In Search of the Perfect Loaf: A Home Baker's Odyssey

by Fromartz, Samuel

  I then returned to Kaplan’s book Good Bread Is Back, and read through descriptions of the baguettes made by two influential bakers in France, Éric Kayser and Dominique Saibron. Both bakers added levain to their baguette dough in minor amounts along with baker’s yeast. Although a contemporary narrative account of French bread, Kaplan’s book gives just enough information about the technique to craft a recipe. And more important, he talks about why bakers apply certain techniques, which can be more valuable than any recipe. When I spoke to Dan Leader, whose book had started me down this path many years earlier, he mentioned that he, too, added a small amount of natural leaven to his baguettes. It wasn’t as overpowering as a loaf made entirely with sourdough, but instead provided a hint of acidity. In fact, the more I read, the more I realized that many artisan bakers were using the technique, including the American bakers who had competed with French baking teams in the World Cup of Baking. And the Americans began winning these baking Olympics in 1996.

  So I tweaked the recipe by adding a bit of sourdough and a minute amount of whole wheat flour to stimulate the fermentation. Soon, I began to get results I was pleased with. On the phone with Delmontel one day, I told him I was getting closer to the baguette I wanted. But I also expressed frustration with the flour I was using, which was not the same as the Viron flour he had in the bakery. But he was dismissive. “Look, it’s not reasonable to import flour so you can make the same exact baguette as mine,” he said. “It’s like strawberries—you don’t eat them in winter. The most important thing is to make people happy, to love what you have done! Whether it’s the same flour, it’s not important.”

  I knew he was right. I had to adapt the process to the flour I had. I would create my own baguette—which is what any serious baker would do.

  Within a month or two, I felt I had nailed the recipe, finally achieving a slightly more complex flavor. It still wasn’t the same as Delmontel’s baguette but it was a good one just the same, with an open crumb, crisp crust, slight chew, and the slightest hint of acidity. It felt like the end of a very long journey, and a triumph, given that I had concluded so long ago that baguettes couldn’t be made at home. I had just handed in my travel piece on the baking adventure when I got an e-mail from Tim Carman, a food writer then working for the Washington City Paper. He asked how things were going, as he knew of my attempt to tackle the baguette. I invited him over and gave him a brief lesson in making the loaf. He had trouble handling the extremely moist dough, which is a challenge for any beginner. From another batch of dough which I had sitting in the refrigerator overnight, I shaped three loaves, let them rise at room temperature for thirty minutes, and baked them in the oven, pouring boiling water into a sheet pan on the bottom shelf to approximate the effect of a steam-injected oven. They came out nicely, golden brown in color, the bread bursting through the cuts. Once they had cooled a bit, we ripped into one.

  “These are pretty good,” Carman said.

  “Yeah, not bad, for homemade,” I replied.

  “No, I mean really good,” he added. “These might be the best I’ve had in Washington.”

  I told him the reason I started baking was precisely because I couldn’t find good bread in the city, or at least anywhere near my house. Then, thinking of the Paris competition, I added, “If you really like the bread, why don’t you have a competition and put my loaves against the professionals here in D.C.?”

  Tim immediately liked the idea and a few weeks later had gathered the judges in a drab conference room of the paper for a blind tasting: Joan Nathan, a cookbook author; Eric Ziebold, chef at CityZen, a top-ranked restaurant in Washington; Mark Furstenberg, the local baker and an outspoken perfectionist about bread; and Jule Banville, a home baker and staffer at the paper. I had mixed my doughs the day before, sweating at the prospect of going up against professionals. Trying to gain whatever edge I could, I made sure the bread came out of the oven by around nine A.M., which meant that the crust would still be crisp when the loaves were eaten at eleven. Tim had asked several local bakeries to deliver bread, but only two complied—evidence perhaps of how highly they regarded this exercise. So he went around town fetching loaves that morning, and I helped out as well with a couple of samples, seeking out the best specimens I could find. But nearly all of them, it appeared, had been baked long in advance, which is a major drawback of the wholesale bakery business. My loaves were probably the freshest.

