The chapters most immediately relevant to a baker are those on breads & pancakes, and on fermented grain “porridges”. In the former, the basic sourdough starter recipe suggests using potato or pasta cooking water and possibly some organic grapes or berries to kick start the process, and asks us to cover the open bowl with something porous like cheesecloth, and the following bread recipe encourages experimentation, with its use of leftover grains and a variety of liquids, including stock, beer or sour milk, and we are urged to allow as long as it takes for the dough to rise.

There are also recipes for an onion-caraway rye bread, an Afghan flatbread and the sprouted-grain Essene bread, amongst others, but the book is primarily a call for us to be more aware of the ubiquity of fermented foods in all their forms, and most of all, it is its author’s personal story of a love affair with fermentation and its perceived health benefits.

Given that you can’t spend an evening in front of the television in the UK without being bombarded with adverts extolling the benefits of “good” micro-organisms in commercially-available yoghurts, it’s perhaps surprising that “artisanal” fermentation is still in its infancy here; and surely any reaction against the bland flavours of processed foods should wholeheartedly embrace the stinky-zingy-tangy palate of fermented flavours, so many of which we could cultivate in our own homes.

I’d never assert that any one book contained all the answers, but at least this book isn’t afraid to ask us questions, about how we eat and how we react to now-unfamiliar food tastes and smells, which our ancestors would almost certainly have been familiar with. So much more than a bread book, this paperback will also guide you through fermenting vegetables and beans, dairy products and more; the section on “country” wines, made from fruits and vegetables, reminded me of the knockout potions my grandfather used to brew from his Buckinghamshire garden, drinks so strong that my Aunt Joan still calls them “idiot’s brew”.

This book clearly grew from the author confronting a health crisis in his own life, and from his need to acquire a new focus and meaning, and along the way he has clearly created a happy synthesis of where he came from, where he is now and where he is heading. It’s an unusual book, a kind book, and an affirming book. For anyone who ever looks inward, and contemplates their own place in the bigger scheme of things, it’s a rewarding book.

above, a rosemary-topped focaccia straight out of the oven and left to cool on the balcony, at The Green Grocer

On past trips to Melbourne, Dan’s been delighted to hold bread making classes and other events at The Green Grocer, an outstanding organic cafe, food and wine retailer and cookery school in North Fitzroy, in the heart of the ‘good bread belt’ – Dench Bakers, Loafer Bread and Natural Tucker are all just around the corner, and if you need some written inspiration, then Books for Cooks, that unequalled paragon amongst foodie bookstore, is just a short tram ride away. Even the Piedimonte’s supermarket on the corner sells a terrific pane di rosetta.

dough for the Mill Loaf, resting at The Green Grocer

Classes at The Green Grocer have their own rhythm and charm, taking place in a fully-equipped kitchen above the cafe, the separate ‘wine room’ next door with its cool and breezy balcony overlooking the bustle of Scotchmer Street and St George’s Road providing a charming opportunity to unwind afterwards with a glass of wine or a bottle of organic Mountain Goat Steam Ale brewed just down the road in Richmond, and chat more informally with the class members.

More suited to a shorter evening class than an all-day event, Dan’s classes here have concentrated on dealing with and explaining some of the more complicated ideas from The Handmade Loaf and The Cook’s Book, along with basic techniques for baking good open-textured naturally fermented and yeasted breads at home. He’s talked about how Australian flours differ from those widely available in the UK, France or Italy, for example, and how best to use them to make outstandingly good bread, and one popular feature has been to lead the class through all the stages of making the Mill Loaf (from The Handmade Loaf), using 3 different flours (baker’s white, wholewheat and rye) from Four Leaf Milling in Tarlee, South Australia, and  an ‘overnight’ method where you make the dough the night before, stick it in the refrigerator, take it out the following day and bake it when it’s puffed up and lively.

the baked Mill Loaves, left to cool out on the balcony at The Green Grocer

At these classes, Dan has also made the focaccia from The Cook’s Book. This is a good example of an impossibly sloppy, sticky dough that turns into something malleable and easy to shape, all due to the quantity of bubbles forming inside the dough – gently stretched and folded, until full of holes and ready to be shaped. The underlying concept is to mix and move the dough along, through the different stages, only when you can observe the changes that tell you it’s ready. Dough watching rather than clock watching, and realising that that you have much more time to do other things when you make bread this way. Finally, the loaves are baked using a baking stone in The Green Grocer’s large gas-fired ovens.

To compress the whole process into a single evening’s class, Dan presents doughs made at different times during the preceding day, so that the class can see all the stages from unmixed flour to fully-baked loaf, and then breads baked before the class are enjoyed with a glass of wine, so that once the class is finished, everyone can taste and talk about the end results.

It would be unfair to end this article without mentioning the cafe and shop at The Green Grocer once more. I’ve always found it a delightful and informal place to eat really good food, and would recommend you to visit their website and check out the Menu, which changes with the seasons, and the wine list. Brunch items such as eggs with sourdough toast, porridge with fruit, nuts and seeds, and fresh juices are served all day, along with a selection of salads and hot lunch dishes, or you can choose something from the bakery counter to enjoy with one of their organic fair trade coffees or range of more than a dozen types of tea and herbal infusion. The shop has the variety of organic fresh produce which the name might lead you to expect, along with ‘larder essentials’ (most of them made on the premises), convenient meat, cheese and dairy products, and their range of ‘slowfoodfast’ and freezer products, if you’re looking for a take-home meal.

the Mill Loaf, make with Australian flour and baked in Melbourne

The Green Grocer
217 St George’s Road
Fitzroy North 3068 VIC
Telephone (03) 9489 1747

above, the open texture of a ciabatta, from a dough kept wet with 72% water (assisted by 30% strong white flour combined with a softer flour)

Remember: baking is not a set of separate processes, but rather one single process defined by different stages. Thus, change any part and you will cause changes in every subsequent stage, from mixing to baking. Assess each of the ideas presented below, and work out what modifications are best for you.

Stretching the dough: gently tipping the dough on to either a flour dusted or oiled surface, light pressing out and stretching the dough into a rectangle, and finally giving it a ‘book fold’ before returning it to the bowl, then repeating this every hour or so during the bulk fermentation.

above, even the gutsiest wholewheat loaves can display an open crumb texture

Increase the dough’s water content: with a more fluid dough, it is difficult to maintain a bold, round shape during proving and baking. Some sort of dough containment, such as a cloth-lined and flour dusted basket, or a flour dusted proving board may be needed (a heavy dredge of flour on a wooden board will hinder the spread as the dough proves). Too wet a dough, and it is a problem keeping the slashes clean and open. So for sheeted doughs and flat breads this is useful.

Use a sour leaven, or old dough addition: either in place of or in addition to commercial yeast. I often rely on the combination of a small percentage of commercial yeast (0.5%) and a sour starter (naturally fermented, and used at around 30% to flour weight), as it gives both speed (a bulk fermentation of 2 –3 hours @ 22C, depending on the strength of the gluten in the flour, and a final prove of 2 ½ – 3 hours, depending on the ambient bakery temperature. And yes, I would describe this as ‘yeasted’ bread.

Extend the fermentation with as little leavening as possible: often this requires some control of the temperature, as in a retarding cabinet. I find that if the temperature is kept at around 15C – 17C, this seems to allow tighter doughs to develop a more expansive texture when mixed with a sour or combination starter.

Use a pre-ferment: I don’t know whether to thank either my US or French colleagues for this one, and the method I use depends on the mixer type that I’m using. With a fork petrin, I mix the sour leavening with the flour, mix for 1 – 2 minutes, then leave in the bowl for 20 minutes. Next I’ll add any additional yeast (if I’m using it), mix for a further 5 minutes, then add the sea-salt mixed with a little water, and mix for a further 4 minutes. I add the leavening at the beginning here because I have found it difficult to mix the dough evenly in a petrin. However, after talking with baker friends, I’d suggest that with a twin-arm or a spiral, leave the leaven out, mix the flour and water, leave for 20 minutes, then add the leaven, any additional yeast, and after a few minutes, the salt.

(originally published in British Baker)

Foccacia has a home, in Italy, and a birthplace in the town of Genoa. That’s what Italians from Genoa tell me. But then as every man, woman and child of Italian extraction seems to have a slightly different take on their homeland’s culinary traditions, it is only right that there are many versions of the crisp oily Italian flat bread.

above, the dimples and salt strewn terrain of a foccacia, taking on slightly green hue from the olive oil brushed on after baking

In the most general terms, a focaccia is a thin sheet of bread dough, probably made with Italian ‘00’ flour, dimpled with the impressions from the bakers fingertips, and washed with oil, salt and a little water before baking. There is a tradition of topping the sheets of dough with a simple herb, vegetable or cheese (rarely more than one), but purists deny these variations exist, and prefer the dough kept simple.

There are many recipes for the perfect focaccia, and many bakers who will insist there is only one. So we should look at the possible ingredients, and find the recipe that works best for your bakery. Below is a simple recipe I’m using at the moment, and following that, thoughts on the ingredients used.

The dough

1000g Italian 00 flour (100%)
325g sour starter (32.50%), made with 50% flour to 50% water
7.4g slow-activity yeast (Craftbake) (0.74%)
22.4g fine sea salt (2.24%)
25g dark dry malt (Edme) (2.50%)
50g extra virgin olive oil (5.00%)
50g refined pork lard (5.00%), optional
650g water at 10ºC (65.55%)

final dough temperature around 22ºC

above, a cut section from the focaccia showing defined aeration and thin upper and lower crust

Mix on first speed for 3 minutes, then on second speed for 12 minutes (until very elastic and forms a fine membrane when stretched between the fingers). Tip into a tray brushed with a liberal amount of good olive oil (500g per 10kg of dough), cover with a plastic sheet, and leave at 22ºC – 25ºC for 2 hours, turning the dough every 45 minutes, and using more oil where necessary. Pin out into an oil brushed 4-sided tray, short prove to recover, dimpled with fingertips, brushed with oil/water/salt mixture if desired, sprinkle with extra flaked sea salt, and bake in a hot 230ºC deck, top heat 7–8, bottom heat 2-3, for 30+ minutes, until a good golden brown on top.

