My Daily Bread
I always wanted to be in the kitchen. As soon as I was old enough to stand at the stove and burn myself, I was cooking. I instinctively knew it was what I wanted to do and, eventually, that I’d do it in greater volume and with better technique.
At the age of 20, having climbed my way from the professional kitchen’s dish pit to its line stations — and hit all the spaces in between, I went to work at a farm in the Umpqua River Valley of central western Oregon. I was there to learn about the natural course of the seasons and sustainable food production, as well as to do a bit of soul searching, no doubt. The farm was organic and produced grains, fruits, nuts, vegetables, wine grapes, and wool.
During my stay, my bedroom was down wind from the wood-fired cob-and-brick hearth bread oven that would bake periodically. Often, in the early mornings, I would wake up to the aroma of freshly made bread. It was intoxicating, and inspiring. Soon, I could think of nothing else but that smell; I needed to learn how to produce it.
I asked the baker — an old-school world traveler and intensely focused man* — if I could watch the process. The answer was “no.” But he said I could help.
In the middle of the night, he taught me how to feed and maintain the starter, which was born of grapes and rye grown on the property. He let me assist with the three-day cycle required for proper loaf fermentation, a process that uses neither electricity nor commercial yeast. Following his lead, I would first mix warm water with salt and a ripe starter, by hand. Then, with a rhythmic pattern of arm motions, I would incorporate flour until the correct consistency was reached. It would take hours to rest and fold, and rest and fold.
Next came the pre- and final shapings (I was pretty bad at this on my first few tries). It isn’t like Play-Doh; you have to cooperate with the protein structure of the malleable base and it is a matter of moving the wrist and palm in just such a way that it doesn’t damage the dough. Finally, we would wrap the loaves in cloth and let them mature. Wild yeasts digested the starch of the grains and expelled gases trapped by wheat protein, forming intensely aromatic bubbles; this would, s l o w l y, cause the dough to gain in volume and soften.
A couple of days later, when the loaves were ready, we would prepare the oven. Built by the baker, it was a brick and cob about fifteen feet in length. Readying the oven entailed cleaning it, lighting two fires, and bringing the loaves close to the heat for a few hours before baking. It is an indirect-fired apparatus: The flames flare in front of and below the hearth; the flue is in the back, where it guides the heat of the fire across the hearth and around the baking chamber. The first fire begins the heating process and the second, the intense one, increases the hearth’s heat to reach the necessary baking temperatures.
When all that’s left of the fire were its embers, we would sweep the remaining ash off the hearth. Finally, we were ready to begin baking. Once the oven was at the correct temperature — anywhere from 620°F or higher, we would bake. Anything that is close to the walls has to be transferred to the middle pretty quickly. Because it’s baking at the hottest temperature, the first load bakes faster than the rest; you have to shift those loaves around a lot. The second load you move around less; the third, you barely move at all.
The first time I was “at the oven” — meaning, in charge of baking the loaves, my teacher cut me a slice of the bread I had baked and buttered it, then melted the butter in the still very hot oven and served the slab to me. It was a good moment, a pat on the back of sorts. And the sourdough I had just baked was delicious — its crust, crispy; its interior dense with a lovely acidity.
The nights were always cold there, even in the summertime, so it was nice work near the oven, and although it occupied only a small part of my day, it was a substantial addition to my quality of life. I will always feel a sense of gratitude for that experience and the depth of understanding it gave me about slow fermentation and the techniques behind of age-old bread baking. I was lucky enough to gain a few life lessons while I was at it.
I left the farm for the city — Austin, specifically. A few years later, after knocking around in restaurant kitchens across the U.S. and running wild through South America, I delved back into baking in Taos, New Mexico. I made bread, by night, and helped a friend built an Adobe house, by day, resting a little bit at dusk.
From there, my baking and pastry career kicked into high gear. I hit the Pearl Bakery in Portland; Bakery Nouveau in Seattle; a shop that specialized in chocolate and cake, a boulangerie (bread bakery) and the famous LeNotre patisserie, all in Paris; a boutique casino-hotel in Las Vegas, and, acclaimed Le Bec Fin restaurant in Philadelphia. At that last stop, I spent nearly every hour of my time readying the staff to open the venue’s bakery, in Narberth, Pennsylvania, where training took place in the basement of George Restaurant. Once the entire crew — bread makers and pastry team — was hired and trained, and the recipes complete, I packed up my apartment and headed to New York City to get my hands on some dough in the hardest ass-kicking city in this country.
Since my time at the Pearl Bakery I had longed to get to New York, but I wanted to make sure I was prepared to bring something worthwhile to this very competitive environment. As we well know, there are a lot of talented bakers in this city, but thanks to all my years of hard work and training (and to the ability to adapt my techniques to differing altitudes, water pH levels, flour types and humidity changes in all the geographically different places I’ve worked), I felt that I was bringing a well-rounded, carefully thought-out, and thorough balance to the bakery/cafe concept. I believed that what I was doing had a place here; that, daily, elaborate flavors could be hidden and discovered inside what appears to be the simplest food; that if I could train my team to make the food with respect for all the complexities involved in fermentation, and help them understand how these flavors and textures are developed and harnessed, I would really have something that would speak to a culture that loves great food.
After about six months of researching the market, finalizing the opening menu and calibrating the the costs of the buildout with our budget, my wife Kate and I opened our first Bien Cuit in Brooklyn on July 13th of 2011.
We make bread (and pastry) in a way that has been done for a very, very long time. The techniques we use are traditional, and many of them are those I learned from my first teacher at that farm in the Umpqua River Valley. While the equipment I now have is far more technologically advanced, it ultimately does the same job. Wood-fired baking anywhere outside of a heavily forested area is not an ecologically sound practice, and while perhaps romantic in theory, not necessary either. The fermentation style we use is based on the exposure I initially received, though I’ve made adjustments to suit our environment, our needs, and our sourdough starter’s maturation rate. We haven’t changed the basis of the process at all, really, but by allowing for the intervention of machinery and modern ovens, we are able to feed more people.
I will never grow tired of making bread and improving the manner in which we do it. In fact, if I go any length of time letting my team do all the mixing, shaping and baking, I begin to feel I’m missing out on an important aspect of my life and get myself back on the floor — back into the wee hours of the night, hands on the bench. I think there is something timelessly satisfying about making a substance that will feed and make many happy. I believe a good baker is predisposed never to believe in mastery, but rather to want continue to learn every day.
The people of my trade are successful when what they’ve brought to the table makes one pause and identify the beautiful complexity and balance of a humble food. It’s hard to achieve, but very satisfying when accomplished. There is nothing like slice of well-made miche, baked bien cuit, with a little butter atop. Without our efforts, this pleasure would be long forgotten.
*I’ve left out his name to respect his privacy.
