What is Good Bread? Good bread. Its pleasure is deeply soul satisfying. It's not a superficial pleasure. It's down deeper than that. It may come from a perfect crust, with texture, definition, a caramelized crusty crunch with just the right give and not too thick. And it may come from a light, airy crumb, and you know it's been crafted by gentle, knowing hands that have shaped thousands of loaves just like this. And it may come from that lingering, wheaty fullness that makes you think of a soft sun-tinted breeze flowing its tide through a field of just-ripe, golden, amber-at-sunset wheat, ready for harvest. And it may make you think how the simple pleasure of a loaf of good bread, with wine, cheese, and good company makes one of the finest of meals - inside by the fire in winter, or spread out on the grass when it's warm. And you may notice how the shape of the just-baked bread tells you an artisan did this - it bears his or her form, her mark, his signature. This is real food. It becomes a part of daily life. What are some of the characteristics of great wine? Complexity that transforms the singularity of the grape into a fermented chorus of harmonious flavors; long, pleasant lingering aftertaste; sensuous mouthfeel; a transporting bouquet; visual appeal. Like fine wine, good bread is pleasing to many of the senses: it looks beautiful with shades of sunshine gold and caramel brown; its shape like pottery formed by hand, uniform but individual; and it has been allowed to expand to its maximum potential with well executed and evenly placed scoring that displays a dramatic bloom in which you can see the spider web structure of the bread’s gluten membrane, and the raised ear that mediates between the golden bloom and the darker crust; it has a satisfying texture with definite contrast between caramelized crust and soft airy crumb; the crumb is completely baked (not too wet, not too dry), light, and the web glistens in the light; it has flavors and aromas of the wheat and fermentation, with complexity; and a long lingering, nutty aftertaste. It even satisfies the sense of sound: bread just removed from the oven crackles as the hot crisp crust meets the cooler air of the room; I love the sound of a full batch of bread on the rack as it sings to me. The wine trade has its own familiar lingo to describe characteristics of wine, with descriptors like cedar, cassis, pain grille (toast), pencil shavings, or this from the well known writer Robert Parker, Jr., to describe a Chateauneuf Du Pape: "Sweet black cherry and currant aromas are intertwined with pepper, fruitcake, and spice box". Unlike this wine, my bread will not be best between 2005 and 2015! Brewmasters and micro-brew devotees use phrases like "bold, complex and smoky, yet refined to its bittersweet finish", "floral, fruity hop aroma", or "a sweet malty flavor and a smooth, dry finish". They can talk about mouthfeel, color and flavor, effervescence and aroma. Brewpubs, micro-breweries, and their craft brewers are the beer equivalent of artisan bakers, just like winemakers are artisans making fine wine. Fine beer, wine, and bread are each the result of slow, controlled yeasted fermentation. Yet the American consumer has no vocabulary for bread in the way it does for wine and craft beer. The dialogue, in other trades usually generated by the producers and the media that cover them, doesn’t really exist. But that’s consistent with the way bread is consumed vs. wine, beer, and other products that encourage people to consider what they taste like. That is, most people, when they drink wine or a good beer, will give some consideration to its charms, more or less depending on how good it is – but bread doesn’t usually get the same kind of consideration. And given the quality of bread most people eat, it doesn’t deserve it; it’s used to sop up a sauce, hold a sandwich, not appreciated for its own goodness, if it has any at all. I was originally inspired to become an artisan baker by a 1995 article in Smithsonian magazine about the famous French boulanger, Lionel Poilane, who bakes his large, 2-kilo brown boules in wood-fired brick ovens. The first time I tried pain Poilane I thought it had flavors of wheat and wine. Yet, beyond that, I didn’t know how to describe what good bread was. I might have said something profound, like it has a nice crust. I could readily characterize wines that I liked, in terms that were recognizable and could be mapped to their taste impression, and the same with beer. But not with bread. The value of a recognized lexicon is that it encourages consumers and producers to talk about and focus their experience, compare, and better appreciate what they are eating. The media plays a role in this, and I think it is up to good bakers to work with them in this regard. The better culinary press have a good understanding of what goes into haute cuisine, sometimes approaching the knowledge level of the better chefs, and many restaurant critics and food writers are culinary school graduates themselves. I think most people who are interested in food have a much better understanding of what goes into high quality cuisine than what goes into high quality baking, and their baking knowledge is, in my estimation, weighted more toward patisserie than bread baking. This