that the Weichardt Special lasted seven days and I found that to be the case with these homemade ryes as well. They keep well, because they soak up so much water and because the sourdough inhibits mold and bacteria. It was quite amazing really, cutting through a thick crust after a week and finding a moist interior. It’s yet another reason to bake with rye: it not only fills you up and burns slow but lasts a long time without going stale. In terms of staying power, nothing quite matches it.

With rye under my belt, I had one task left—to explore locally grown grains, which had begun to reemerge spottily in farmers’ markets and in bakers’ breads. It was the latest thrust in the locavore movement and perhaps the most difficult to grasp, for unlike a tomato, we’ve learned to think of flour as just flour. As I began to explore this thread, one baker in particular caught my attention. Maybe it was the picture of his windmill, the small village where he lived, or just his bread. Whatever the case, I knew I had to visit with him and so in spring 2012 I returned to Europe, this time to southern France.

(
DIFFICULT
)

Makes 1 loaf

Roggenweizenbrot
(literally, rye-wheat bread) was my favorite loaf at Weichardt Brot. It has a mixture of coarse and more finely ground rye flours, which I made by mixing equal parts of Arrowhead Mills organic whole rye flour and Hodgson Mill rye flour. To achieve a mild sourdough, which favors lactic acid, I’ve added a second rise, or build, to the leaven. Since there’s such a high percentage of sourdough in the rye-wheat dough, it ferments quickly. The first rise takes 45 to 60 minutes and the final rise in the pan about 1 hour. If cooler than 75˚F (24˚C), it will proceed more slowly.

A key step in this recipe is to dust the surface of the dough entirely with rye flour, once it’s in the pan. Most of the flour gets absorbed into the moist dough, so don’t be concerned about getting a mouthful of flour when you eat the bread. When the dough rises sufficiently, the flour cracks open on the top, signaling that it’s ready for the oven. This is a far more accurate gauge of rising time than anything else.

The bread also takes two days to make, with the bulk of the work accomplished on the second day. So plan for a six-hour window on the second day to make the bread. Since this loaf rests for a full day before you cut into it, truthfully, it’s a three-day bread. If you start making the sourdough on Friday evening, you can cut into the loaf by lunch or dinner on Sunday.

Optional step one: This loaf is quite good on its own, but for a twist you might want to add freshly roasted spices. Lightly toast 1 teaspoon each cumin seed, aniseed, and coriander seed in a pan until fragrant, let cool and then grind them in a spice grinder.

Optional step two: When starting out, you might want to use 1 teaspoon of instant yeast as an insurance policy to help the loaf rise. But it isn’t necessary if you have an active starter.

Tools

Bowl

Plastic dough scraper

Rectangular baking stone

Rimmed baking sheet, for the bottom of the oven

Loaf pan measuring 9 by 4 by 4 inches (also known as a Pullman loaf pan)

Kitchen mitts

First Starter Ingredients

10 grams ripe starter

100 grams rye flour mix (made of coarse and fine rye flours; see headnote)

80 grams water at 80˚F (27˚C)

Second Starter Ingredients

180 grams first starter

100 grams rye flour mix

80 grams water at 80˚F (27˚C)

Final Dough Ingredients

180 grams whole wheat flour

220 grams rye flour mix

11 grams salt

1 teaspoon instant yeast (optional)

Ground spice mixture (optional)

360 grams starter

320 grams water

Vegetable oil spray or 1 tablespoon melted butter

Evening, First Day

Mix the ingredients of the first starter together until combined and place in a covered bowl or container. Rye is very active, so you don’t need a lot of starter to get it going, especially during a long fermentation. That’s why there are only about 2 teaspoons of starter in this initial fermentation. Let it rise for 16 to 20 hours.

Second Day

The first starter will have risen and will contain a lot of bubbles, with a noticeably acidic aroma. Mix it with the ingredients of the second starter until combined. Dust the top with rye flour and cover the bowl. The starter will double in size within 3 to 4 hours and the rye flour on top will have cracked open. At this point, it’s ready to be used in the final dough.

Final Dough

Place a baking stone on a rack in the middle of the oven and a rimmed baking sheet at the bottom.

Preheat the oven to 460˚F (240˚C).

Combine the whole wheat flour, rye flour mix, salt, and the yeast and spice mixture, if using. Break up the starter with your fingers and add it to the flour. Pour in all the water. Then, using one hand—moistened with water—mix to combine. I find this is easiest if you have the mixing bowl right next to the sink, so that you run your hand under the water as soon as the dough begins to stick to it. If you wait too long, you will have a hunk of dough stuck to your fingers. (If you do get a hand full of dough, moisten the fingers of your clean hand and use your thumb and forefinger to remove the dough from the dough-encased hand, then rinse it again.) Mix until just combined, 1 to 2 minutes, and cover. Then let sit for 10 minutes so that the flours can hydrate.

At this point, the dough will be quite thick, almost like cookie batter. Wet your hand and then go at it again, squeezing the dough with your fingers and folding the dough over on itself. This should take 1 to 2 minutes. Let the dough rest covered for about 10 minutes, then repeat the action, adding more water so that the dough loosens up a bit. (While mixing, I will add 40 to 60 grams more water.)

The dough should be stiff but pliable. Cover and let it rise for 30 to 40 minutes, until it looks slightly more porous and gassy.

Lightly oil the loaf pan, or brush it with melted butter.

I find it easiest to shape the loaf in the bowl. Wet your hands and fold the dough toward the middle several times, so you have a round ball. Turn it over, so the seam is facedown. Then with your moist hands, roll the ball so it’s kind of a loaf or football shape and about the length of the pan. Then with two hands, pick it up and gently place it in the pan. Wet your hands and smooth out the top, but don’t worry if it’s uneven: the dough will flatten out as it rises and evenly fill the pan. The dough should fill one third to one half of the height of the pan. Dust the top of the loaf with a generous dusting of rye flour and cover the pan with plastic wrap.

The timing of the final rise is crucial. You want the loaf to rise to within a half inch of the top of the pan. But more crucially, look for cracks in the flour coating. When they begin to appear, the loaf is almost ready for the oven. Let the cracks open a bit, until they are a quarter inch at the widest point. Depending on the temperature of your kitchen, this will take 50 to 70 minutes. If your kitchen is very cool, it might take longer. But remember, the cracks are your ultimate guide—not the time.

Preheat the oven to 460˚F (240˚ C) with the baking stone on the middle rack and the baking sheet on the bottom of the oven.

When the loaf is ready, place the bread pan on the baking stone, pour
²
/
₃
cup of water into the baking sheet, and shut the oven door. Bake the loaf at 460˚F (240˚C) for 20 minutes.

After 20 minutes, open the oven to vent the remaining steam and then lower the temperature to 390˚F (200˚C). Bake the loaf for another 40 minutes, turning the loaf around after 20 minutes if your oven tends to bake unevenly. Then turn the oven off and let the loaf sit in the oven for another 10 minutes, for a total baking time of 70 minutes.

Using thick kitchen mitts, remove the loaf from the oven. It should fall right out when you tilt the pan over. Place it on a cooling rack. Let the loaf rest for 24 hours before slicing it open. While it rests overnight, place a towel over it.

This loaf has exceptional keeping quality. I cover it with a towel for 3 days, then place it in a plastic bag and continue to eat it for a full week. Alternatively, freeze half of it in a plastic bag. Remove and defrost the loaf, though there is no need to reheat the loaf unless you desire.