January, 2005

This is a complex, detailed work without peer. If you want to bake using a natural leaven, if you ever feel in your mind that you want to give over a chunk of your life to baking remarkable loaves with care and dedication, then The Bread Builders should be your first book to start that new life.

There is so much well thought information contained in the pages, told in a straightforward and generous manner with little self-reverential chest beating (other than a rightly felt pride in what it sets out to do) that it is a book that you can place before all others. It is a life science book, about baking and working in a way that is both hardcore and in harmony with nature and sweet living. Still today, flicking through the book as I write this, it excites me and fills me full of ideas. It is an essential book for each baker who cares enough to want to improve the quality of every loaf they bake.

above, co-author Alan Scott pours a fermented but elastic dough out on the floured surface.

The words and thoughts of Alan Scott (the leading brick oven builder in the USA and an inspired teacher and rock for many artisan bakers) together with the research by Dan Wing explaining clearly and intelligently just how and why such simple methods and conditions produce complex and varied results - putting the science in place to explain traditional practices. It's not a recipe book, a point Dan Wing notes in his introduction, but rather a method book. He explains how, from the grain upwards, every element, ingredient and technique should builds upon the other and exists in a tight, co-dependent state. There cannot be bread without heat, and the way that heat is applied will affect the final loaf as much as the type of flour used.

Wood-fired oven building is a strong part of the book (a bit less than 100 of its 250 pages are devoted to building and oven handling), but for those who really just want to bake with their existing electric or gas oven there is enough method to keep you going back to the book. Scott's cherished bread is his Desem loaf, gaining its flavour not just through the combination of leaven and slow rising, but by its use of freshly ground wheat in the dough.

In stages similar to the process used to make a pain au levain in France, or the English/Scots (here think Scotland rather than Alan…) virgin barm method prior to the early 1900s, an intermediate tight leaven (think of a dough simply made with flour, water and leaven, though the Scots method would include salt) is made - then that is used to ferment the dough. In the book, Alan Scott keeps his stock rye leaven as a nugget buried in a jar filled with rye flour. Then, an intermediate dough is made, then finally that is incorporated in the final mix.

above, the storage and rising procedure that Alan Scott uses for his Flemish Desem bread.

Many of these steps are illustrated with clear and beautiful line drawings. There is a short section in the centre of the book showing Alan mixing and baking, and throughout there are black and white photographs showing both the stages in oven building and also to illustrate the essays on artisan bakeries in America. Alan, through his website at www.ovencrafters.net, helps bakers around the world build woodfired ovens that are sympathetic to traditonal baking methods - you can read a little online about his work and oven at the Fruition Bakery in Australia, by clicking here.

At the back of the book is a short chapter, Bakers' Resource: Sourdough Microbiology, that, through an interview with research graduate Michael Gänzle from the University of Hohenheim on his work studying growth and metabolism of Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis and Candida milleri during sourdough fermentation. Though it is important to remember that the presence of specific bacteria and yeast is not guaranteed simply by using particular ingredients, methods or even just holding certain beliefs, it is utterly vital to understand that complex system at work in a leaven. And this short section explains so much of what occurs so clearly.

These little sections and paragraphs that dot the book are magical, and you put the book down feeling such warmth towards the authors, and admiration for what they have added to the knowledge of baking, and what they believe the role of a good artisan baker to be. As Daniel wing notes, at the end of the chapter on dough development, Artisan bakers are careful with their dough. They use good flour, they use good active leavens, they don't over-knead, they give plenty of time for fermentation, and they are careful when they form and proof their loaves. Then they cast fate to the winds, and their dough into the oven.

click picture to enlarge

The Bread Builders
Hearth Loaves and Masonry Ovens
by Daniel Wing and Alan Scott
Published in 1999
by Chelsea Green Publishing
Vermont, USA
Pages 253

available from
Chelsea Green Publishing
P.O. Box 428, 85 N. Main Street, Suite 120
White River Jct., VT 05001
www.chelseagreen.com

or from Amazon UK click here