Theriault - Baking Heirloom Artisan Bread

I teach folks how to make heirloom artisan bread, usingtraditional ingredients and techniques. Students often wantto know if they can substitute one ingredient for another, use modernappliances, and speed up the process so it will fit into their busylifestyle.

With artisan bread, as with many things in life, what youget out of it depends on what you put into it. My advice is simple: learnhow to make it by hand, understand the how and why, and experience the taste,smell, and feel of the finished product. Realistically, that will take afew weeks of flying solo, recording what you did and how you did it, andlearning from your successes and failures.

At that point, you will know what you gain or lose by modificationand whether it is worth continuing the journey. Let the journey begin.

This chapter focuses exclusively on baking bread using wheatflour. Although you can experiment with different types of flour madefrom different varieties of wheat, the preparation and baking process willremain uniform throughout. Most readers are surprised by how their choiceof flours can affect the finished product.

Understanding the anatomy of a wheat seed is the key toknowing how various types of flour will perform.

The outer protective shell or bran, includes fiberand often pigment. Hard Red Winter Wheat is the variety mostfrequently used to make bread flour, and the bran contains a red pigment thatgives its flour a distinctive "wheaty" flavor. A variety knowas Hard White Winter Wheat lacks the red pigment. Its flour has amilder flavor but is otherwise identical to the red variety.

The inner endosperm includes carbohydrates andproteins. When some of these proteins are combined during the mixingprocess, they form gluten, an elastic ingredient that traps the carbondioxide and alcohol produced by the yeast as it digests thecarbohydrates.

Bread flour contains more gluten-making proteins thanall-purpose flour. Without them, bread won't rise as high or have thechewy texture and open structure found in artisan bread. Unfortunately,some flour manufacturers label their all-purpose product "breadflour" even though it lacks the protein needed for a high rise and astrong structure. You can use it to make bread, but it will NOT rise ashigh or have the same texture.

When you have made heirloom artisan bread using high glutenflour, you may want to try the same recipes using all purpose flour. Personally, I sometimes substitute one kind of flour for another todeliberately change the taste or texture. Colonial bakers used the flouravailable in their area, so results probably varied from one region to another.

Fortunately, flour sold in the United States must contain alist of ingredients, and it's easy to determine if it can be used to makeartisan bread. Typically, the ingredients list contains the weight of aserving size (for example, 30 g) and the protein content of the serving. The protein content should be 4 g or higher. Some labels might list onlythe percentage of protein, but it's easy to do the math for yourself: