Thumbs Up

I had the good fortune of visiting Sullivan Street Bakery yesterday.  Jim Lahey, of no-knead fame, is the owner of Sullivan Street.  He invited me to stay and watch how his operation works.  Of course I couldn't just stand by and watch so I jumped in and helped mix, divide and shape his bread.  The bakery is different from anywhere I've baked before yet still remains very much the same.  My afternoon started with Antonio, the mixer.  As far as I could tell, he is the longest running baker there.  After twelve years, he can do it all.  Every bakery has an anchor.  The anchor tends to be the person who mixes the dough.  The mixer has to be trusted above all others.  Yesterday, Antonio was mixing 200 kilo batches of dough...that's about 500 pounds.  Imagine if he forgot the salt or worse yet, added too much salt and he ruined 500 pounds of inventory in one swoop.  If the dough is properly mixed, it easily lends itself to shaping and it will have the flavor and structure that Jim, in this case, is striving for.  I tend to get a little bored with mixing (unless it's mixing brioche), shaping is more my game.  I don't know how these anchors can do what they do, day in and day out.

At Bread Alone, Alex was the mixer.  He came in at 5am every day and mixed away.  That was his only responsibility but he knew it well.  He knew when to add ice to the water and how much to add.  He knew when the flour was a little young and what to do to improve the dough.    Amy's Bread has several mixers.  There is actually a mixing team.  Amy mixes more varieties of dough than Sullivan Street or Bread Alone.  The mixing team is very strong and they too have an anchor.  Orlando has been at Amy's Bread for at least 10 years though I can't remember exactly.  He is the head mixer.   He mixes 6, sometimes 7, days a week as the mixers often do.  The mixing team works in the early morning.  Orlando was always the 'go to' guy if I had any problems over night.  Brioche didn't rise properly, challah was too cold, potato over-proofed....no problem, Orlando would fix it!

After I got to know Antonio, the first shift of bakers arrived to start shaping and dividing the dough.  A couple days ago, Jim had a contest to see if anyone on his team could divide dough faster and with more accuracy than he could.  The prize was $100 to match and $200 to beat.  Antonio's brother, Oscar became a very rich baker that day and Jim seemed pretty bummed that he let his speed slip.  Jim's method of dividing was totally different from mine and it difficult for me to get the hang of.  Oscar divides in much the same way in which I was taught.  Who knew there were so many different ways to achieve the same results?  When dividing the dough by hand, a balance scale is used to make sure all the pieces are the same weight.  It is important to try to get the proper weight on the first cut because it is easier to shape a whole, rectangular lump of dough than to try and shape lots of small bits that occur when the piece is too heavy or too light.  Jim told me the bits signify doubt.  If you doubt your ability to feel the correct weight of the dough, you end up with bits.

Once the pieces were divided, Jim showed me his shaping technique.  Again, this was new to me.  It's been a long time since someone showed me something new in terms of the baking process.  It was total brain candy!  I fumbled with Jim's method of shaping.  Normally, I loosely shape the interior of the loaf and tightly seal the outside.  Jim shapes the exact opposite way.  I use the outside edge of my hands, the lines created by my pinky fingers to my palms, to fold the dough over.  Jim uses the line created by his thumbs.  That being said, I was all thumbs and not in a good way, when I tried to shape like Jim.  It took a lot of effort and I loved it.  My hands had to think for the first time in years.  I didn't get to stay long enough to master the new-to-me technique but I did get to hang around and talk theory with Jim Lahey.  I dorked out with one of the biggest baking geeks in the business!  What a great day.

The Magic of Baking

A couple years ago, Mark Bittman from the NY Times ran an article about "no-knead" bread featuring Jim Lahey, creator of Sullivan St. Bakery.  Lahey claimed he created a revolutionary method for baking bread at home.  Every time I teach a baking class, someone asks me what I think about this concept.  I often tell the students that I think it's cleaver but not revolutionary.  For thousands of years, this is how bread has been made in Europe.  Lahey uses a Dutch oven, the French use a cloche (a bell shaped clay pot that traps steam).  Then I did what I never thought I would do...I ordered Jim Lahey's new book, My Bread.