The ingredients and method

Firstly, the flour for any flat bread has slightly different requirements to that for a 400g round English loaf. We’re not looking for too much oven spring, perhaps more generous extensibility than strength in the available gluten, and above all we want tenderness rather than toughness. One popular recent characteristic, though perhaps not entirely traditional, is for the crumb to display a wild, open texture. New Zealand baker Peter Burge, formerly of the Exeter Street Bakery, London, created a dramatic open texture in the sheet Focaccia sold at their high street bakeries with strong flour and long fermentation. By cutting a traditional ‘00’ Italian flour with another stronger white flour, such as Dove’s Farm’s excellent Biobake Strong White Bakers Flour, a similar result can be achieved.

above, cracked black peppercorns and cheese melts into the surface of the foccacia, cut here to show an open texture to the crumb

However, be careful in using very strong flours. Sometimes the flavour can be a little thin, and with strength comes a tough bite, so consider their use carefully and reduce the amount of strong flour in the mix until you achieve the result you require. Strong white flour added up to 30% of your total flour weight should suffice. My own preference lately is to use a single Italian flour with a slightly higher strong gluten content.

In this way you get a result made entirely with Italian flour (a selling point), together with a bite and texture that seems appropriate. There is a slight loss in crumb aeration, but the dough flavour is enhanced. Other flours can be used, if labelling with origin of ingredients is not a selling point or concern. A mixture of baguette flour (T55) or traditional baguette premix (such as Moul-bie’s Campaillette) and strong white flour, could be used and will given rather striking results, though might struggle to claim any authenticity.

But one of the key factors that affects crumb aeration is water content. Simply put, the more water the more holes. Firstly, remember that the available gluten in a flour is activated when water hydrates the strands of protein (gliadin and glutenin) which bind to form gluten, and their individual qualities of strength and elasticity will combine to give the final gluten its final characteristics. So different levels of gliadin and glutenin will result in different characteristics to the final available gluten. Make sense? Generally speaking, if a flour can hold a greater proportion of water, its ability to extend and hold carbon dioxide created by the yeast will be greater. And with it, the possibility of more holes in the final dough. How much water? If you’re using 100% Italian ‘00’, then probably not much more than 65%. If using a mixture of Italian and strong white, then up to 68%. If using a t55 and strong white up to 50%, then that can be increased to 70+%.

above, halved cherry tomatoes, tossed with olive oil, sea salt and thyme, are baked on top

Other ingredients typical would be malt (2 or 3%), yeast (up to 1% if using a souring with an extended prove, without the souring up to 1.5%), salt (less than 2% if you are salting the top of the focaccia), and some sort of fat (5 – 10%). In the north of Italy, rendered pork lard is used commonly, and it is a flavour that is particularly suited to the bread. However, given many customers dietary restrictions, the addition of a small amount of olive oil into the mix will be enough. The combination of malt and fat help to colour the bread quickly in the oven, and stops the thin dough drying out too much during the baking. Given the old links between brewing and baking in Europe, the use of malt is also quite authentic in most of our fermented breads. I also add a sour starter to the mix at 30 – 35% of total flour weight.

But it’s also important to fully work the dough during the mixing and to aerate the focaccia dough during the bulk fermentation if this capacity is to be utilized. In a small plant or bakery, where hand skills can be employed, I find that turning the dough in a tray spread with good olive oil, as you would turn puff pastry, helps to introduce more air pockets throughout the dough. Every 40 minutes or so, the dough is very roughly pinned out in the tray, dimpled with the fingertips but not really degassed, then folded upon itself in thirds. The oil helps protect the focaccia dough from the rigors of the stretching. If you get tearing on the dough surface, then use more oil.

To achieve that final open texture in the sheet focaccia, there is one more technique to remember. By stretching the dough into the sheet corners gradually, with short rests in-between handling, small air pockets will also be stretched into long elliptical pockets, which will expand upwards in the oven heat into large holes. Dimple the surface with your fingers while you push the dough out into the tray, but do not go so far as to degass the dough. Rest the dough then stretch it finally into the corners of the sheet. Then let the dough have a short final prove for 15 minutes at a warm temperature (28C+), before baking in a hot (230C) oven, with a little steam, top heat high (7 or 8) and bottom heat low (2 or 3).

above, a peek inside the sourdough panettone shows good aeration, a rich dark and soft crust, a rich yellow crumb and a scattering of fruit

The Essential Ingredient in Melbourne’s Prahran Market is more than just a retailer, it’s a place which really celebrates the joy to be found in cooking.

Under one roof, you’ll find not only an outstanding selection of cookware, cookbooks and ingredients, but also a cookery school which is really well-equipped and which offers an interesting range of classes for every season, along with staff who seem to have perfectly judged the right balance between offering assistance and leaving you to browse.

Their achievement is simply inspirational, and I was delighted to teach an Italian Baking class there on one of my visits to Melbourne.

Italy was my first inspiration in baking, and the ingredients and methods still hold my fascination and respect. The flavour and texture found in the very best Italian baking, is characterised by its utter clarity and simplicity, and I am yet to find a cook in Italy who doesn’t bake with precision and deliberation.

At Essential Ingredient I was able to teach and demonstrate some of the bread recipes I developed for Giorgio Locatelli’s restaurant Locanda Locatelli here in London, as well as other classic Italian breads and pastries. The class was directed at both home and commercial bakers and restaurant pastry chefs and attracted a range of ages and abilities. Through an intense and hands-on experience, focusing on traditional methods, we made a biga, which we used in making an open-textured stirato Torinese, a focaccia Genovese and a sourdough pannetone; as well as farinata di ceci and crisp amaretti.

above, the cut top of the sourdough panettone, and you can see the crumb that burst through during baking.

Italian flour, and making a biga

Bakers in Italy often use a type of flour that contains a mixture of imported wheat and local grain to increase the elasticity and resilience in the dough. Italian flour is divided into categories according to the size of the flour particles, with ‘O’ a coarse granulated flour, ‘OO’ (doppio zero) a medium fine flour, and ‘OOO’ a very fine flour for delicate work. Then, within these categories, the miller will produce flour suitable for different uses. So a miller will produce a OO best suited for pasta, as well as another OO best suited for pizza. But they’re not interchangeable, and this is where the confusion and problems arise. Adding a small proportion of strong white flour to a OO pasta flour (the most common Italian flour found around the world) is the best work around.

Generally in Italy, when bakers talk about “a biga” they mean a piece of dough left from the previous day’s baking, much like the French use the term “pâte fermenté” or fermented dough. A common practice used in Italy is to mix the dough very, very tightly – with very little water and a tiny amount of yeast – and allow it to ferment and soften slowly at room temperature overnight.

The following day a small amount of additional flour, a tiny amount of water, malt extract, sometimes lard (strutto) and salt are added, and mixed into a refreshed dough that ferments very quickly. As traditional Italian flour does not produce dough with the elasticity or resilience seen in the strong baker’s flour we are used to, this method protects the available gluten. This is because a tight dough ferments very slowly, therefore placing less stress on the structure of the dough, by constraining the amount of gassing that is possible, and leaving the dough with some elasticity and resilience at the end.

This method can be used with commercial yeast or a leaven (sourdough) process, and is particularly good for the latter as it produces a very lively dough, comparable to a commercially yeasted dough in its gassing power. Similar processes were used throughout Europe up until the late 1800s (in the UK they were called ferment, sponge and dough) but colder countries tended to rely on a batter mixtures as these would have fermented more easily at lower temperatures. At the Melbourne class, we used both a commercially yeasted biga and a leaven-based (sourdough) one for different recipes.

above, the cut section of sourdough panettone peeled away from the baking paper.

An open-textured stirato Torinese and a focaccia Genovese

Bakers in Italy, like bakers around the world, tend to want to get the most variations possible from the one house dough. A plain white dough made to the method above can be used in different ways, and we used it to make both a type of giant grissini called a stirato Torinese, as well as a bubbly, aerated focaccia Genovese.

Farinata di ceci

Until the early 1900s, food made with fine white wheat flour was something many people in continental Europe only aspired to. It was expensive, and relatively few people could afford it. Other grains and starches were relied upon, and in Italy it was common to find street vendors selling a simple ‘pancake’ that served as a bread snack. In the north of Italy, the two main street foods were the savoury and salty Farinata (made with chick pea flour) and the sweet Castagnaccio (made with chestnuts).

Amaretti

It was a great pleasure to pass on the ‘secret’ to making light, crisp amaretti biscuits at the class (and there will be a recipe elsewhere on this site in due course). Sometimes cornmeal is added, sometimes semolina, but ours were kept plain and simple with just nuts, apricot kernels, egg white and sugar.

Panettone

This was the greatest challenge of the day, and not just for the students ! In Italy, factories dedicated to the manifacture of ‘industrial’ panettone have the process down to a fine art; but replicating this in anything more like a domestic kitchen is more testing. We used a biga I’d started the previous day, made with a leaven (sourdough), enriched with egg yolks and sugar and left overnight to rise, with the final dough topped with up with more eggs, butter, sugar, flour, and fruit. In Italy, panettone is flavoured using a mixture of natural essences (or often artificial ones, combining natural and fake in a relaxed and care-free way). We used natural aromas to create the flavour.

The Essential Ingredient: store and cookery school
Prahran Market, Elizabeth Street, South Yarra 3141 VIC
Telephone: (03) 9827 9047
www.theessentialingredient.com.au
Further stores in Albury, NSW; Canberra, ACT; Newcastle, NSW; Orange, NSW; and Rozelle (Sydney, NSW)

above, a panettone made with a natural leaven, and without commercial yeast

above, (b&w portraits, left to right) top row: Antoine at Loafer Bread , Iain at Fruition, Phillippa from Phillippa's, bottom row: Tony from Dench, Chaminda Silva at Daley at Chimmy's, Daniel Chirico from Baker D. Chirico.

It was after one of my regular trips to Melbourne, promoting my book The Handmade Loaf, teaching classes and meeting local bakers. To be truthful, I returned rather depressed about the plateau we’d reached in the UK – some fine baking here, but little that’s remarkable. We must raise our game, and of course we will. I hear the rumblings from many talented British bakers desperate to break out and ‘be extraordinary’, and leave all this crumb-conditioned crap behind. But it’s taking a long time.

Here’s an essay, originally written for Allan Campion and Michele Curtis, for their website which promotes all that’s great and good in Victorian food. Or, if you browse the Features/Travel section here, you’ll find interviews with some of the bakers I met there, and more photos.

