Citizen Appetites

I spent the weekend trying to bake bread. This isn’t by any means the first time I’ve baked bread, and the bread I bake usually pleases the people I bake it for– so one might ask why I’m bothering to experiment with other recipes and techniques. The short answer is that we’ve built a wood-fired oven in our backyard and have plenty of wood. But the real answer is that I’m seduced by the magic of bread– kneading it, letting it rise, shaping the loaves and finally taking it out of the hot oven and tapping it to see if it’s done. There are lots of people out there on the internet who feel the way I do and who have painstakingly described their techniques for people like me to follow. Not surprisingly, the bread–baking community is a generous, opinionated and friendly bunch. They want to create more of us, and so have taken the time to write down the methods they use in meticulous detail. These bakers use special scales to weigh their flour, salt and water, even their yeast. They report on the exact temperature of the dough at each stage of the fermentation process–which they time carefully. I’ve spent months reading and experimenting with these recipes. And finally this weekend I decided that I just can’t make myself follow these precise directions. Despite my determination to learn how to bake a loaf of bread I can really be proud of, and my recognition that bread baking is all about chemistry, and that I should pay close attention to weights and temperatures, I just can’t do it. This is partly because I think like a humanist and not a scientist, which is a disciplinary contrast that we will be exploring in this Learning Community.

I like to remember that bread baking is an ancient human skill (or art), and only recently have bakers had access to scales and thermometers. I’d love to have find a master teacher I could bake with so that I could “learn by doing” –and tell when I’ve added enough flour to the dough. And feel when I’ve kneaded it enough. And know whether I need to slow down the fermentation or shape the loaves. I’m trying to learn this by practicing it on my own, just as millions of men and women have done in the past. That’s the romantic version of the story.

But it’s not that simple and that’s what really makes me want to keep on trying, endlessly interested in what the next batch will be like. Because even in this standardized/mechanized day and age, there are too many variables (at least for me) to control to achieve a completely repeatable result. For example, the flour is never really the same,the barometric pressure outside fluctuates, the interaction of yeast and water changes, the moisture in the oven varies, etc. And think of bread-baking before the availability of commercial yeast, when the natural “levain” varied from day to day! What we’re also discovering is that the process becomes even less predictable when you use a wood-burning oven. First of all, it’s hard to know exactly how much heat an individual log will produce. Then regulating the heat of the oven and being able to predict when it will cool off enough to receive the loaves for baking is proving to be very complicated (and we even have a nifty infrared thermometer to guide us.). Baking bread, it seems to me, defies science. And it approaches art.

Here are a few photos of my experiments this weekend:

bread dough being mixed next to the bag of “Hudson Valley” flour

The oven with a fire going inside

A loaf of bread right before going into the oven

So, I thought I would start this off by talking a little about food in my neighborhood which is Williamsburg, Brooklyn. One of my favorite things about Williamsburg is the food and the mix of traditional (mostly Italian-American) bakeries and food shops and the newer (some would say hipster) shops. My area of Williamsburg has a large population of Italian Americans who came mostly from the region near Naples but also a large number of Puerto Ricans and Dominicans. The real newcomers are the “hipsters” who are often people in their 20’s who have recently graduated from college but also might include other young professionals who have moved to the neighborhood in the past decade.

McCarren Park greenmarket

On the weekend, I usually walk to the greenmarket in McCarren Park where there are farmers from upstate New York and New Jersey selling fruits, vegetables, eggs, and meats among other things. Given this was the Labor day weekend, the crowds were light. The vegetables were nice as usual! I find it interesting that most of the people who shop here are those who have gentrified the neighborhood. I prefer the vegetables here because they are fresher and more ripe than those at the supermarket. The peaches have been great this summer as have been the tomatoes and arugula.

The Meat Hook, Williamsburg

On the way home from the park, I often stop at one of the two following places which are examples of the old and new. The first is The Meat Hook which is a butcher shop and kitchen supply store. Most of the people who work here are young and the customers are mostly the newer inhabitants of the neighborhood. They make the best sausages!

The other is the neighborhood fish market where I find a great selection of shellfish such as mussels, oysters, lobster, shrimp, and (occasionally!) even crawfish. Here you see many Italian-American customers but also many newcomers who would rather get seafood here than at the supermarket. It’s owned by an Italian-American family who also operates a butcher shop on the next block and they seem to know most of the customers. Finally after shopping there for 5 years they know me and sometimes throw in a few extra shrimp!

Metropolitan Fish Market, Williamsburg

Blog for Learning Community 13

Bread baking past and present

Shopping for Groceries before Labor Day in Williamsburg