Harvest America CUES BLOG

It’s 2 a.m. and you’re wide awake knowing that in sixty more minutes your workday begins. It’s been this way, your routine, for more than a dozen years now. The sun won’t even break the horizon for a few more hours as you pour that first cup of coffee and look out your window to the dark, quiet, peaceful night. In earlier years it was common for police to pull you over on the way to work thinking that you must be driving home from a local bar after last call. After a few years of this cat and mouse routine they knew who you were and just ignored the single, lonely car driving to another day in the bakeshop.

You flip on the lights, fire up the massive deck oven, tie on an apron and tuck your hair under a fresh skull cap. It’s time to start making today’s first batch of bread. Over the next hour, your two-apprentice bakers arrive, barely awake, with a foggy cloud hanging over their heads. This is a different life, a very different kind of work, it is far removed from a job – being a baker is a lifestyle that very few choose, not too dissimilar from farming. If you stick with it, the rewards go beyond the paycheck.

From the early days of the Roman Empire and likely much earlier in history, bread baking has been part of the culture of humankind. Simple ingredients – flour, water, salt, yeast (in some form) when understood and handled as it should, result in one of the greatest pleasures in the culinary world. Around the globe, this product in many forms, helps people greet the day, and complement nearly any meal. It is a symbol of gathering and finding a common bond (breaking bread), an essential measure of survival, and a guilty pleasure for both those who can afford it and those who can’t. It is the product of storytelling (in the French play Les Misérables – Jean Valjean, the main character, is sent to prison for nineteen years for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family). But in this moment, it is the focus of your attention.

Ironically, the oven was still warm from the previous day’s work, so it came up to temperature (around 500 degrees F.) rather quickly. Dough that was prepared yesterday and then retarded in the walk-in cooler has been pulled into the bakeshop to rest before shaping. In short time, flour was in the air and try as the air handling might work to keep it under control, flour quickly rests on every surface: wooden tabletops, carts, floors, your skull cap, and apron. The apprentices, now awake, forecasted more flour on their tables and coated their hands as they gingerly portioned, lightly kneaded, and folded dough balls into baguettes, whole wheat boules, rustic seeded breads, hard crusted dinner rolls, and ciabatta.

The more these young bakers worked with the dough, the greater their education. Soon they will understand the dough as it ferments and changes. They will understand the flour as it sifts through their fingers, and sense when the dough is ready by its spring and smell. The ferment that allows the dough to be a living thing during this stage releases a wonderful aroma that is only surpassed by the smell of the product as it is peeled from the oven.

A final proof for a time, as much as two hours, readies the different shapes for their time in the oven. There is something magical about sliding breads from a floured peel to the oven hearth. Expert hands can manipulate the loaves to maximize use of oven space. Over the next period of oven time, loaves are exposed to temperature variances and moisture as the exterior caramelizes and envelopes the scoring from the baker’s knife to reveal the work of art that these breads are. Finally, a tap from the baker’s fingers on the bottom of a loaf and a hollow thump signal the bread is ready.

The satisfaction felt as a few hundred rustic loaves are pulled from the oven and slid on cooling racks is hard to describe. The smell is intoxicating and no matter how many years you have been at this, your thoughts are of that first slice of warm bread slathered in salty butter. With all the breads removed there are a few minutes available for a break. Another cup of coffee and that first slice are your reward. It’s time to break bread with fellow bakers and nod with a smile – this is what you were meant to do. It’s only 7 a.m., the sun has shown itself for a little over an hour, and your day is nearly half done.

You bite into this incredible bread, chew through the magical crust, and relish the warm, nutty center that serves as a platform for the richness of butter. It really is heavenly.

Soon these breads will be bagged, labeled, and sent to retail shops and restaurants across town. They will find their way to shelves, still warm, as customers relish the opportunity to carry a loaf home, or slice in restaurants for lunch or dinner service.

To many, me included the quality of a restaurant or a meal at home is determined by the quality of the bread served. Consumers throughout the town are enjoying the experience that defines the work that you do. A great order of eggs over easy transitions from utilitarian to exceptional with a slice of toast made from this bread. A bowl of pasta with Bolognese becomes world-class when served with your baguettes. A sandwich in a local deli is worthy of a sojourn when made on your ciabatta. And that banquet for a few hundred that you were not looking forward to is suddenly noteworthy when guest bite into those hard crusted rolls. Your work as a baker makes everyone smile, makes every meal special, and stimulates conversation over memories of food rather than the challenges of the day.

After your break, as you start the process of mixing tomorrow’s doughs and feeding the sour dough starters that bring life to your bread, you think again about this lifestyle that you chose. This is who you are, not just what you do. You are a baker.

PLAN BETTER – TRAIN HARDER

Praise your local bread baker.

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