  I submitted two loaves—one with a slightly higher proportion of sourdough than the other. While I had some trouble shaping the loaves, because the dough was more relaxed than usual after the overnight rise, they still came out fine: dark brown, a generous opening at the grigne, a decent shape, and, I hoped, a winning taste.

  All the loaves were marked with numbered flags and each judged according to crust, crumb, appearance, flavor, and several other categories cribbed from the Paris competition. Some loaves were, to use Kaplan’s words, “insipid,” since they had obviously been made quickly, then languished on store shelves. (The shelf life of a baguette is about six hours, max.) When Tim cut them lengthwise, it was clear that only a few had the open, uneven interior crumb that I was striving for—a basic requirement of well-made loaves in France. Many had the kind of white uniform center that probably resulted from intensive mixing, ample yeast, and high-protein flour. In short, many were replicas of precisely the kind of loaves that had brought down bread in France in the preceding decades. I wasn’t alone in these assessments. Sitting around the conference table and discussing each loaf as they tasted it, the judges were unsparing.

  When it came time to taste my loaves, though, I was nearly shaking with nerves but tried hard to mask the fact that this was my bread. Tim sliced into my first loaf, then passed around the pieces. The judges smelled and then nibbled at the bread. I tasted it as well—it had the soft, open crumb I was seeking, a mild hint of levain, and, yes!, the crust was still crisp. Joan Nathan said simply, “This is the best one so far.” Even Furstenberg, who was unstinting in his critique of the other loaves, said: “This is a good baguette.” Ziebold agreed. Now, this wasn’t the Paris competition, or anything even remotely close. But when Carman later tallied up the results, my two loaves earned the highest scores. I had topped the professionals!

  In the postgame interview, Furstenberg wasn’t pleased. He thought the fact that I was only making a few baguettes at a time gave me an unfair advantage. But as I pointed out, I also lacked what the pros had on hand: commercial deck ovens, loaders, and the experience that comes from pounding out a few hundred loaves a day. For me, perhaps the most telling comment came from Loic Feillet, the owner of Panorama—a wholesale bakery in nearby Alexandria, Virginia. He mentioned that he had tried to sell a baguette similar to the one I was making, but his customers, restaurants and stores around D.C., revolted. He could not convince them that his loaf, made with a hint of sourdough, was superior. So he dumbed it down to their idea of what a baguette should be.

  This isn’t unusual. Even in Paris, bakeries routinely undercook their baguettes to meet their customers’ expectations for an extremely pale loaf. By reinforcing this choice, the customer never experiences the taste of a crust infused with the flavor components of the Maillard reaction. It’s like eating chicken with rubbery skin. Somehow customers learn to prefer it. Playing to the lowest common denominator might do wonders for a business, but it has never been a path to greatness. Working in my kitchen, I never had to worry about that. My only customer was the ideal loaf that I had tasted on occasion and had in my head. I didn’t have to compromise. All I had to worry about was to do better next time.

  I have made baguettes many times since the competition and the recipe has continued to evolve, less because I am seeking out new flavors than because I’m curious about how different methods alter the taste and appearance of the loaf. I have even done away with the natural leaven on occasion, trying to moderate the slight tug or chew when you bite into the loaf. I cut the yeast in half from the levels I used in th
e winning recipe. I’m experimenting with “poolish,” in which up to half the flour in the loaf is pre-fermented twelve to fifteen hours before mixing, with just a pinch of yeast, so it’s a bubbling mass by the time you mix it with the remaining flour, water, and salt. This tends to open up the crumb even more because poolish helps break down proteins in that long prefermentation. I’m also playing with the salt levels, so that the sodium doesn’t overpower the natural flavor. The baguette tastes cleaner, more pure, but I imagine that in another few months, I’ll go back to using levain again, or raise the amount of whole grains in the loaf for a more rustic feel. In the end, my goal is the same: flavor, an open crumb, a dark crust—in short, a dynamite loaf.