My grandmother bought me a Dutch oven for Christmas.  It was the only thing I really wanted.  I've never owned one and I often wish I had one for making stews and such.  Along with Lahey's technique, I do not find crock pots revolutionary.  I see them as one more thing to find a storage space for.  My Dad is the crock pot king (when he's not making kebabs on the grill).  He can't understand why I don't have one.  Any self respecting cook should own a crock pot, right?  I love slow cooking but I use the oven to roast or the stove top to stew.  Why add one more thing to my already crammed kitchen?  That being said, I am willing to add the Dutch oven because it serves multiple purposes.  It works as a pot for the stove, a pan for the oven, a really heavy brick when you need to press something flat, a torture device (have you seen the inside lid of the Lodge brand pot?)...

While I was relaxing at my grandmother's house in Maryland, I read Jim Lahey's book cover to cover.  There are two big ideas in  My Bread.  First, it is centered around the use of the Dutch oven as a vessel to bake bread.   The pot can hold the high temperatures needed to bake crusty bread and it traps the steam naturally released by the dough during the baking process.  Second, the "no-knead" technique is explained.  Basically, the ingredients are stirred together, not mixed, in a bowl.  12-18 hours later the mixture is turned out onto the table, folded and roughly shaped into a boule.  This rests for another hour or two and is then turned into the pre-heated pot and baked.  While the flour and water are getting friendly, the long fermentation time allows the gluten molecules to find each other and join together.  This is creating the gluten network that kneading the dough or mixing on a machine would.  Lahey believes letting time do the work creates more flavor and greater texture in the final product.

Not only did I read the book, I followed his basic recipe and I did another unthinkable...I baked bread at home.  I never bake bread at home because I know it won't be the same as the bread I bake in a steam injected, stone deck oven.  Here comes the revolution:  The boule I pulled from the pot, nearly a day after starting the process, was incredible.  The crumb was open and airy.   The crust was thin and crisp.  I'm sold!  Though what Jim Lahey is preaching may have been done before (and he is quick to say this in his book), the revolution comes from the idea that great bread is now accessible for the home baker.  Yes, I know the history of baking and how the modern technology came to be but I went to school for this and it is my business to know this.  Lahey brought these ideas down to an undertandable, easy to grasp level.  Baking his bread was so easy.  Around 7pm, I dumped the ingredients into the bowl and gently combined them with my hands.  The next morning, I turned the mix out and did the folding described in the book.  I let the dough rise, baked it and would have had a nice specimen to go with dinner but it didn't last that long.  I couldn't get over how great the outcome was and I ate the whole loaf.

Where's the magic?  I see Jim Lahey's technique as revolutionary not because of the way he is baking bread but because of the way he has gotten people into baking.  Millions read Bittman's article  and they tried the recipe at home.  It is one of the most downloaded articles in NY Times history.  Jim Lahey did for baking what J.K. Rowling did for reading.  Sure Harry Potter is just another fantasy series.  There are lots of critics that say some older series books, like the Tolkien trilogy, are much better.  They say there is nothing revolutionary about her books.  The only reason I am mentioning Rowling is because I have been a huge Potter fan since day one.  I'm one of the nutty adults who stood in line at midnight, with all the kids, when a new book was released.  I cried when Dumbledore died.  That is all to say that I always defend the books not because I believe in the stories but because I believe Rowling single-handedly got kids reading again.  The video game generation suddenly began to pick up books.

Jim Lahey is single-handedly getting a generation of fast food, microwave junkies to get back to the basics and to bake bread at home.  He has made it so easy that people who have always been afraid to bake are trying his method and they are getting great results.  As soon as my bread came out of the oven, my mind quickly jumped to J.K. Rowling.  The only difference is, I saw her vision from the begining.  It took reading Lahey's book and trying his formula but now I see his vision too.