Read Online In Search of the Perfect Loaf: A Home Baker's Odyssey by Samuel Fromartz - Free Book Online Page A

wheat grew,
water
to make the dough, and
air
, which fueled fermentation.
    When we finally ate the bread—a light loaf with one long slash running the length of the bread instead of the usual series of cuts—it was extremely airy, almost floating in my hand as I held it, with a very mild and almost sweet, milky flavor to the crumb. The crust was crisp and chewy, and well done. On the first bite, though, I did notice the reduced salt. As we kept eating, it was no longer apparent.
    A lot of work and thought went into this loaf, and the process was quite challenging. Was it worth it? The answer was in the work itself, for Pichard told me he wanted to keep baking intellectually exciting for himself and his bakers. “You have to be engaged and interested in what you’re doing and learn the way dough ferments,” he said. “That takes ten years. Those who say they can teach baking in six months, it’s a big lie.”
    In one of his parting comments, he said he wanted to champion the baguette because that was what kept people coming to
boulangeries
each day. He made two to three thousand baguettes daily for his customers. He didn’t knock Poilâne, and the dark
levain miche
the bakery sold, but that bread could last for a week, meaning customers would not have to return to the bakery very often. If you wanted a Pichard baguette, you had to buy it and eat it on the same day. It was the main staple of those who lived in the apartments overlooking the streets around him. “They are the most demanding clientele,” he said, “but also the most loyal.” He only charged one euro per loaf, which was much less than other
boulangeries
in Paris. If he offered the best bread possible to his neighbors, they in turn would support him, and he had no interest in doing anything else. There would be no Pichard chain, no international brand. Just one neighborhood bakery with its unrelenting focus on coaxing good bread from the wheat of one farmer in France. “It’s a good living,” he said. “It’s enough.”
     • • • 
     
    W hen I returned from Paris, I took all that I had learned and went to work. I made baguette dough nearly every day, following the process I learned at the Boulangerie Delmontel of minimal mixing time, a long rise in the refrigerator, and then shaping what was an extremely wet dough. I also kept the final rise quite short, so that the loaf would get a nice upward burst in the oven. Gradually, I started to get good results, with an open crumb, crisp crust, and wide
grigne
. Still, I was disappointed. The flour was not quite the same, the flavor less sweet and grassy than I recalled. I couldn’t figure out what was wrong, because the flour I used was well suited to artisan loaves, milled from hard red winter wheat with an ideal protein level of about 10.5 to 11.7 percent. Scour the Web and there are all sorts of comparisons between French and American flours, but the main point is that French flours have a lower protein level, requiring less hydration than American flours. So I increased the amount of water in the recipe to account for the higher protein in U.S. wheat, but still I wasn’t happy. The bread smelled and tasted different.
    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