SALON

Wednesday, Aug 11, 2010 4:01 PM UTC

I’ll pass you my notes from baking school

The best baker I know is teaching me the ways of bread, and I'm happy to show you my homework

By

Topics: Baking techniques, Food,

I'll pass you my notes from baking school(Credit: Gokce)

I’m going to baking school this week, and I’d love for you to come with me. But before you do, I have to warn you: Serious bakers are, as a rule, a little bit crazy.

This was news to me, too, but I should have suspected something when, years ago, my old friend Shelby stood up in a room of 50 people and said, “I’d like to introduce you to some close friends of mine. They’re all cakes.” My suspicion should have grown when I read about a baker in Anthony Bourdain’s “Kitchen Confidential,” who would call the restaurant when he was strung out of his mind, yelling for someone to take care of his sourdough starter. “Feed the bitch!” he would squeal. And I really should’ve known something was up when a friend told me she was scared of a co-worker who kept saying that bread was his religion, and that his soul lives in his dough. (He was also fond of saying that people just don’t understand him.)

But it was finally a visit a couple years ago from Shelby that convinced me. Our conversation had been light, full of catching up and laughter. He’d been running Bake!, a school at Zingerman’s Bakehouse in our college town of Ann Arbor, Mich., and was inviting me to come take some classes with him. But then I brought up the idea of slicing into a loaf of bread still hot from the oven, and suddenly his face grew grim. His voice flattened. His eyes went faraway, and he said, “I have to cut open hot loaves to show my students the crumb, but I smell it, and … I’m revolted. I feel I’ve done the bread a disservice.”

He spoke slowly, disapprovingly, disappointedly. “When you cut open a loaf of bread before it’s finished cooling, you let all the steam out. That steam carries all these flavors that should stay in the bread. Now it will never taste as good as it would have. You let the spirit out of the bread. It’s not like the spirit is coming back.” He paused to collect himself. Then he finished: “You f*&^#d it up … because you had to be a [BLEEP BLEEP] and eat hot bread.”

Yeah, so maybe he’s a little nuts, but this is the person you want teaching you about bread. And I aspire to that kind of crazy. I’ll be learning from him this week, as a guest of his school’s Bakecation program. I hope you come hang out with me after class so I can slip you my notes as we go from quick breads and flatbreads to yeasted loaves and all the way to real-deal sourdoughs. We’ll talk about how to make starters, mixing and kneading dough, how to bake serious bread in a home oven … and, if you happen to have built, like Shelby has, a wood-burning oven in your backyard out of mud and dirt you dug yourself, in that thing, too. So come along and ride on this fantastic voyage.

Oh! And you should feel free to ask any questions you might have about bread baking in the comments, or e-mail them to me directly at food (at) salon (dot) com. I’ll do my best to find answers for you, and I’ll reply to them in a later post. 

Francis Lam

Francis Lam is Features Editor at Gilt Taste, provides color commentary for the Cooking Channel show Food(ography), and tweets at @francis_lam. More Francis Lam.

Next Article

You Might Also Like

More Related Stories

Featured Slide Shows

The week in 10 pics

close X
  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11
  • Serena William in an emotional moment during the final women's French Open match against Russia's Maria Sharapova. Williams won 6-4, 6-4, while Rafael Nadal defeated fellow Spaniard David Ferrer 6-3, 6-2, 6-3 in the men's finals on Sunday.
    AP/David Vincent

  • Ongoing anti-government protests at Taksim Square. Five people have died and thousands have been injured since the protests began on May 31. On Friday, Turkey's government agreed to suspend redevelopment plans for Gezi Park, which initially sparked the protests, until a court rules on its legality.
    AP/Vadim Ghirda

  • Billy Porter is all heart and "sole" at a performance of the Cyndi Lauper-scored "Kinky Boots," which won the Tony Award for Best musical on Sunday night.
    AP/The O+M Company, Matthew Murphy

  • A chemical plant explosion and fire in Louisiana on Thursday morning killed a 29-year-old and injured 73 more. The cause of the fire is still undetermined.
    AP/Gerald Herbert

  • So much for pie-throwing loyalty. Media Mogul Rupert Murdoch and third wife Wendy Deng announced they are filing for divorce on Thursday after 14 years of marriage. The pair are pictured at the 69th Annual Golden Globe Awards in Los Angeles this year.
    AP/Matt Sayles

  • Ariel Castro, accused of holding three women captive in his house for roughly a decade, walks into a Cleveland courtroom on Wednesday. Castro, 52, pleaded not guilty to hundreds of charges that include rape and kidnapping.
    AP/Tony Dejak

  • Supporters of Iranian presidential candidate, Hasan Rowhani, campaigned with banners on the streets of Tehran on Wednesday in anticipation of the Iranian presidential elections on Friday.
    AP/Ebrahim Noroozi

  • People watch from the side of the road as a flame-fighting plane passes over the Black Forest area north of Colorado Springs. A raging fire which has been burning since midweek has destroyed more than 360 homes and killed two.
    AP/Brennan Linsley

  • A restaurant in Dunabogdany, Hungary, is roof-deep in floodwaters spilling from the River Danube. Heavy rainfalls this week continued to flood major rivers and lakes in Germany, Austria, Switzerland the Czech Republic and Hungary.
    AP/MTI, Balazs Mohai

  • A gas mask-sporting demonstrator walks past Portuguese graffiti on a bank which reads "Fascist government." Thousands took to the streets São Paulo, Brazil, on Thursday to violently protest a 10-cent hike in bus and subway fares, while similar protests took place in Rio de Janeiro, Brasilia and Porte Alegre in southern Brazil.
    AP/Brennan Linsley

  • Recent Slide Shows

  • Share on Twitter
  • Share on Facebook
  • Thumbnails
  • Fullscreen
  • 1 of 11

Related Videos

More Related Stories

Comments

 34 Comments

Comment Preview

Your name will appear as username ( settings | log out )

You may use these HTML tags and attributes: <a href=""> <b> <em> <strong> <i> <blockquote>

follow salon

Most Read

Popular on Reddit

links from salon.com

From Around the Web

Presented by Scribol
listener_new_rect The Listener: "We Are All Completely Beside Ourselves": Growing up primate

Recommendations