  This quest of mine—and the resulting travel piece—got me through the darkest three months of the recession. Work started flowing again. But more than that, this one project—and the obsessive focus it required—grounded me at a tenuous moment. I wasn’t making as much money as before, but I was making a helluva baguette. And that was certainly better than no bread at all.

  Stirato

  (MODERATE)

  Makes 4 loaves

  When I first started baking, I stumbled on stirato, which is like an easy-to-make baguette. I found it in Joe Ortiz’s The Village Baker. Although I didn’t know it at the time, this bread was actually a good one to begin with because it introduced me to the benefits of highly hydrated (that is, very wet) doughs, which create an incredibly airy crumb if handled with a light touch. Ortiz made the dough in a food processor, which you might want to try, but I use a method that combines minimal hand kneading, or more precisely folding, and periodic rests.

  With Ortiz’s recipe, the difficulty came in shaping the loaves. I mangled many, with dough stuck on my hands, apron, and counter. Here, I offer a much simpler technique I learned from Roland Feuillas (chapter 7): you simply form a rectangle and cut off the loaves. Then there’s the fun part: hold the end of each one and stretch it out (hence the name, stirato), forming a long, thin, irregular baguette-like loaf.

  This recipe can be made in one day but requires a long first rise to build flavor and crust color and help ensure you’ll get those holes everyone tends to want in homemade bread. If you bake with sourdough, try adding a tablespoon or two to this dough, simply to build more flavor, though it comes out fine without it. If you mix it around nine A.M., it will be ready by dinner.

  Tools

  Bowl or container

  Spatula

  Plastic dough scraper

  Rectangular baking stone

  Rimmed baking sheet, for the oven

  Dowel or wooden spoon with a long handle or a chopstick

  Parchment paper, cut to the size of the baking stone

  Cutting board or second baking sheet, to move the loaves to the oven

  Cooling rack

  Ingredients

  500 grams unbleached all-purpose flour

  375 grams water 80˚F (27˚C)

  1/2 teaspoon instant yeast

  1 tablespoon sourdough (optional)

  10 grams sea salt

  Semolina flour, for dusting the loaves

  Morning

  Combine the flour, water, yeast, and sourdough, if using, in a bowl, mixing together with a spatula or your hand moistened with water for about 1 minute. After the ingredients are combined, make a small indentation on the top of the dough. Add the salt to the small well you’ve just made in the dough, and about 1 tablespoon of water to cover it, but don’t mix it in yet. Cover the bowl and let the dough sit for 20 minutes.

  Moisten your hands slightly and use the dough scraper to loosen the dough from the bowl. Rather than knead the dough, you’re going to stretch and fold it in the bowl—a technique I use in nearly all the recipes in the book. Working from the edges of the dough, pull the dough out to stretch it and then fold it over toward the center. You can also squeeze the dough with your fingers to help incorporate the salt. If your hands begin to stick to the dough, moisten them again with water. Work around the dough and stretch and fold it 12 times. This action should take about 1 minute in total. Flip the dough over so the folds are underneath and the smooth side is on top. Cover the bowl and let the dough sit for another 20 minutes.

  Do the stretch-and-fold action for one more round. By now you’ll notice that the salt is incorporated and the gluten offers noticeable tension. After folding about 12 times, turn the dough over again, cover the bowl, and let the dough rest for 20 minutes.

  Do the stretch-and-fold action 2 more times, at 20-minute intervals. In the final round, the dough should feel very elastic and should be glistening. If it isn’t, add a few more stretch-and-fold actions but be careful not to rip the dough. Turn the dough over so the smooth side is face up.

  Cover the bowl and let it sit for 6 to 7 hours. The goal here is for the dough to rise until it has at least tripled in size, but has not collapsed in on itself. By the end of the rise, you might see big air bubbles on the top of the dough.

  Afternoon

  Preheat the oven to 470˚F (245˚C), with your baking stone on the middle rack, 60 minutes before baking. In the lower part of the oven, or on the bottom, place a rimmed baking sheet that can hold half a cup of water.