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I’ve been trying to think “just why is the bread so good in Victoria?”, and that epicentre of a good crust, Melbourne. When I grew up in the eastern suburbs in the 60s and 70s, bread was simply hot and white – and if you ate it while it was steaming in the bag it tasted fine. Now I look around the state and see so many world class bakeries. Even the bouncy-soft bread chains like Baker’s Delight still produce far better loaves than similar multiples in the UK. New bakers like Tony Dench producing baguettes as good as those in Paris, without even a flying visit by him to compare. We’re just across the Channel, with access to the same ingredients and, damn it, even to the same bakers, and we still can’t get it right. The rich earthy taste of Phillippa and Andrew’s spelt sourdough would beat all of the competition at a Soil Association “Best” event in England.

above, travelling further afield, Jason Warwick's award-winning sourdough in Sydney

The bakers I met in Victoria try hard to get the very best out their local ingredients, still driven to succeed at producing loaves that meet their own high standards. This occurs even where there are problems caused by the characteristics of those same local ingredients. Their way is just to accept those characteristics – and then get on with the work. Even aiming to accentuate those characteristics rather than mask them. Here in Britain, so many bakers leap from mill to mill, from supplier to supplier, always with an air of dissatisfaction with the ingredients at hand, and always sure it will all come right when they find their perfect mill and the perfect flour. Here we have a choice of so many excellent flours, yet still find it difficult to craft one single, world-class loaf. Scarcity can, and I would argue “usually does”, beget excellence.

In Victoria, bakers share information freely with one another, they help each other out, and (on the quiet) they compete with one another. Here in Britain they’ll compete for customers, compete for a buck, compete to be the biggest and most lucrative bakery in the region. But they won’t compete to produce the best bread. That’s the only competition the customer has a chance of gaining from, since the supermarkets will always be able to provide the cheapest bread in town. Even there, Victorian customers still win. At Piedimonte’s supermarket in North Fitzroy, the pane di rosetta (those hollow crunchy crisp rolls perfect for scooping up a thick, pesto-stirred bean soup) are as good as I’d find in any bakery in Milan, and this is in a supermarket in-store bakery. If only we had a Piedimonte’s here in London….

above, a dark and thick crusted rye sourdough from the old Gertrude Street Bakery, in Fitzroy

Someone said to me today, “But the trouble is, here in Britain we don’t really love food.”. Perhaps that’s it. Perhaps for many customers in the UK bread is just chunky, tasteless, soft and stodgy carbohydrate. An outspoken Australian will have no hesitation in telling the shop staff when they’ve got it right, and wrong. I can still recall my mother telling shopkeepers what their problem is. It matters to the customer because the reward for emigrating was always to have a better quality of life. And when that’s missing, the Australian customer complains.

Immigration will have played a part in defining the character of the Australian daily bread. I spent a morning with my partner David visiting Melbourne’s Immigration Museum, where the moving and harrowing stories of early immigrant life are on display. This reminded me of the difficulties faced by Italian, German, and Arab chefs and bakers in Melbourne, trying to recreate the foods they remembered from home, simply working the local flour to get it to behave like the milled grain in Europe. The wholefood movement in Victoria kept hold in pockets around the state, sometimes where Steiner communities were located. Much of the greatness in Melbourne’s artisan baking stems from bakers who spent time at Natural Tucker in Nicholson Street, one of the early wholefood bakeries in Melbourne. And with them they took a passion for wholegrain baking, with no fear of sprouted seeds and natural leaven. Woodfired ovens are also embraced, many designed by Victorian Alan Scott, a guru to the natural bakers in the USA.

I was overwhelmed by the many bakers who came to see whether I knew anything that could help their work, or make their bread better. Not that the bakers felt that there was a problem, but just the chance that there could be improvement. No-one knew whether I had anything useful to add, but they came anyway – even though there was the big possibility that they might come back without learning anything new. That risk is the key to learning, taking the journey just for the possibility of a droplet of knowledge, and I’m sure that approach contributes to their excellence.

Compared to Victoria, Britain is still in artisan baking infancy. So I’m hoping that, with a little encouragement from bakers overseas who have transformed their own communities, that Britain too can become a destination for good bread lovers the world over. We’re getting there here, with some great budding bakers that will soon excite people, but we still have a way to go to match the excellence I saw in Victoria.

a baguette from Dench, 109 Scotchmer St, North Fitzroy, VIC 3065

above, fresh from the oven (it's actually hurting the baker's hands), the baguette looks taut and slightly burnt on the edges of the tears

…would smell as sweet.

Recipes and tricks for improving your sticks

(Originally published in British Baker)

Recipes for the perfect baguette are probably as numerous as bakeries in France, and each baker appears to claim a secret ingredient or technique that makes him the star boulanger. But do they have anything in common?

Well, flour for a start. A perfect baguette begins and ends with the right qualities in flour. Soft wheat does make for dough that requires slow cool mixing, leaving the mixer at around 22 – 23ºC, creating a dough that is delicate and difficult to handle.

Next, cool water is needed to achieve that final dough temperature. Following that, a bulk fermentation of at least 45 minutes, but often longer. Then the dough is scaled, lightly rounded, left for 15 – 20 minutes, before being shaped with the aid of a baguette moulder and left to proove on a flour dusted cloth. To finish, the baguette is transferred to a peel or a setter, slashed 6 or 7 times with a sharp blade, and deposited on a hot stone to bake. These are the rules of the baguette, set in the stone of tradition.

above, each of the cuts slightly tears, and when sliced the crumb shows an open texture

However, the only way to judge a perfect baguette is by tasting one. Remember the days of the fine English ‘French Stick’? Remember that deliciously tough elastic crust, with a smooth brilliant white crumb and those dainty dimples left from the perforated cradle that the dough sat in, while it baked in its fan-assisted oven? Well, the perfect French baguette is a different beast altogether. We’re looking for crispness in a thin tender crust, a creamy-coloured crumb with an uneven aerated light texture, and the oval circumference and dark base crust only achieved through stone-sole oven baking. The taste should be of wheat with a hint of acidity, neither too sour nor too yeasty.

