The Staff of Life

The heady aroma of bread baking enveloped our guests this morning at our first class of the year, River Cottage Bread featuring the River Cottage Handbook No. 3: Bread by Daniel Stevens. Baker Chris Brown of Rise Artisan Breads demonstrated and discussed key techniques for classic bread making.

In this informative class, Chris demonstrated a basic bread dough, focaccia, ciabatta and classic scones. Using the book's basic dough, he discussed variations using different flours and he demonstrated a myriad of shapes from which the dough may be formed to make baguette, buns and mini-loaves.

Christmas Gift Ideas: 6 Top-notch Bread Books for Every Kind of Baker

“We need the same things to bake bread that we need to build character: we need the right proportion of ingredients —not too much of this or too little of that. We need an animating principle like the yeast or leaven —something to enliven us, a passion. We need to be kneaded, mixed well by the slow, rhythmic pattern of everyday life. Periodically, we need to rest in a warm place with a towel over our heads. We need to be punched down, sometimes at the peak of our rising. And we need to be tested in the fires of suffering. Ultimately, our lives are without meaning until we’re broken and shared. We’re not meant to sit on the shelf, but to be given away.”

-Father Dominic Garramone

This lovely quote precedes the recipes in Wild Sourdough, by Yoke Mardewi. It both comforts me and brings bread-baking to a whole new level, neatly summing up what the collection of bread books at Barbara-Jo’s accomplishes. Any of the following books as a Christmas gift are a way of fortifying the reciever against the coming winter days of cold, grey wetness. What better way to warm the soul than with fresh, hot bread? And if in baking we build better character as Father Dominic attests, then pass the butter, I’ll take another slice.

Peter Reinhart is a baking Renaissance Man. Three of his books stand out as excellent choices for the budding baker on your Christmas list. The Bread Baker’s Apprentice is a true teacher. Aiming to empower new bakers to “fly without controls,” as Reinhart phrases it, the chapters neatly break down the techniques and components of bread baking so that formulas can eventually be tinkered with and the students can wean themselves off “recipe dependence.” Shaping (braids buns, knots, and crowns), treatments (fermenting, washing, garnishing), and resources (flour sources, schools, websites, and books) are all covered here, as are the “Twelve Stages of Bread-making” from mise en place to the gloriously satisfying first bite. This is a great guide for someone who wants to become a true artisan baker or bake high-quality loaves at home.

Reinhart’s Whole Grain Breads is an answer to the cry for whole grains from the health-minded, artisan-supporting bread eaters of the world. Many of the traditional French and Italian loaves were made with white flour (our modern white flour is but a ghost of what it once was, nutritionally). With recipes for whole wheat brioche, multigrain struan, seed breads, and sprouted grain breads, bread eaters who shun white flour will rejoice. And how does he do it? Reinhart shares his renegade “delayed fermentation technique” which promises that elusive softness and delicacy to the whole grain breads.

Artisan Breads Everyday is for the at-home baker who wants to be able to bake bread without having it consume an entire afternoon. Recognizing that “artisanship feeds not only a bodily hunger, but also a hunger in our souls,” Reinhart has come up with rustic-style recipes that can be made quickly and easily without compromising the integrity of the bread. Check out the recipes for Kranz Cake Babka (chocolate and bread twisted together to create heaven, basically), Pain a l’Ancienne, and the San Francisco Sour Dough. Also make sure to read Reinhart’s history lesson on bread consumption (find this in the intro —it’s a very interesting take).

Wild Sourdough not only starts out with an incredible nugget of philosophy (see opening paragraph above), it follows through with some beautiful, inventive recipes all using sourdough: Black Rice Ciabatta, Fig & Walnut Sourdough, Bitter Chocolate, Cranberry, and Pistachio are just a few examples. All of the recipes were tested in a home oven, so excellent results are pretty much guaranteed. Mardewi assures home bakers that our hands are our best tools and our intentions are as important as our experience —which is awfully reassuring for novices. A very helpful guide on sourdough tips and tricks (what to look and smell for), a brief history, and the health benefits of sourdough all make this book a gem that will certainly be used time and again.

Rose Levy Beranbaum’s The Bread Bible smacks of the maternal, feminine instinct associated with baking. Piping hot biscuits, butter popovers, Irish Soda Bread, challah, Chocolate Almond Kugelhopf, and flaky scones —these are the comfort foods mothers the world over pull from the oven in their very best efforts to nurture. Rose’s practical advice that “the best bread is one you make according to your own taste,” empowers bakers to experiment while still providing them clear instructions and fantastic illustrations to make the technique of home baking a snap and a joy.

With a Ph.D. in chemistry and a humourous, light-hearted approach to rustic breads, Emily Buehler’s book is a balance of technical, practical, and cute. The cuteness comes in with her hand-drawn diagrams of molecules with speech bubbles (to explain the fermentation process, of course). Don’t let the lightness fool you though —if you really want to understand the chemistry and magic of the bread-making process, this book can teach you. A chronology of gluten research, the process of bread-making in chronological order, and the protein content of bread flours all provide knowledge to make you a better baker through understanding Bread Science.

By Katie Zdybel

Plum and Cardamom Sweet Bread from In the Sweet Kitchen

Late summer in B.C. is a wonderful time to enjoy locally grown fruit: blueberries, nectarines, peaches, cherries... Apricots are also in season and are not only great to eat out-of-hand, but are great to use in baked goods. For our featured picnic recipe, I chose a sweet loaf from Regan Daley's In the Sweet Kitchen. The recipe calls for Italian blue plums but they're not in season yet so I substituted apricots.

The haunting scent of cardamom, often used in Scandinavian baking, filled the shop. Its sweet, aromatic flavour was a lovely complement to the tangy flavour of the golden apricots.

Plum and Cardamom Sweet Bread

3/4 cup unsalted butter, at room temperature
1 cup granulated sugar
3/4 cup tightly packed light brown sugar

2 large eggs, at room temperature

1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract

1/2 teaspoon finely grated orange zest

3 cups all-purpose flour

1 teaspoon baking powder

1/2 teaspoon baking soda

1/2 teaspoon salt

2 teaspoons ground cardamom

3/4 cup full-fat sour cream (14%)

2 cups (about 12 to 16) Italian blue plums [I substituted firm-ripe apricots], stoned and cut into 1/2-inch pieces
Additional unsalted butter, at room temperature, or vegetable oil cooking spray, for greasing the pan

1. Preheat the oven to 350 degrees. Grease a 9x5-inch loaf pan. If it is not non-stick, line the bottom and up the two long sides with a piece of parchment paper, letting the paper hang over the edges of the pan by an inch or two. If you haven't any parchment, lightly dust the greased pan with flour and tap out the excess. In the bowl of a stand mixer, or in a large bowl with a wooden spoon, cream the butter and sugars together until light and fluffy. Add the eggs, one at a time, beating well after each addition and scraping down the sides of the bowl. Beat in the vanilla and orange zest.

2. Reserve 2 tablespoons of the flour; sift the remaining flour together with the baking powder, baking soda, salt and cardamom. Add this mixture to the creamed mixture in three additions, alternating with the sour cream in two additions. Scrape down the sides of the bowl between each addition. Toss the plums with the reserved 2 tablespoons of flour (this will help keep them from sinking to the bottom) and fold them into the batter, mixing just until the fruit is evenly distributed. As with most cakes and quick breads, you want to avoid overworking this batter, or your loaf will be heavy and too dense. Scrape the batter into the prepared pan and smooth the top with a rubber spatula.

3. Bake the loaf in the centre of the oven for 1 hour and 30 minutes to 1 hour and 45 minutes, or until a wooden skewer inserted into the centre of the cake comes out clean. Cool the loaf in the pan on a wire rack for 15 minutes, then turn it out and cool completely before slicing, or wrapping and storing. This is very good spread with sweet or flavoured butter and even a few days old is wonderful toasted. For a special dessert, serve the fresh bread with a little mound of Creme Fraiche or lightly sweetened whipped cream, and a few slices of fresh plum that have been macerated in sugar and brandy or other compatible alcohol for 30 minutes.

Makes one 9x5-inch loaf