follows from the curricula at most culinary schools. I believe the program at the CIA, Hyde Park, for example, includes three weeks in the bread bakery, and the patisserie program is focused on plated desserts. So, the restaurant reviewer or the consumer evaluating a bakery’s breads and pastries will be helped by the baker that can focus his or her tasting on flavors, textures, aromas, and processes involved in creating each element. It is up to the baker to educate. But it’s not the words so much as it is the conversation that matters. Paying attention to detail, understanding how to compare products, and developing an appreciation, create a more discriminating consumer. Bread itself becomes the center of attention, not just a platform for what it carries. It puts a demand on the baker to produce a bread that goes beyond eye appeal to producing a bread that can stand alone with its own complexity, texture, aroma. And when good bakers put their best efforts forth, their customers can discover how good bread can be. The greatest wines and the greatest restaurants are priced out of the range of most of us. One thing I like about bread is that no matter how good it is, it is affordable for everyone. Historically, it has been the food of the common man. That is less so now. Shame, isn’t it? There are some breads that when well made can be wonderful for their texture and appearance, like ciabatta, where the taste is subtle, it is surprisingly light when you hold it, showing off big open holes when you slice it, and it has a crisp crust that provides a marked contrast to the soft off-white crumb. Texture on the outside and the inside is what ciabatta is all about for me. It must have a pleasant flavor too, of course, with a mild complexity from fermentation. The color of the crumb tells me a lot about what the bread is going to taste like, or maybe more to the point, what it’s not going to taste like. I turn my head from very white bread, because it’s been made from flour only from the very center of the wheat berry (used to be called patent flour), or it’s been bleached, or both. In modern roller-milling and hammer-milling, the germ is expelled from the wheat berry, and is most often only available from whole wheat flours, which is regrettable since the germ has more nutritious elements, and a rich nutty flavor from its oils. Older, traditional stone mills crush the germ and its contents become integrated into the flour, and the bran is sifted out. The outer layer of the wheat berry endosperm has a higher mineral content than the part that is milled into most white flours, and with that more opportunities for flavor are usually lost. A small number of artisan bakers search out mills that offer higher extraction rate flours (more of the wheat berry gets milled into the flour). Traditionally, white breads like baguette or ciabatta, are preferred to be creamy white in color. I have had some very good baguettes that have a slight grayish tint, a sign of flour with a high mineral content, or perhaps a small amount of rye flour added. The bread should look good. A baguette is the most difficult bread for perfect appearance because its long, thin shape makes small errors unfortunately obvious. The scoring marks on a baguette open up during baking, to display what should be a set of evenly spaced and evenly opened blooms. Ciabatta is very different. As the ciabatta expands on a heavily floured couche, dozens of striated lines develop throughout the outer surface and look like the cracks of a dry river-bed seen from high up. Some rye breads are formed to create the same look. Many bakers show some artistic flair with their own signature scoring pattern on their loaves. The hand work of an artisan baker who forms his or her own loaves is evident in the batard. Like a wide baguette, not as long, the batard, or ‘bastard’, loaf is a football shape from any dough, and it can be scored with a single stroke or with multiple slashes. Look for an even, consistent shape, no seam lines on the bottom, and a bloom that has allowed for a good expansion of the dough as it was baking. Some bakers try to get what they call an ear from the outer edge of each scoring, raised enough so you could pick up the loaf and almost carry it from this sculpted handle. It is however, unfortunate that too many breads are judged more by their appearance than by their flavor, in many cases because that is their primary redeeming characteristic! Is form over taste and texture an American phenomenon? I’m not sure. Crust color is important, and very much a matter of personal taste. The darker the crust the greater the contrast in both flavor and texture with the moist crumb inside. Many bakers compromise a little on this point, preferring a dark, caramelized crust for their own consumption, but bowing to customer desires for a lighter crust. Then there are the stubborn bakers, more power to them, who train their customers to enjoy it their way. Converts rarely go back. A slice of bread displays the gas pockets inside the bread where fermentation gasses expanded and were trapped in the gluten network of the bread dough. Boy howdy, that’s where a lot of flavor comes from. Good, long, fermentation creates gas chambers in a variety of sizes, bien alvéolé, as I think the French