But to simplify things a little, lets start with a very simple and rather ordinary baguette:

1.000kg T55 (100%)
0.650kg water at 18 – 20ºC (65%)
0.020kg yeast (2%)
0.020kg – 0.023kg salt (2% – 2.3%)
1.690kg total weight

Mix together on 1st speed for 3 minutes, then on 2nd speed for 7 minutes. Remove from bowl, leave to bulk for 45 minutes, the scale, shape and proove. Cut with a blade (seven slashes), and then bake at 225ºC for 25 minutes, with a little steam in the beginning and the vent open after 15 minutes.

To be fair, I don’t know any baker using a recipe as simple as the one above. It produces a bread so uniform, and unspectacular, that there is no gain in making it yourself. However, by tweaking the recipe a little we can soon change that.

If we start by making a sponge, we can begin to add character to the baguette by opening up the texture. Here is the way I change a direct recipe into one that uses a sponge and dough. Take a third of the original total dough weight (appx. 560g), and then divide that number in half (280g). Then take that amount of flour and water (from the total quantities) and mix together with one quarter of the yeast. So our new recipe will look like this:

For the sponge:

0.280kg T55
0.280kg water at 18 – 20º C
0.005kg yeast

Mix together thoroughly, and leave for 2 hours (agitating the mixture briefly after 1 hour)

For the dough

0.720kg T55
0.370kg water at 18 – 20º C
0.005kg yeast
0.020kg – 0.023kg salt

Mix together with the sponge on 1st speed for 3 minutes, then on 2nd speed for 7 minutes. Remove from bowl, leave to bulk for 45 minutes, the scale, shape and proove. Cut with a blade (seven slashes), and then bake at 225ºC for 25 minutes, with a little steam in the beginning and the vent open after 15 minutes. As the sponge is a large fermenting batter, we have reduced the total yeast quantity to 1% of the total flour weight, split between the sponge and final dough.

Getting better, but still not to my mind a perfect baguette. Lets change the flour next.

above, the same dough as in the image below, but shaped into a ball, proved upturned in a basket, and baked with a little steam in a deck oven

Flours such as Moul-bie’s Campaillette and Viron’s Retrador are milled and blended specially to open the texture of the baguette. Changing your flour either on the direct recipe, or ideally on the sponge and dough method will dramatically enhance the texture and final crust on the baguette.

Before the introduction of these flours, I tended to cut the T55 with a little Canadian-rich English flour. This had the advantage of being able to tolerate more water in the dough, enabling the actual water content to be increased from 65% up to 68% (or 70%). This produced a very crisp baguette with huge bubbles throughout the light crumb. Very seductive, but difficult to manage and shape.

So the recipe would change to:

0.350kg Canadian
0.400kg water at 18 – 20ºC
0.005kg yeast

Mix together thoroughly, and leave for 2 hours (agitating the mixture briefly after 1 hour)

For the dough

0.650kg T55
0.300kg water at 18 – 20ºC
0.005kg yeast
0.020kg – 0.023kg salt

above, try and keep the crust colour relatively even - a baguette should display great control

Mix together with the sponge on 1st speed for 3 minutes, then on 2nd speed for 7 minutes. Remove from bowl, leave to bulk for 45 minutes, the scale, shape and proove. Cut with a blade (seven slashes), then bake at 225ºC for 25 minutes, with a little steam in the beginning and the vent open after 15 minutes.

Baguette au levain

This is the recipe I use. It combines the use of Canadian plus T55, together with a sour sponge replacing the yeasted sponge. This is not an overnight-yeasted batter, but rather a levain that has been started by letting a mixture of currants, water and flour ferment, then sieving the mixture and refreshing it daily with equal quantities of flour and water.

Let me warn you that producing a sharp healthy levain or sourdough is a craft that needs practice. There is a way around this, by using one of the prepared sour ferments available on the market, or by sending off to a company called www.sourdo.com who produce little sachets of dried yeast combined with lactic enzymes that will give the desired flavour, texture and crumb structure.

At the moment in both France and the US, electric fermentation tanks that keep the sour ferment at a constant temperature with gentle agitation, are becoming increasingly common in the bakeries that aim to produce excellence in quantity.

For the baguette recipe I would keep the sponge at 35% of the total flour weight.

0.350kg sour starter
0.650kg T55
0.350kg Canadian
0.625kg water at 18 – 20ºC
0.005kg yeast
0.020kg – 0.023kg salt

Four other techniques in use:

A slow, final fermentation at 12-14ºC is especially useful for baguette au levain, and if the yeast is reduced still further allows for a complex slightly sour acidity to develop. Also increases the crust colour when baked

Mixing the dough entirely on first speed, for 15 – 18 minutes, can help develop the crumb flavour and structure. If you have the time!

Mixing the dough on first speed for 3 minutes, then leaving the dough to rest for 30 minutes – 1 hour, before giving a final mix on second speed for 5 minutes. As above.