  Place a piece of parchment paper roughly the size of your baking stone on an overturned and lightly floured or a cutting board baking sheet. Dust the parchment lightly with a 50/50 mixture of white flour and semolina flour or just white flour and set it aside.

  Flour a two-foot-square area of your counter generously with the flour/semolina mix or white flour. Dust the top of the dough lightly with flour. Using a plastic dough scraper, gently loosen the dough from the bowl and pour it out onto the counter, being careful to keep it in one piece. The outer, smooth surface will have landed on the floured surface, becoming the bottom of the dough. The top of the dough will be sticky. Dust it lightly with flour. Flour your hands and gently make a rectangle that’s about 3/4 to 1 inch thick and about 10 by 16 inches, with the long side on the east-west axis, or parallel to the edge of the counter. Don’t fuss over it to make it perfect or you’ll compress the dough, losing the open structure of the air holes.

  Sprinkle a thick line of flour across the middle of the dough, moving east–west, marking where you will divide the rectangle in half lengthwise. Then sprinkle another two lines of flour through each of those portions, again moving east–west. You will cut the dough along the three lines, making four long loaves. Using a dowel, the wooden handle of a kitchen spoon, or a chopstick, press on the floured line so the pieces separate. A thick, dull tool works well because it joins the dough together at the seam. If the tool does not fully cut through the dough, use your dough scraper to finish cutting the pieces. Separate the pieces so they are not touching each other and cover them with a light towel.

  This second fermentation will take about 20 minutes. When the loaves are ready, they will be very light and spring back within one second when you press your finger very lightly into the dough.

  Baking

  Pour 1/2 cup water into a measuring cup.

  Sprinkle the loaves lightly with semolina/flour. Loosen two loaves gently with the dough scraper. If you put enough flour on the counter it won’t take much effort. Place your hands under the dough at either end of one loaf, then turn it upside down onto the floured parchment paper. To prevent the dough from sagging in the middle while you move the loaf, you can move your two hands closer together, slightly crimping the loaf lengthwise. The floured underside is now facing up. Do this with the second loaf, too. (If your baking stone is big enough, you might be able to place all four loaves on the parchment paper and bake them at once.) Now, here’s the fun part. Lightly grab either end of the dough and gently stretch out the loaf to just under the size of your baking stone. If it resists, don’t pull it—the dough will rip. Do the same with the second loaf. You can straighten out the edges by gently repositioning the loaf with your dough scraper, but don’t fuss too much. Open the oven and slide the parchment paper o
ff the cutting board or baking sheet and onto the baking stone. The loaves will bake on the parchment paper the entire time. Close the oven. Take the 1/2 cup water and pour it onto the baking sheet, being careful not to get burned by the steam. Shut the oven door.

  Bake for 18 to 22 minutes. Do not open the oven until at least 18 minutes into the bake. Bake until dark brown. Using a peel, or oven mitts, remove the loaves to a cooling rack, and let them stand for at least 20 minutes before eating. Repeat the baking method with the second two loaves.

  These loaves are best eaten within four hours. If you do not eat all the bread, the loaves can be frozen in a plastic bag. When you’re ready to eat a loaf, remove it from the freezer until it defrosts and bake it for 5 minutes in a 400˚F (205˚C) oven to crisp up the crust. Once reheated, it will go stale relatively quickly.

  Levain Baguette

  (DIFFICULT)

  Makes 4 loaves

  This recipe closely follows the one I used to make the winning baguettes in the contest. It might be intimidating, but experienced home bakers will likely recognize the steps. Beginners will need to be patient—to start baking bread with this recipe is like jumping into calculus after third-grade math, so try the stirato first. If you don’t yet have any levain, you’ll need to make it first.

  The levain baguette is a wet, slack dough that is challenging to shape. If you end up with something that looks like a twisted branch, don’t despair. Scarf it up—the rich flavor, bubbly internal crumb, and crisp crust will likely surprise you, even if it does not approach the ideal of a Parisian baguette. For additional tips and links to videos showing techniques, visit my Web site at ChewsWise.com.