King - Baking By Hand: Make the Best Artisanal Breads and Pastries Better Without a Mixer

MAKE THE BEST ARTISANAL BREADS AND PASTRIES
BETTER WITHOUT A MIXER

ANDY &
JACKIE KING

FOUNDERS OF
A&J KING ARTISAN BAKERS

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Copyright 2013 Andy & Jackie King

First published in 2013 by
Page Street Publishing Co.
27 Congress Street, Suite 205-06
Salem, MA 01970
www.pagestreetpublishing.com

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced or utilized, in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, without prior permission in writing from the publisher.

Distributed by Macmillan; sales in Canada by The Canadian Manda Group; distribution in Canada by The Jaguar Book Group.

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ISBN-13: 978-1-62414-000-6
ISBN-10: 1-62414-000-9

Library of Congress Control Number: 2013936601

Cover and book design by Page Street Publishing Co.
Photography by Eric Laurits

Printed and bound in China

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FOR MOON FACE AND PEA BRAIN,

AND FOR BANANA DOGTHE MOST PATIENT ONE OF ALL

It sounds like a silly coincidence or a fateful prognostication, but Jackie and I knew we were going to be bakers together from very early on. We had known each other for less than seven months, had recently starting dating, and Valentines Day was coming up. Fantastic. I scrambled around to buy her a present, and settled on a great find from the local bookshop in Montpelier, Vermont, where we both were attending the New England Culinary Institute. We had connected over the simple things that let you know youre going to be with someone a while: food (obviously), a love of family, late nights watching the Game Show Channel, that immediate comfort that allows you to sit in silence and not feel weird about it. I knew I was going to marry her in about five minutes.

For Valentines Day I bought Jackie a beautiful, large, coffee table book called Artisan Baking by Maggie Glezer. I met up with Jackie later in my little dorm-style bedroom to exchange presents. As I reached behind my back to present my gift, she did the same. We brought our gifts forth. And we both held the same present, with the exact same bookstore wrapping paper and ribbon.

It was clear that baking was in both of our bloods.

Fast forward four and a half years, and one of those books sat in our makeshift office, earmarked and dirty, along with some of the other invaluable reference books that helped us answer our own questions as we started a bakery. As much experience as you may think you haveand working for three and a half years at one of the best bakeries in the country, Portland, Maines Standard Baking Co., gave us plenty of thatnothing prepares you for having to solve every problem yourself. These books kept our brains afloat. It was 2006, and we were up to our ears in dough, debtand, thankfully, customers. Salem, Massachusetts, welcomed our little bakery with open arms, a steady stream of interested and open-minded locals allowing us to make it through that rough first year.

Jump forward another six and a half years, to the present. Weve brought many of our books home from the bakery, as weve made so many mistakes and solved so many problems that weve discovered that now our experience is whats leading us. Our training, our research, just the day-to-day living with dough is what informs our decisions. We meet with our amazing bread and pastry bakers and talk about production and schedules and flavors, and we eat and argue and laugh, and then we get back to working and arguing and eating and laughing some more.

We love what we do: the passion, the people, the problem solving, the fun, the sweat, the end result. We just love to make and eat good food. When the act of dining starts to focus solely on the plate and less on the gathering of friends, that is bad. One of the reasons we love artisan bread is that, while it should be amazing on its own, its also a perfect starting-off point for greater things. Im not just talking about foodIm talking about gathering those you care about near to you, facing one another and sharing a meal.

Once the loaf is made and sold, I want customers to come back and tell me what they did with it. I want to hear that it made an amazing bruschetta, or that its the only sandwich bread little Delia will eat, or that you sawed some ciabatta in half and stuffed it with deli meats and sharp provolone to eat while watching football with the gang. I dont want to hear these things because I need to hear compliments about my product. I want to hear that it fulfilled its intended destiny as a canvas for your own food obsession.

There is a vast canyon between a good loaf of bread and a bad one. They might all have the same ingredients, but you can spot a bad loaf just by looking at it. A pale, dull crust. Small, dense, a bit wonky on one side, no real definition to it. A quality loaf, however, is tall and proud, sporting a beautiful russet crust, a sharp burst or carefully slashed design. You can thump the bottom and hear that it has a nice, airy open crumb underneath a crackling crust with a matte sheen. It looks healthy and strong, and not least of all, delicious.

Theres no magic to it, no secret ingredient to that second loaf, but the uninitiated are tempted to say that there is, and I dont blame them. There are few humbler food items than a loaf of bread, fewer still that are claimants of both the phrase staff of life and, in some circles, the title of all that is unhealthy about your diet. I find both positions a bit extreme and way too close to politicization. Making artisan bread isnt spell casting, its not a statement, its not part of a movement. Its a series of actions that create a final product that is greater than the sum of its parts, and therefore worth putting a bit of time into if one wants to understand the process.