would say, and wetter doughs properly formed and baked will produce larger holes. Inside baguettes you should see a variety of open holes of different sizes, not a dense compressed crumb that comes from machine-shaping. Hand shaping is more time consuming and requires training and experience, but it is gentler on the dough and doesn’t expel the interior, flavor producing fermentation gasses the way machine shaping does. Hand shaping also gives a less dense texture to the crumb, and it seems less heavy. The fact that it is mostly crust means that the baguette will lose its moisture and dry out quickly, but baguettes made with preferments will last longer before staling. Time will take away aroma and flavor too. So it’s important to eat the baguette fresh, within about 12 hours after it is baked. A crisp, crackly crust, and a cream-colored interior gives the eyes, the hands, and the ears an advance review of the quality. The baguette is a city bread, for people who live close to their boulangerie, and can stop by daily, or sometimes twice daily, for their bread. Its flavors are subtle, complimentary to all foods, whether robust stews, or light seafood dishes, salads, or pastas. My favorite bread is pain de campagne. Country bread. Mine is made from a blend of several flours, and it has a light café au lait colored crumb, and a dark, burnt caramel colored crust. The bloom opens up dramatically, rips away from the rest of the crust. The texture of the crumb is light, and you can see the shape and pattern of the holes on the interior as if they were rushing, almost exploded away from the heat of the oven’s hearth. There is a shiny gloss on the thin web of the gas cells. The big boules don’t burst their cuts as much as the more tightly shaped batards. The large boules of country bread are similar to what rural villagers used to bake or buy one or two times a week. Because of their size, their thicker crust, and their natural leavening they can last up to a week, and when they start to get hard, they serve well in a soup or a stew, or as croutons. The campagne bread has a rich, wheaty flavor, and a long lingering nutty aftertaste. It is wonderful all by itself. No butter required. A characteristic of artisan bread formulas is more water in the dough. The resulting sticky dough is much more difficult to work with, but the end result is a bread that can be lighter, with bigger holes. I bake with wet dough because when it’s properly developed and baked it allows greater fermentation activity and the light and airy texture that I want: light and airy without dough conditioners. Keep in mind that the only ingredients in my naturally leavened bread are flour, water, and salt. What about yeast? The sourdough starter is made from flour and water. You need to be sure when you bake from wet doughs that the interior is fully baked – I have had some breads that are just too wet on the inside, and the crumb wasn’t entirely baked; the result was a heavier bread than what it would have been if completely baked, and it sat heavy in my stomach (as a side note, unbaked gluten is very difficult to digest). The holes are a problem for some customers that want to make sandwiches, so I thought about another formula for sandwich breads, that uses a lesser hydration, but there is some loss of flavor too and I don’t like the denser texture, so I go back and forth on this one: principal vs. the need to sell more bread. For myself, I make sandwiches with thicker slices and don’t worry about getting stuff on my hands. That’s what napkins are for. In France, the pain de mie is a traditional sandwich bread, baked in Pullman pans with the lid covering the top, so no crust forms. Another French sandwich bread is the ficelle, a narrow baguette shape, sliced lengthwise, buttered, and filled with ham, cheese, or other fillings. Cheese bread, bread with nuts, raisins, currants, seeded baguettes, and ooh, garlic bread. Why do they always make me think of wine coolers? Of course, I make raisin-pecan bread, I like my olive-fougasse, and sometimes pain gruyere, I’ve had good garlic bread, and I’m very fond of our petit-pains, or breakfast breads, with fruits and nuts. But let’s not confuse the baker’s craft with the stuff that is added to the bread. Too often I hear raves about a bakery’s bread because of what is in it, not because of its inherent qualities. Reminds me of wine coolers of the 1970s and 1980s. As consumer tastes matured we learned to appreciate good wine for its inherent character, not its additions, not its packaging. If the dough has the integrity to stand alone, it’s good bread. I think this comes largely from our dialogue about bread, suffering from the lack of a common language, the lack of a culture of good village bakers, or palate memory and experience to judge it on its own qualities. That is, collectively, we don’t have that history. The good news is that American bakers and consumers have come a long way since I was a kid, and more people are recognizing and appreciating good bread in this country. Let’s hope our lifestyles and the economics of real quality baking support that progress, so the family-owned, independent, quality-conscious craft baker can continue to thrive. Looking forward, hoping we progress to the way things used to be.