In Search of the Perfect Loaf: A Home Baker's Odyssey (38 page)

showed no adverse reaction:
See Raffaella Di Cagno et al., “Proteolysis by Sourdough Lactic Acid Bacteria: Effects on Wheat Flour Protein Fractions and Gliadin Peptides Involved in Human Cereal Intolerance,”
Applied
and
Environmental
Microbiology
68.2 (2002): 623–33. See also Raffaella Di Cagno et al., “Sourdough Bread Made from Wheat and Nontoxic Flours and Started with Selected Lactobacilli Is Tolerated in Celiac Sprue Patients,”
Applied
and
Environmental
Microbiology
70.2 (2004): 1088–96.

fast
fermentations
common
in
industrial
breads
Carlo G. Rizzello et al., “Highly Efficient Gluten Degradation by Lactobacilli and Fungal Proteases During Food Processing: New Perspectives for Celiac Disease,” Applied and Environmental Microbiology 73.14 (2007): 4499–507.

sourdough
fermentation
can
maintain
Gobbetti and Gänzler, Handbook on Sourdough Biotechnology, chap. 9, “Nutritional Aspects of Cereal Fermentation with Lactic Acid Bacteria and Yeast.”

Certain
strains
of
lactic
acid
Vittorio Capozzi et al., “Biotechnological Production of vitamin B
₂
–Enriched Bread and Pasta,”
Journal
of
Agricultural
and
Food
Chemistry
59.14 (2011): 8013–20.

sourdough
breaks
down
phytic
acid
Stevenson et al., “Wheat Bran.”

Mineral
deficiencies
Modern wheat breeding may have also exacerbated mineral deficiency in wheat. See F. J. Zhao et al., “Variation in Mineral Micronutrient Concentrations in Grain of Wheat Lines of Diverse Origin,”
Journal
of
Cereal
Science
49.2 (2009): 290–95. See also David F. Garvin, Ross M. Welch, and John W. Finley, “Historical Shifts in the Seed Mineral Micronutrient Concentration of US Hard Red Winter Wheat Germplasm,”
Journal
of
the
Science
of
Food
and
Agriculture
86.13 (2006): 2213–20.

A few nutrients
Doblado-Maldonado et al., “Key Issues and Challenges in Whole Wheat Flour Milling and Storage.”

Chapter 7:
Local Bread in Cucugnan and Cobb Neck

village
of
Cucugnan
Cucugnan is pronounced Coo-coo-nyon.

“I
remember
when”
Interview with Stephen Jones, March 29, 2011.

Heather
Darby,
another
agronomist
Interview with Heather Darby, April 12, 2012.

Epilogue

I
had
studied
Kiko
Denzer’s
classic
book
Kiko Denzer,
Build
Your
Own
Earth
Oven:
A
Low-Cost
Wood-Fired
Mud
Oven,
Simple
Sourdough
Bread,
Perfect
Loaves
(Hand Print Press, 2007).

When I began baking bread, there were not nearly as many books available as there are today, but I still return to those that were helpful, including Daniel Leader’s
Bread Alone
, Nancy Silverton’s
Breads from the La Brea Bakery
,
Joe Ortiz’s
The Village Baker
, and Carol Field’s
The Italian Baker
. Since then, there has been an explosion of bread-baking books and resources online—so much so that a beginner might not know where to begin.

If you are new to bread baking, I’d pick up Jim Lahey’s
My Bread
, which grew out of the extremely popular piece Mark Bittman wrote in
The
New York Times
about Lahey’s no-knead method. I wish I had had this book when I started baking. I would put another no-knead series in the same category—the
Bread in Five Minutes a Day
books by Jeff Hertzberg and Zoë Francis. My only quibble with Francis and Hertzberg is that they relied on copious amounts of yeast in their first book; in their most recent version, they advise that you can cut down the yeast and still get good results. What I most like about the no-knead method is that it will get the most nervous and insecure person baking bread, with a lot of success.

Flatbreads are especially worthy of exploration by the beginning baker, which I didn’t realize for many years after baking with yeast and sourdough. This category of breads is generally underappreciated even though they can be made quickly and with such satisfying results. I’d recommend two books that offer a wide span of recipes: Anissa Helou’s
Savory Baking from the Mediterranean
(which goes beyond flatbreads) and Jeffrey Alford and Naomi Duguid’s
Flatbreads & Flavors
(which mixes flatbread recipes with other foods).

