Golper Zachary - Bien cuit: the art of bread

ZACHARY GOLPER opened his bakery Bien Cuit in the Boerum Hill section of Brooklyn in July 2011. It was named Best New Bakery by the Village Voice and made best of 2011 lists in both the New York Times and New York magazine. Food & Wine , Saveur , Harpers Bazaar , and USA Today have honored the bakery as one of the best in the country. Bon Appetit also selected Bien Cuits baguette as one of the top ten in America.

PETER KAMINSKYs cookbooks include collaborations with Daniel Boulud, Michel Richard, Francis Mallmann, and Sheila Lukins. His outdoors column has appeared in the New York Times for more than twenty-five years. Kaminsky has contributed frequently to Food & Wine and is the author of Pig Perfect and Culinary Intelligence .

TO MAMA TAZ (K. CLARK OF THE MILFORD TRACK, LITTLE ROCK, AR). YOU SET THE BENCHMARK FOR A BALANCED TEMPERAMENT IN THE PROFESSIONAL KITCHEN. IM SO GLAD YOU GAVE A KID A CHANCE. THANK YOU, K.

As you cut into the first Bien Cuit bread you bake, you will know this is a different kind of loaf. The crust is dark as old mahogany. Next comes a rasping sound as the knife slices into the crust, like a woodsmans handsaw on a piece of oak. The insidebakers call it the crumbwill be airy, slightly moist, and dense at the same time. Inhale the aroma; it will be yeasty as a mug of dark brown ale and maybe a little nutty, like a pecan pie cooling by an open window. Take a bite. Chances are you will get more of that nuttiness, the tang of fermented grain, the scent of an orchard in late September, and a hard-to-pin-down aroma that might be rye, might be wheat, walnuts, or raisins or, equally likely, all of the above. Zachary Golpers bread combines ingredients in a way that brings out seductive flavors, some pronounced, some nuanced, and as complex, in their way, as the flavors and aromas of another fermented food: fine wine.

I first discovered Zachary Golpers bread three years ago as I was biking home from Brooklyns Prospect Park on a fine spring day. I noticed a new bakery two blocks from my house. Bien Cuit, the sign read, a phrase the French use to describe the darkest, crunchiest loaves, baked to the point of perfection. To create bread that achieves this elusive status, Zachary walks a gustatory high wire between burnt ruination and delicious elegance.

As soon as Id taken a few steps into Bien Cuits spare, brick-walled storefront, I was gobsmacked by the almost inebriating aroma of yeast and toasted grain wafting from the oven. It looked and felt like something bien was definitely happening here. A display case held stacks of gnarly loaves in various shades of brown: deeply golden baguettes, chestnut tones for the country bread and darker, earthen hues for the Raisin Walnut Bread. Self-effacingly tucked off to one side, as if to say, I dont need to strut my stuff, was Zacharys miche : three pounds of dense, crusty, dark bread that would win the heart of the neighborhood and later the business of many of New Yorks most demanding chefs. It is killer.

Zacharys journey is the story of a pilgrimage alongside some of the worlds most accomplished bakers, who took this hardworking prodigy under their wings to share the secrets of their craft. Many of the breads that follow are inspired by the lessons learned in his travels and apprenticeships. A gifted artisan, Zachary has stood on the shoulders of these giants of baking to invent his own signature techniques and new breads.

For many, the hardest part of becoming a home baker is getting over the initial hump of starting outdough thats too sticky, too much flour all over the kitchen, too many hard-to-clean bowls. If you have felt this way, youll be pleasantly surprised by Zacharys recipes. Almost all of the following doughs were made on the limited counter space of a New York apartment kitchen. As for the fear of flour flying everywhere, put that worry aside. It wont happen. Most of the mixing is done in a large bowl, and the kneading and shaping on a lightly floured counterno expensive stand mixer required.

All of the breads in this book are mixed the way a thousand generations of people have done it: by hand. The process is efficient, surprisingly quick, and cleanup afterward is a lot easier than if you use a mixer. Likewise, kneading and shaping by hand are both relatively quick operations. And perhaps more importantly, they give you an intimate experience of how a dough develops, allowing you to learn to feel when a dough has reached the right point for baking.

In watching Zachary work, I have come to realize that the actual baking part of the bread-making process is just the last stepand, all things considered, probably not the most important one. Putting a loaf in the oven and taking it out later requires no great skill. Rather, it is in the art of fermentationthe interaction of yeast, grain, and waterthat Zacharys mastery of his craft never ceases to impress me. If there is one distinguishing element in his baking, it is his commitment to long, cold fermentation. He says it was the single most important discovery in his career. Letting yeast do its work for a long time is the only way to develop full flavor.

Wheat ferments at one rate, rye ferments at another, and buckwheat at yet another. The amount of water, milk, or cream can accelerate or slow the process. When Zachary combines any of these elements to create a new bread, hes like an orchestra conductor pulling out different themes over the course of a performance. Yet his goal is always the same: to control the process thats responsible for the deep, complex flavor of great bread. All of the fermenting ingredients have to reach their peak of flavor at the same time, just before the dough goes into the oven. You need to have baked legions of loaves to gauge when things are going well; then you can just feel it. The recipes in this book will allow you to benefit from Zacharys experience. Following instinctand a lot of trial and errorhe has determined what goes into each dough and at what stage of fermentation.

Figuring out the right combination at the right time demands the kind of exacting skill that only comes with native talent and endless practice. There is a dizzying amount of theory and breadspeak that Zachary could, at the drop of a hat, use to explain a loaf, but you dont need a PhD in breadology to bake these breads. Just follow the recipes, and youll find that Zachary has blazed the trail for you and marked every step along the way.

IN THIS BOOK, YOU WILL EXPLORE BOTH AN HOMAGE TO TRADITION AND THE EXCITEMENT OF INVENTION.

In this book, you will explore both an homage to tradition and the excitement of invention. For example, not satisfied with the contemporary state of the New York bagel (supersized and tasteless) or the meal-in-a- loaf known as Sicilian prosciutto bread, Zachary and I have searched high and low through the ethnic enclaves and old-time neighborhoods of New York as part of a research effort that ended with what he imagines these classics want to be. His bagels are the best I have tasted in decades. These Bread Quests will appear from time to time in the book and will enable you to become a full-fledged bagel bender, lard bread laborer, or Kaiser roll king.