What are you reading? Answer, The Bread Bible by Rose Levy Beranbaum and Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes by Jeffrey Hamelman. Why? It's a quest. I'm always in search of how to get more flavor out of the flour. These two books are good road maps for the journey.
Friends know I'm loaf loony. They want me to teach how to make good bread. Mon dieu, I'm still trying to figure it out.
One thing I know: Better bread doesn't come in a day. Oui, you can find recipes that simply explain how to mix flour, water, salt and yeast for a bread you can eat in a few hours. In fact, my first bread book was a gift from Dear Val, called Judith Olney on Bread. If you're just starting out with home-baked breads and you're impatient, Olney is there for you. Get started.
The day will come, though, when you ask yourself why the bread doesn't taste earthier, deeper, like artisan breads. Stroll into Poilane on the rue du Cherche-Midi in Paris, open le bouche and you'll know what I mean. Better bread is made over time, certainly more than a day, and with advanced skills at understanding the use of clock, temperature and ingredients. This is why I have trouble with my friends, who want a demo class that's sure-fire. That would take a few days, a bread camp, maybe. I don't presume to know everything about how to get the best results, but I'm willing to eat my way through it.
Years ago after Olney, I jumped into The Village Baker by Joe Ortiz and have never looked back. Ortiz and his wife, Gayle, have a bakery in Capitola, Calif., and have made countless pilgrimages to bakeries in France, Italy and Germany to learn the true heart of artisan baking in the European traditions. They have done the hard part for you.
Aha! Thought I, reading how Joe learned to "build" his pre-ferments (bread dough starters) over several days. See, it takes time to build flavor, I knew it all along.
Joe's book still has an honored spot on the shelf near my stove, along with Gayle's book The Village Baker's Wife, with a great collection of croissant and pastry recipes. Next to those, I added Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. Right now I'm baking off recipes from 3 of the aforementioned books, just to compare taste, crust, crumb and aroma - Pain de Campagne, Vermont Sourdough with Whole Wheat and Whole-Wheat Bread with a Multigrain Soaker. Doing this while eating handfuls of bread pudding from Commander's Palace that we made in class last week. Bread, always bread.
The moral of all this bread talk is - work it. Find recipes and try them out. Listen to what these knowledgeable and passionate experts know about grains, weather conditions and yes, math. Follow your bouche, and your nose.
Get your hands doughy.
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