Once you’ve mastered these approaches, you might want to develop your skills a bit further. I’ve thoroughly enjoyed Ken Forkish’s
Flour Water Salt Yeast
, which is a kind of Baking 201 to the 101-level no-knead books. Another good book that straddles the beginner and intermediate levels is Peter Reinhart’s classic,
The Bread Baker’s Apprentice
, which was one of the first books that explored a baguette similar to the one I encountered in Paris.

As your interest and knowledge grow, you’ll soon be moving on to sourdough loaves. Although her method for culturing a sourdough starter is more complicated than it needs to be, Nancy Silverton’s recipes in
Breads from the La Brea Bakery
stand the test of time (her chocolate cherry bread is memorable). I’d also include Maggie Glezer’s valuable book,
Artisan Baking
, which uncovered recipes by many of those who created the bread revolution in the United States in the 1990s. If you really want to drill down into sourdough, Chad Robertson offers a thorough, thirty-seven-page recipe in
Tartine Bread
. Many home bakers, including me, were enthusiastic about this book, and their breads often came out looking like the quintessential Tartine loaf.

The United Kingdom has a number of notable bakers with equally interesting books: I’d include Dan Lepard’s
The Art of Handmade Bread
, which among other things first gave me the idea of making a starter with beer. It’s also worth following his column in
The
Guardian
newspaper, which is available online. Andrew Whitley’s
Bread Matters
offers many interesting whole grain and rye recipes and also delves into what has gone wrong with industrialized bread. Finally, I’d include the books of Richard Bertinet, a French baker living in Britain. The DVD included in his book
Dough
was a key to my early success at kneading very wet and sticky doughs. All three bakers, incidentally, offer baking classes in the United Kingdom, as does Roland Feuillas in the south of France.

As bakers have started exploring whole grain breads, a number of notable books have appeared. Peter Reinhart’s
Whole Grain Breads
includes a thorough exploration of the way these grains differ—and what you might do to make better loaves with them. While not a bread-baking book, Kim Boyce’s
Good to the Grain
was a path-breaking book for cakes, pastries, and quick breads made with various whole grain flours. As I write this, Chad Robertson has just released
Tartine 3
, which focuses on whole grain breads and pastries, including breads made with oatmeal and various grain mashes, hearty and dense ryes, and whole grain cookies and crackers.

If you’re looking for a good bagel or challah, try Stanley Ginsberg and Norman Berg’s
Inside the Jewish Bakery
, which includes recipes and an illuminating, if brief, history of Jewish baking.

Now that you’ve got a thorough understanding of baking, you will probably want to read a bit more about baking methods and where they came from. Elizabeth David’s
English Bread and Yeast Cookery
is a classic that reaches back to the earliest days of British milling practices and might offer a good companion to George Eliot’s novel
The Mill on the Floss
. (David discusses British home bakers who baked breads in overturned ceramic flower pots surrounded by coals—a precursor of the pot method championed by Jim Lahey.) Another all-encompassing baking book is Jeffrey Hamelman’s
Bread
, which is a valuable resource for baking methods. He has a facile way of explaining concepts and techniques, making this the first book I reach for when I have a question about bread making. It also contains the largest collection of rye recipes I’ve come across in an English-language baking book. He and his team of bakers also teach classes at King Arthur Flour in Norwich, Vermont.

For those interested in baking with wood fire, you can make an oven in a day following the instructions in Kiko Denzer’s
Build Your Own Earth Oven
. For a deeper dive, including brick oven building and baking, Richard Miscovich’s
From the Wood-Fired Oven
is essential and a good companion to the classic
The Bread Builders
, by Daniel Wing and Alan Scott.

Beyond books, I’ve relied on many Web sites by talented home bakers the world over. I’ll just mention a couple that would be suitable for all levels of bakers. The first is The Fresh Loaf, where home bakers post their questions, recipes, and results. The group has grown over several years, with bakers from Scandinavia to Italy to Australia to the United States posting pictures and sharing tips. But you need to spend some time on the site to find the truly superlative home bakers, whose explanations are often as good as any baking book. The Wild Yeast blog is another great resource by professionally trained home baker Susan Tenney. Her recipes and photographs are excellent, and she offers links to home bakers around the world with her Yeast Spotting feature (usually weekly). I also have recipes and tips on my blog at ChewsWise.com and also feature pictures of my breads on my Twitter feed @fromartz.