Delaying adding the salt until the last 3 minutes of mixing. Particularly good if you are using only a sour starter and no commercial yeast

above, the tear caused by the slashing of the baguette dough with a razor blade, a perfect example from the book. Photographs from Le Pain – l’envers du décor © Moussa Elibrik

Books written specifically for the working baker are somewhat hard to come by. Publishers are in the book selling business, and over the past few decades there just weren’t that many bakers to sell books to. However, that has changed and we’re starting to see publishers who recognise a growing market for artisan baking books, publishers that aren’t fearful of detail or text, using lively photography that doesn’t seem stuck in the 70s.

above, perfect aeration in the crumb of a loaf baked by Thom Leonard, baker at Farm to Market Bread Co., Kansas City. Photographs from 'Artisan Baking Across America' © Ben Fink

Maggie Glezer’s Artisan Baking Across America is a book I have recommended more than many others. It’s the one that working bakers so often talk about, telling me ‘I really like that book’. A vibrant and honest account of contemporary bread baking in North America, it also helps to demonstrate that traditions can be re-established, and that it’s possible to create workable, visually appealing, revenue earning bakery systems using old artisan methods and slow processes.

Though her text is lucid and detailed, not all the bakers I work with are big on reading. The photographs by Ben Fink, shot in natural light and vividly saturated, helps explain to wannabe breadcrafters the hard-graft edge to the bakers work, and emphasises that artisan baking can be boisterous and energetic. There is a sense of sweat and labour in every bakery Glezer visits, and the photographs show bakers mixing leavens, carefully selecting flours from old varieties of wheat, proving soft dough on cloths and in linen lined baskets. But every baker is still modern, still living in the 21st century, and driving prosperous bakery businesses forward.

above, a page showing baker Aaron Weber at the Della Fattoria bakery, Petaluma, California

The Della Fattoria bakery in Petaluna, California is one of the great bakeries featured (they have a website at www.dellafattoria.com, with more photographs of the bakery looking ever so idyllic). Alan Scott, author (together with Dan Wing) of the artisan bakers’ bible The Bread Builders, and who also features the bakery in his book, built the oven for Kathleen and Ed Weber in their back garden. Here, the Weber’s baking first started very much as a business from home until the orders grew sufficiently to take on employees outside of the family.

Recipe ingredient quantities throughout the book are written in a block, that lists the quantities in volume, imperial, metric and percentages. All made very clear, and most recipes extend over two or three pages, giving plenty of room to explain each step in detail. I like details such as ‘recipe time: about 23 hours’. Excellent. Lots of cut loaves showing the open crumb texture now preferred by contemporary bakers, a texture that is a league away from the homogenous crumb still common in the UK. Old school industry figures here tell me that ‘women’ in Britain (don’t you just love those sweeping comments) would hate an open texture in the bread’s crumb. So that’s probably why ciabatta has been such a ‘failure’ in the UK? The truth is that it’s easier to industrially process a dough with a homogenous crumb.

above, a hot crisp thin-crust pizza, made with a naturally-leavened dough, straight out of Jack Lang's brick oven in Cambridge

he aims of the home baker are varied. For some, the only thing important is to produce a loaf cleanly with minimal effort. Bread machines fill the tin for those that desire convenient baking. But for others it’s the thrill of the effort, going after excellence and a primitive baking experience. Grinding the wheat for freshly milled flour, nursing a natural starter through it’s infancy to full-blown fermentation, blending grains and flours to create a personal mix of dry ingredients…

above, a thick layer of fragrant thyme grows on the warm roof of the wood-fired oven

Back in 2003, Jack Lang, ‘Entrepreneur in Residence’ at the University of Cambridge, and his partner Jill hosted an apple pressing day at their modern farmhouse in Cambridgeshire. Now, if you (like me) have ever wandered past the laden boughs of apple trees in late summer, and wondered what will happen to all of the fruit, this is one solution.

Within a small community, it makes sense to get together and turn the task of pulping and pressing several hundredweight of crisp sweet apples into an enjoyable weekend-long affair. So over one weekend in September, colleagues and friends of Jack and Jill collect the apples, help force them through a garden shredder, and then tip the apple bits into a hand-cranked press. Fresh apple juice with champagne (not a ‘Bellini’, more a ‘Normandie) wets the tongues of the workers.

Jill was left with the herculean task of cleaning up after the baking and apple pressing. If you have ever had to clean up after a baker, you will understand the trouble it takes to get the dough off every surface. That glutinous mixture of wheat-flour and water bonds to the tap handles, the cupboard doors, anything the baker touches.

But this was the only downside to a glorious day baking bread and pizza. When I arrived on the Sunday morning, Jack had on the kitchen table the dough that would be baked that day: a large batch of sour pizza dough and rye dough, placed alongside two loaves that had just come out of the Aga oven and sat cooling.

The kitchen looks out over an old orchard that surrounds the house. Apples are scattered on the ground underneath the trees, and to one side sits the brick oven, looking like a small house.

above, the craftsman at work, Jack Lang in a quiet moment on the baking day.

I asked Jack how he got started in baking. “I was at University and had a girlfriend who was a good cook”, he said, “and that got me started. After we split up, I still continued to cook, and gradually developed a mild interest baking. But it was later, after I had spent time in San Francisco, that my interest really took off”. Jack’s brother Charles became friendly with Ian Duffy (when he was the baker at the outstanding Daily Bread bakery in Boulder, Colorado. Ian now resides at Cook Natural Products, in Oakland, California, a leading distributor of Organic flour). ”He introduced Charles to sourdough baking”, says Jack, “and fired his enthusiasm to learn (a lot) more about baking. I brought back one of those Gold Rush sourdough starter packs, which was good. But after a week or so the flavour changed and it lost that sharp, vibrant acidity. So I decided I had to do better.”

