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Authors: Samuel Fromartz
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in his dough, which is typically twenty grams per kilo of flour, or 2 percent of the flour weight. But I’ve seen recipes that go up to 2.5 or even 3.5 percent, which would verge toward “salty.” Pichard’s view: “Anyone who is adding 2.5 percent salt is trying to mask the lack of flavor, because salt exhausts the taste buds.”
I tend to agree with him. I’ve found that with more flavor in the dough—from a long fermentation, or sourdough, or a higher percentage of whole grain flour—you can reduce salt without ill effect. In fact, on a sandwich with salty cold cuts, cheese, or olive tapenade you can even use a nearly unsalted bread and hardly notice the difference. You get the salt from the fixings. I usually benchmark salt at 1.8 percent, or eighteen grams per kilo of flour, which is an effective 10 percent reduction from the usual amount recommended in baking books. But Pichard cut the sodium in his dough by one fifth, to sixteen grams per kilo. This would be noticeable, and for many the bread might well taste bland, at least on the first bite.
“You didn’t have any customers revolt when you did that?” I asked.
“No. I did it gradually, over time, and no one mentioned a thing,” he replied.
That conformed with what I’ve found as well, which is that no one has ever remarked on the seasoning in my bread. But here is the other thing about salt: Pichard, like many French bakers I met, uses coarse sea salt, such as
gros sel de Guerande
, from the marshlands of Brittany. Compared with table salt or kosher salt, this sea salt already has roughly 12 percent less sodium because of the minerals and moisture it also contains. When combined with the already reduced amount of salt in the dough, the bread has perhaps a third less sodium than the norm—at least the norm in the United States. But Pichard’s not cutting down on salt because of health concerns; he doesn’t want salt to mask the intrinsic taste of wheat. He’s not alone in that regard, at least in France. I met other French bakers who maintain salt at levels that would probably be unacceptable in the United States. In fact, the food in general tasted less salty, and while some American chefs might say it was improperly seasoned, perhaps we’ve just gotten used to more salt in our food.
Frédéric Pichard in front of his wood-fired oven
Upstairs, a baker was loading baguettes into the brick oven on a peel, not the canvas mechanical loader that is a common piece of equipment in most other bakeries. The oven’s circular hearth rotated with the turn of a mechanical wheel on the wall. This way, the baker could load baguettes on one portion of the hearth and then turn the wheel so another segment of the floor was exposed to the oven door. Between each baking session, wood was added to a fire box next to the hearth, which blew the hot air into the oven. This way the oven remained free of ash. Pichard clearly loved the wood oven, but when I asked him whether he thought it made better bread than a modern deck oven, he said, “
Non,
” and then paused. The oven was beautiful, folkloric, and related to the heritage of bread. If it altered the flavor at all, it was only because the oven’s heat gradually receded during baking. This, of course, is a hot debate among bakers, because some swear by the flavors a wood-fired oven infuses into the bread. Of course, bread is not baked in an oven filled with burning wood. Even in cases where the wood is burned directly on the oven floor, the remaining ashes are swept out and then the hearth mopped before the bread goes in. In Pichard’s case, the wood never even touched the oven because the firebox was located alongside it. All that’s left is the heat radiating from the floor, ceiling, and thick stone walls, and maybe some residual flavor—or maybe not. Still, the wood fire suited Pichard’s approach: he thought of it as working with the most essential elements—
fire
from the oven,
earth
in which the
I tend to agree with him. I’ve found that with more flavor in the dough—from a long fermentation, or sourdough, or a higher percentage of whole grain flour—you can reduce salt without ill effect. In fact, on a sandwich with salty cold cuts, cheese, or olive tapenade you can even use a nearly unsalted bread and hardly notice the difference. You get the salt from the fixings. I usually benchmark salt at 1.8 percent, or eighteen grams per kilo of flour, which is an effective 10 percent reduction from the usual amount recommended in baking books. But Pichard cut the sodium in his dough by one fifth, to sixteen grams per kilo. This would be noticeable, and for many the bread might well taste bland, at least on the first bite.
“You didn’t have any customers revolt when you did that?” I asked.
“No. I did it gradually, over time, and no one mentioned a thing,” he replied.
That conformed with what I’ve found as well, which is that no one has ever remarked on the seasoning in my bread. But here is the other thing about salt: Pichard, like many French bakers I met, uses coarse sea salt, such as
gros sel de Guerande
, from the marshlands of Brittany. Compared with table salt or kosher salt, this sea salt already has roughly 12 percent less sodium because of the minerals and moisture it also contains. When combined with the already reduced amount of salt in the dough, the bread has perhaps a third less sodium than the norm—at least the norm in the United States. But Pichard’s not cutting down on salt because of health concerns; he doesn’t want salt to mask the intrinsic taste of wheat. He’s not alone in that regard, at least in France. I met other French bakers who maintain salt at levels that would probably be unacceptable in the United States. In fact, the food in general tasted less salty, and while some American chefs might say it was improperly seasoned, perhaps we’ve just gotten used to more salt in our food.
Frédéric Pichard in front of his wood-fired oven
Upstairs, a baker was loading baguettes into the brick oven on a peel, not the canvas mechanical loader that is a common piece of equipment in most other bakeries. The oven’s circular hearth rotated with the turn of a mechanical wheel on the wall. This way, the baker could load baguettes on one portion of the hearth and then turn the wheel so another segment of the floor was exposed to the oven door. Between each baking session, wood was added to a fire box next to the hearth, which blew the hot air into the oven. This way the oven remained free of ash. Pichard clearly loved the wood oven, but when I asked him whether he thought it made better bread than a modern deck oven, he said, “
Non,
” and then paused. The oven was beautiful, folkloric, and related to the heritage of bread. If it altered the flavor at all, it was only because the oven’s heat gradually receded during baking. This, of course, is a hot debate among bakers, because some swear by the flavors a wood-fired oven infuses into the bread. Of course, bread is not baked in an oven filled with burning wood. Even in cases where the wood is burned directly on the oven floor, the remaining ashes are swept out and then the hearth mopped before the bread goes in. In Pichard’s case, the wood never even touched the oven because the firebox was located alongside it. All that’s left is the heat radiating from the floor, ceiling, and thick stone walls, and maybe some residual flavor—or maybe not. Still, the wood fire suited Pichard’s approach: he thought of it as working with the most essential elements—
fire
from the oven,
earth
in which the
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