Finally, I would be remiss if I did not mention the resources of the Bread Bakers Guild of America, though it is more focused on professionals than home bakers. The recipes by artisan bakers featured in the monthly newsletter are worth the price of membership and the Bread Bakers Guild e-mail list is a highly valuable source of information and tips. Plus, if you take BBGA classes, you can rub shoulders with professionals and learn as I did.

The page numbers in this index refer to the printed version of this book. To find the corresponding locations in the text of this digital version, please use the “search” function on your e-reader. Note that not all terms may be searchable.

A. Zito & Sons Bakery, 5–6

acidity, 50, 72, 79, 81–82, 86, 92, 111–12, 166, 208, 252

Acme Bread, 91

additives, 31, 33–36, 104, 138

agriculture, 78–79, 131, 137, 142, 144, 160–61, 166, 170, 179, 181, 197, 228, 264, 267

Alaska, 171

alveoli (the crumb), 19, 267.
See also
crumb

American bread, 30, 35, 44, 49, 92

airy/soft, 192

amount of salt in, 46

early types of, 132

lacks health benefits, 215

new directions in, 258–60

“rye-injun,” 132

wholesale, 7, 52–53, 69–70

See also
artisan bread: American

ancient wheat varieties, 11, 141–49, 157, 173–77, 179, 181–84, 228–30, 233, 235–37, 254, 259–60, 268, 271–72

Anson Mills, 231–32, 246–47, 253–54

Archer Daniels Midland mill, 164

Arrowhead Mills flour, 220

artisan bread, 6, 15

American, 28, 50, 69–70, 91–92, 98–99, 103–4, 108–9, 258–60

and artisan grains, 183, 246

characteristics of, 267

and flour, 103–4

French, 2, 22, 28, 194

Italian, 194

movement of, 67, 85

and wheat, 157–59, 270

Asheville, North Carolina, 92, 246

Asia, 75, 145, 147, 155, 170, 268, 273

Athens, Georgia, 165

Australia, 170, 292

Austria, 30, 203

autolyse
method

and baguettes, 22, 24, 26, 29–30, 39, 44, 55

description of, 22, 267

and flatbread, 129, 153

importance of, 102

and
pain de campagne
, 118

and wheat bread, 236–38

bagels, 4, 6–7, 16, 104, 158, 192

baguettes

additive-free, 33–36

American, 258–59

award-winning, 21, 38, 53, 60, 90–91, 239

baguettes (
cont.
)