It was at that time that Jack made the decision to eat better bread. ” I remember saying to Jack in his early bread-making days” says Jill, “that he should bake bread on a regular basis…. just keep at, keep at it, keep at it, and it would ‘come right’ in time – something I learned for myself in an earlier life when raising a family and baking all their bread”.

“Today”, says Jack, “I bake less, probably every week, but I still bake for friends on occasions.” The weather outside was warm and just starting to get sunny, as the light broke through the bank of clouds that had threatened the morning. We started baking a test pizza first, after a glass of apple juice mixed with champagne. As the oven was blisteringly hot, it seemed best to keep the dough ultra thin, with a light smear of tomato sauce, studded with pitted black olives, the odd anchovy, and a light drizzle of extra virgin olive oil. The peel was dusted with yellow cornmeal, and the pizza quickly slid onto the hot stones on the base of the oven.

above, straight out of the oven, Jack's sourdough loaf sits on the stainless steel pizza peel.

“We needed to replace an old BBQ that we had in the garden”, said Jack, “and decided to replace it with a brick oven. It was Jill who urged me to think about building a brick oven in the garden. We had been out to visit friends, who had a house near Poitiers in France. They uncovered a brick oven in an outhouse in their garden, built early last century which, would have been used as the communal oven for the village. So I helped them clean it out and fire it up again. I had taken out to France a sourdough starter that I had cultivated in the UK, so we mixed that with flour from the local supermarket, and baked our first loaf in the revived oven. So by then, I had that gleam in my eye….”

“When we got back, I started looking on the web to try and purchase an oven, and it seemed to be easier to build our own. At the time, we had builders working on an extension to the house. So we purchased a refractory shell (the dome that sits above the sole of the bakery oven) from a company in France, Four Grandmere, and had the builders spend a little time with some extra bricks building the side walls for the oven, insulated with vermiculite.

above, hunks of sour white dough sit ready to be rolled out, on a sunlit bench set up by the wood-fired oven in the garden.

“Traditional wood-fired ovens are very good at maintaining steady, even heat”, said Jack, “and are by design very economical. And equally, naturally leavened breads are very easy to manage, especially for the home baker, as the dough matures more slowly and the point when the loaf finally gets to the oven is less critical. I am convinced that naturally leavened breads, like sourdough, are great for the home baker and less problematic that other quicker yeasted breads.”

We took the pizza out of the oven, and quickly cut it into pieces. It had just a faint smoky hint to the crust, whish was both hot and crisp but tender inside (it’s always a shame when the base dries out to something that resembles a cracker). After this first test, we bowed out and let other people roll their own pizza.

above, a loaf of rye bread fresh from the Aga oven sits cooling on the kitchen table

And what if you don’t have a wood-fired oven? “Well, here we have an Aga, which is very good for baking bread. Domestic ovens often don’t get hot enough. Also, the Aga is very good at retaining the steam inside the oven, as it only has a small outlet for the steam. I just throw a cup of water into the base of the oven with the bread, and that produces a beautifully glazed loaf. ”

I left the day just wishing I had a big garden, and the drive to build my own oven. Below, Jack shares with us his seven tips for successful home baking:

1. Use a naturally-leavened starter. “Using a sourdough starter is easy,” says Jack. “You keep it in the fridge from one month until the next, and simply refresh a small amount when you need to use it”

2. Keep practicing your ‘baking routine’ until you find a method that suits you. “It was the constant baking that improved my breads”, says Jack.

3. “For many of the breads I bake”, says Jack, “I make the dough the night before and leave it overnight in the refrigerator”. This is a great help in managing your time when baking at home, when there are always other things to do.

4. Do keep a record of the temperatures of your flour, water, dough and room when you bake. “Temperature control is very important when you bake”, says Jack, “but don’t go overboard with it”.

above, tucked up in their linen-lined baskets, two rye loaves sit slowly proving in the kitchen

5. “Food processors are great for mixing bread, just remember to use the steel blade”, says Jack. My co-author on “Baking with Passion”, Richard Whittington, swears by the food processor and finds it much easier to use than the upright mixer.

6. Remember that when you bake brown, mixed wheat, rye or wholemeal loaves, you will not get the same volume in the finished loaf as you will achieve with white flour, nor as open a texture to the crumb. Just remember this and be content.

7. And finally, “Bake the dough from cold”, says Jack, who lets his dough prove overnight in the refrigerator at 4ºC. This, he feels, gives a better result.

About Jack:

‘Entrepreneur in Residence’ at the University of Cambridge, and CEO of Artimi Ltd, Jack Lang founded NetChannel, which was eventually bought by NTL, where he continued as chief technologist. During a rich career, Jack founded five companies, including Topexpress, and the company that grew into E*Trade UK. Though he originally studied applied psychology at Sussex University, after a degree in Engineering at Cambridge, Jack then took a diploma in computer science at Cambridge, and an MA from Emmanuel. He is the author of “The High Tech Entrepreneurs Handbook – how to start and run a high tech business”, published by FT.com, and widely described as both a business angel (now there’s a sweet phrase) and a serial entrepreneur – always starting something new. Jack is recognized as one of the leading UK experts on mass-market computer systems, e-commerce, computer security, artificial intelligence and interactive television. Not only a keen baker, he is a passionate cook and founded the Midsummer House restaurant (in Cambridge) in 1984.