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

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