commercially made, 52–53

contests held for, 50–53, 105

couche
(linen cloth) for, 21, 95–96, 268

critiquing of, 27–28, 32–33, 38, 52–53

cultural history of, 26, 30–34, 36

decline in quality, 26, 28–34, 43

and fermentation process, 259

flours used for, 100, 166

with
levain
/sourdough, 41, 49–50, 52–55, 60–65, 96

making/baking of, 3, 14, 18–22, 24–26, 38–54

renaissance of, 33–37, 41, 43

state regulations for, 36

as symbol of France, 26–27, 43

bakeries, neighborhood, 4–6, 14, 26, 32, 49

bakers

camaraderie among, 110

and consistency, 128

as family tradition, 37, 45

at home, 20–21, 30, 38, 90–91, 93, 120, 128, 133, 157–58, 247, 260

humanity of, 251–52

Jewish, 192–96, 202

and lack of skill, 43

professional, 3, 128, 260

regulation of, 138

and standardized bread, 31–32

and regulations, 36

and superlative flour, 164

See also specific names

baking stone, 9–10, 55, 57, 59, 61, 63–65, 119–20, 122, 124

baking trade, 43, 99, 228

Baking with Julia
(Child), 70

bannetons
(baskets), 111

Banville, Jule, 51

barley, 127, 172, 186, 260

added to flour, 75–76

early use of, 11, 131–33, 137–38, 140, 142–46, 267

experiments with, 215

as food staple, 177

health benefits of, 137

as leaven, 73

locally grown, 241, 248

and making beer, 77–78

and rye, 193, 202

bâtards
, 96

Beach Pea Baking Co., 140

Beard, James, 67

Beard on Bread
, 67

Beauce, France, 33

beer, 11, 44, 67, 72, 74, 77–80, 132, 144, 146, 148, 267, 272

Berg, Norman, 193

Berlin, Germany, 186, 249

and Backferment, 127, 217

rye bread in, 194–95, 197–209, 214–16

and WW II, 195–97, 216

Bertinet, Richard, 39

biodiversity, 140, 172–73, 179, 227–28

Bittman, Mark, 30

Bocuse d’Or, 98

Borlaug, Norman, 169–70

boulangerie
, 2–3, 32

in Cucugnan, 228–30, 234

in Paris, 18, 21–27, 36, 41–49, 239–40

“
paysannes
,” 228–29

resurrection of, 8, 36

See also
specific names

Boulangerie Delmontel, 18, 23, 27, 29, 33–34, 38–40, 42, 49, 102, 239–40

boules
, 96, 119

Boyce, Kim, 247

bran, 132, 134–40, 155, 158, 163, 187, 209, 214, 230–31, 248–49, 253, 268, 271–72

Bread
(Hamelman), 72, 82

Bread Alone
(Leader), 8, 68

Bread Bakers Guild of America, 28

Bread
Builders
,
The
, 109

bread making

and consistency, 116, 128, 139–40

as craft, 31–32, 37, 70, 104, 240, 251–52, 260

essential elements for, 48, 100, 120, 175

and
fabrication en direct
, 29–30

foolproof method of, 30

and free spirits, 99

hands-on approach to, 3, 104, 252

history of, 11, 67, 73–74, 78–79, 129–34, 137–38, 140, 231–32, 244

as metaphor for life, 11

oldest methods of, 67, 238

personal connection with, 228–29, 233–34, 236, 251–52

practicing of, 9, 13–14, 84–85, 116

seasonal changes in, 140

and the senses, 10–11, 13

standardization of, 251

two-day regime for, 111–12

bread wheat, 104, 145, 147–48, 171–72, 244, 251, 268, 270, 272

Breadline restaurant, 7

Breads from the La Brea Bakery
(Silverton), 69, 71

breeding wheat, 155–58, 165, 168–77, 182, 186, 227–28, 245, 259–60, 270

Broeck, Hetty van der, 174–77

Brooklyn, New York, 4, 6, 12, 27, 161, 193, 215–16

buckwheat, 127, 131, 134, 140, 143, 193, 236, 247

Build Your Own Earth Oven
(Denzer), 261

California, northern, 91–92, 95, 99, 108, 113, 236, 246, 248

Calvel, Raymond, 26, 33, 267

Campanile restaurant, 69–70

Canada, 35, 158–59, 245

caraway seeds, 192, 194, 198, 202

Carman, Tim, 50–53

Carolina Ground, 246

cast-iron griddle, 130, 149–51, 153–54

celiac disease, 147, 174–77, 212–13, 268

Central Milling, 113

cereals, 78, 130–31, 141–42, 170, 176–77, 186, 213, 240, 264, 272

Chardon, Thomas, 21–22, 26, 29, 36, 38–40, 239

Chartres, France, 35

Chevallier, Jim, 31

ChewsWise.com, 60

Chez Panisse, 90–91, 120, 248

chickpeas, 132, 145, 153–54, 177, 205, 267

Child, Julia, 35, 70

China, 73, 76, 78, 147

CIMMYT, 170–72

CityZen restaurant, 51

Clark, Earl, 155–57, 173

Clark’s Cream, 155–56

climate change, 171–72

Cobb Neck, Maryland, 240–41

Community Grains, 246

competitions

for baguettes, 27, 105–6

in Las Vegas, 98–99

in Paris, 27, 51–53, 99, 106–7

in Washington, D.C., 51–53

winners of, 21, 38, 53, 60, 90–91, 98, 107

See also specific names

corn/cornmeal, 127, 132, 134, 149, 153, 155, 166–69, 205

country bread, 70, 108, 110, 113, 117, 215.
See also
pain de campagne