Artisan Breads in the Pioneer Valley
When I told a friend I was writing about artisan bread, she asked what that was. “Any bread you can’t roll into a ball the size of a marble,” I answered flippantly. Actually, I wasn’t too far off. The term is used to refer to bread made by professional craft bakers — not the airy loaves produced by large production-line operations. The loaves contain flour, water, yeast or sourdough, and perhaps a few other ingredients, but no artificial leaveners or chemical preservatives.
Bread has been with the human race almost as long as we have been eating grains. The first breads were mixtures of ground grains and water, baked on hot rocks and unleavened. The discovery that bread could be made to rise, using either airborne yeasts or the yeasts left over from making beer, gave rise (so to speak) to the breads we commonly eat today. From Greek and Roman days, the whiter the bread, the more refined and hence expensive and desirable it was.
The search for whiter bread culminated in the Wonder Bread of the 1950s and ’60s. Pure white, airy, loaded with vitamins to replace those removed in the milling of the flour, and flavorless, Wonder Bread became the symbol of where our culture had gone wrong. The search for good bread began.
During this period, I ate dozens of dense brown loaves that might have been good for me but were decidedly not good to my taste buds. That’s all changed today. Artisan bakeries are springing up in virtually every city and town. The bread may be white or brown, but it is both good for you and tasty.
The artisan breads you’ll find these days have a few things in common. The ingredients are flour and water, a leavener such as yeast or sourdough, and salt. Add-ins may include olives, herbs, cheese, or dried fruits and nuts. Depending on the type of bread, there may be other flours, such as rye, and eggs and seeds. Whether the ovens are gas-fired or wood-fired, the resulting loaves are crusty on the outside and soft on the inside — and they taste like bread.
The chemistry of bread baking is fascinating and complex. Harold McGee’s “On Food and Cooking,” an indispensable reference for the serious cook, has a complete discussion, including electron microscope photographs of flour and gluten. Simply put, the proteins in wheat, called glutens, form long chains that hold the starches and the gas bubbles produced by the leavening agents. Kneading the bread causes the glutens to form regular chains that trap water and gas which help the dough rise. You don’t want this behavior in pie crusts, which is why you work these as little as possible to make a flaky crust.
In this area, there are the two grand dames, if you will, of artisan baking, BAKERY NORMAND at 192 Main St. in Northampton and HENION BAKERY at 174 North Pleasant St. in Amherst (www.henionbakery.com). Each offers a range of baguettes, country white, wheat and other specialty breads. I look for Henion’s corned rye, a dense rye bread.
In Amherst, there is also the new WHEATBERRY, 321 Main St., whose bread is also available at the CUSHMAN MARKET in North Amherst. In Northampton, HUNGRY GHOST BAKERY at 62 State St. offers wood-fired sourdough bread with serious crust. I especially like their 8-grain bread. I first had BREAD EUPHORIA’s bread at their stand at the Amherst Farmers market; its bakery is at 206 Main St. in Haydenville and is worth a stop. In Easthampton, there is SUNRISE PASTRY SHOP, 42 Cottage St.
And then there is EL JARDIN (www.eljardinbakery.com). The Holyoke-based bakery was started by Nuestras Raices, a nonprofit that promotes sustainable development in Holyoke, and it’s now owned by its former head baker, Neftal? Dur?n. El Jardin bread is available in many locations (Atkins Farms Country Market in Amherst, Serio’s in Northampton, McCusker’s Market in Shelburne Falls, Blue Moon Grocery in Easthampton) and is served at local restaurants, including Chandler’s in South Deerfield and Chez Albert in Amherst. El Jardin has just opened a cafe in South Deerfield at 265 Greenfield Road. The bakery proves that you can bake wood-fired sourdough in commercial quantities without having to compromise.
You typically buy artisan breads unsliced, which keeps the bread fresher. A serrated blade is best for slicing. The trend is for offset bread knives, shaped like Harry Potter’s lightning-bolt scar, which let you slice all the way through the loaf without hitting your knuckles on the cutting board. I have a great offset bread knife from Lamson & Goodnow, but these knives are available everywhere.
Smeared with butter for breakfast or dipped in olive oil at dinner, artisan breads need no other embellishment. The loaves tend to disappear quickly in my house so there is no need to store the bread more than a day. If a loaf does stay around longer, freshen it by sprinkling some water on it and reheating it in the oven. You can also use it for toast. Or you can cook with it. Here are some ideas:
First of all, there’s garlic bread. Toast the slices of bread, and at the same time melt a couple of tablespoons of butter in a small saucepan, adding an equal amount of olive oil. Mince or grate garlic to taste (I use about 7 cloves) into the butter and saute gently until the garlic is fragrant. Add some dried or fresh oregano, marjoram, hot pepper flakes and/or basil. Drizzle or brush the oil mixture over the bread. Top with some fresh-grated Parmesan and bake in a 400-degree oven or broil until the cheese is lightly browned. The same mixture, with less garlic and a little more oil, can be stirred into a couple of cups of bread cubes. Bake the cubes at 400 until they are crisp and use them as croutons in salads or soups.
Italian panzanellas use stale bread cubes as salad ingredients. Dip the bread into water, pat dry, then mix it into a tomato salad and dress with olive oil and vinegar. Add lettuce, cucumbers, onions and herbs to taste. Let the salad sit for 10 minutes or so before serving.
Soaking stale bread in a milk and egg mixture and frying or baking the resulting custard takes many forms. The French call French toast pain perdu, or “lost bread,” a much more poetic name for the perfect use for leftover bread. Challah, a Jewish egg bread usually served on Friday nights, is available in many local bakeries and makes superb French toast. You can vary the basic mixture, which is ½ cup of milk and two eggs, by adding cinnamon, vanilla, nutmeg or allspice. Dip the slices briefly into the mix and saute over medium heat in a little butter.
The recipes that follow use artisan bread as ingredients. I haven’t given any recipes for bread. I’m not a baker and, besides, my goal is to get you to try the artisan breads that are available locally. Bon appetit.
Recipes:
Bread-Crumb Baked Chicken Breasts
Originally published Daily Hampshire Gazette, September 28, 2007