French Culinary Institute - The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Bread Baking

The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Bread Baking is based on the course in international bread baking taught at the world-renowned French Culinary Institute at The International Culinary Center. This acclaimed program was originally created in 1997 and has been refined over the past fourteen years by some of the worlds greatest artisanal bread bakers (including master bakers who went on to become head bakers at Bouley Bakery in New York and Bouchon Bakery in Napa Valley). The program is currently taught by a distinguished gathering of professional bread bakers from around the world.

Containing many of the proven recipes of the current course, the book is an indispensable guide for professionals, amateur chefs, and home cooks desiring a total immersion in the art of bread baking. It covers bread from around the world, ranging from classic French, regional Italian, and dense German and Middle European recipes to gluten-free bread. Along with detailed instructions for making each type of bread, many of the recipes are accompanied by step-by-step photographs demonstrating the essential bread-making techniques.

The book also includes informative chapters on bread-making terms and techniques; tools and equipment; bread dough mixing, shaping, proofing, and baking; pre-ferments; and calculating bakers percentages. The Fundamental Techniques of Classic Bread Baking is an essential addition to every home cooks library.

Published in 2011 by Stewart, Tabori & Chang
An imprint of ABRAMS

Text copyright 2011 The French Culinary Institute
Photographs copyright 2011 Matthew Septimus

All rights reserved. No portion of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, mechanical, electronic, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without written permission from the publisher.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

The fundamental techniques of classic bread baking / by the French Culinary Institute; photographs by Matthew Septimus.
p. cm.
ISBN 978-1-58479-934-4 (alk. paper)
1. Bread. I. French Culinary Institute (New York, N.Y.)
TX769.F86 2011
641.8'15dc22
2010048673

Editor: Natalie Kaire
Project Manager: Kate Norment
Designer: Liam Flanagan
Production Manager: Anet Sirna-Bruder

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THE FRENCH CULINARY INSTITUTE

Judith Choate with
The Master Bread Bakers and Chefs of
The French Culinary Institute
Photographs by Matthew Septimus

Sessions

Bread is mystical. Bread is life. So says Chef Alain Sailhac, the sage dean of The French Culinary Institute. Through these and other culinary metaphors, Chef Alain has taught me many things about life. Perhaps the most poignant is his own story about food deprivation during World War II. It is how he came to view bread as the giver of life, and the breaking of bread as a mystical experience.

When Chef was eight years old, the war had been raging for years. There was little food for the natives in his hometown of Millau in southwest France, as most of the food went to the German army. Alain, his mother, and his five siblings were lucky to be sent that summer to work on a farm. He said it was as though they had been sent back in time two centuries. There was no electricity on the farm and the food was primitive, but at least there was food. Once a week the local farmers would go to the village where a baker would bake rounds of sourdough bread. Each farm would get one very large loaf (to illustrate just how large, Chef Alain rounds his arms as if hugging a tree when telling this part of his story). This single loaf was meant to feed everyone at the farm for an entire week. There were many workers with their children at the farm, and at meal times they would all sit at a long wooden table. The cooking fire would crackle as they all waited for their meager ration of soup and some cheese, but the bread was the star of the meal. The farmer, wearing a large, floppy black hat, would sit at the head of the table and bless the round of bread with his knife; the workers would bless themselves. The farmer would then peer into the eyes of those around the table and stake his knife into the edge of the bread, starting at the farthest quadrant, and slowly inch his knife back to cut off a small piece. Then, one by one, he would look intently at the eater, then at the bread, and pass it as if it were a communion host. This drama was not lost on an eight-year-old boy, and today our bread program at The French Culinary Institute instills a similarly sacramental regard for bread.

Industrial American bread coming off conveyor belts, wrapped in plastic and filled with additives, created a different and even sadder drama. Not only did these loaves lack nutritional value, they also lacked taste; some were no more appealing than cardboard. Bread had become a convenience on which to slap some meat or slather peanut butter. The art of commercial handmade breads had almost disappeared in the United States, but the back-to-the-land revolution of the 1970sduring which young, educated Americans backpacked in Europe and came home with a taste for real, fire-baked breadhelped revive an interest in different types of flours, salts, and aged starters, as well as techniques such as stone grinding. The artisanal bread movement was born.

In the formation of a novice chef, developing a taste for honest bread is essential. The artisanal approach is the foundation of the bread program at The French Culinary Institute. Our courses range from the classic French, regional Italian, and dense European loaves, to gluten-free breads. Our faculty is exceptional. They are passionate and inspiring bakers. Today we have thousands of graduates who have gone on to work in the finest bakeries and compete with great success in highly regarded competitions around the world. Many are entrepreneurs who own their own shops. Others are chefs who make specialty breads in their own restaurants.

Best of all, good bread has become easier and easier to find. Let me divulge a little secret on where to find the best baguettes: here at The French Culinary Institute. We at The French Culinary Institute enjoy our famous baguette every day in our restaurant LEcole. Chef Alain is duly proud of it, for it is handmade, well-proofed, and revered as only a mystical food could be.

Dorothy Cann Hamilton
Founder and Chief Executive Officer
The French Culinary Institute

One of the simplest of crafts, bread making is the seed from which all other baking has sprung. Beginning with the development of primitive grains in the Middle East some ten thousand years ago, man conjured up a mix of grain and water to create a nourishing food, but the invention of bread as we know it has been attributed to the ancient Egyptians. Remnants of bread-making toolsgrinding stones, baking ovens, agricultural implements used for growing grainshave been found in tombs, and depictions of bread making are shown in great detail in the art preserved there. Further proof is seen in archaeological documentation of their mastering the art of fermentation for use in both baking and brewing. Egyptians continued to advance bread baking through the invention of clay ovens that could produce a risen loaf, rather than the usual flat one produced in the ashes of a spent fire or on a baking stone.