#5 The Taste of Bread

The Taste of Bread by Raymond Calvel - Buy @ Amazon

The Taste of Bread
by Raymond Calvel (1990)
English Edition (2001)

Comparing baguette crumb textures by mixing method: intensive mixing with oxidizing additives, improved mixing, and traditional.

Ratings: Learn more
Quality: 4/5 – Excellent recipes
Importance: 5/5 – Bread Bible
Difficulty: 4.5/5 – Complicated
Rarity: 4/5 – Rare, expensive

Today’s Cookbook:
In yesterday’s cookbook #4 Wild Fermentation, we touched on using fermentation for baking with a “sourdough” cornbread that used fermented hominy.

This led me to sourdough starters and other forms of bread ferments- keys to delicious French bread. Luckily, I have the best book on French bread available- the life work of bread scientist Raymond Calvel- which is today’s cookbook #5 The Taste of Bread.

Making bread complicated
This bread BIBLE covers everything about bread- but it does not have a bread recipe, at least not as a mere human would understand the term “bread recipe”. It has a GREAT bread formula, and a delicious list of bread procedures- together, they make the best loaf of bread possible. I’ve reproduced this recipe below, but it’s only usable if you’ve read and studied the first 9 chapters of this dense, complete bread textbook. The chapters are listed here with key points:

A baffling schematic comparing the types of baking methods for bread, from Pre-ferment, Mixing, First fermentation, Dividing, Forming, Proofing

• Flour: North American vs European wheat types, milling, technical characteristics of manufacturing, ash/mineral content, measure flour’s starch gel strength.
• Dough: Legal additives, water, salt, yeasts and starters.
• Mixing: Dough production, oxidization, improved “rest period” mixing, types of mixers.
• Fermentation: Creating sugars with yeasts + enzymes, comparison of different sponge and sourdough methods, history of fermentation.
• Organic Acids: Responsible for aroma, result of oxidization and intensity of mixing. Compares profiles of Acetic, Propionic, Isobutyric, Butyric, Isovaleric, Capriotic acids.
• Dough Maturation: Visual symmetry from proofing and scarification, proofing changes on pH and sugar levels, loaf molding, and freezing of parbaked dough.
• Bread: Ovens and steams effects on crust, cell structure of the crumb, storage and moisture effects on staling.

By the time I was halfway through this cookbook (Ch. 10, Basic French Bread), I was almost ready to fall asleep looking at the first recipe.

Basic Bread Recipe
This book is full of complicated, industrial bakery production recipes like this one- you definitely need to be able to calculate percentages of weight and use a scale to attempt it. This was the simplest recipe I could find for making a basic loaf of bread:

Visual guide to kneading dough: just starting, not done, fully kneaded.

Basic French Bread: Straight Dough Method with Improved Mixing

FORMULA:
Wheat Flour: 20 kg (100%)
Water: 13.4 l (67%)
Add after autolysis:
Yeast: 300 g (1.5%)
Malt extract: 40 g (0.2%)
Lecithin (optional): 15 g (0.075%)
Ascorbic Acid: 400 mg (20 ppm)
Salt: 400 g (2%)
TOTAL WEIGHT OF DOUGH: 34.15 kg

PROCEDURES:
Mixing (1st spd) : < 5 m
Autolysis : 15 m
Mixing (2nd spd) : 10 m
Dough Temp: 75C (from mixer)
1st Ferment: 60 m
Punch Down After: (20 m)
Dividing, Rounding, Rest: 30 m
Molding: as needed
Baking @ 464F : 30 m
TOTAL TIME: 4 hours

This is a recipe without a pre-ferment starter (a "straight dough"), so it's comparatively less complicated than all of the quality, tested bread recipes this book is stuffed full of (there are seriously a lot of recipes once you get past the theory).

Handy visual reference for determining baguette crust defects: Underbaked, Proper crust, Well Done (Too Dark), Burnt, Burnt bottom, Overfermented dough, Oven too hot

Diagnose any bread defect
Making bread has a crucial final step: evaluating the bread and seeing what could be improved.

This book has a ton of photos for evaluating the crust and crumb of bread (mostly the baguette). The author methodically evaluates “problems” that his pure French mind finds in the bread-making process- such as the presence of bubbles on a baguette crust (a quality desired in the USA).

The effects of steam on bread crust: Too much steam, no steam, and correct steam.

Solutions to these problems are then found: comparing mixing methods and sharing the results leads to improved mixing with a “rest period”. Flavor is improved through oxidization and thorough mixing. Good crust is achieved through proper use of steam.

Bubbles on a baguette are considered a defect in France, but desired in the USA.

The author evaluates common French-legal food additives, with the problems they attempt to solve:

• Ascorbic acid: matures dough faster

• Lecithin: emulsifier and lubricator
• Cereal + fungal amylases: increase volume during fermentation
• Fava bean flour: improves oxidization
• Calcium propionate: mold inhibitor
• Citric acid: added to rye breads for shelf-life, form and flavor
• Powdered wheat gluten: increase bread protein

Conclusion: Worship at the baguette altar, read it in French
If you are like me and need to know EVERYTHING about baking bread before even trying it, then this book is for you. If you want to memorize every single factoid in the hopes of becoming a baking savant, this book is probably worth the 100$ it’s fetching on Amazon right now.

Guide for controlled intensive mixing, for each type of mixer (Oblique Axis, Spiral, Artofex, 20 Qt Planetary, 80 Qt Planetary, Brazilian), indexed by speed (RPM) and time (minutes).

Much like reading translations of the Judeo-Christian Bibles, you’re implicitly trusting the translator. Alas, the English version was translated for North American bakers, and some of the formulas are a little off. If you want to be even more purist and hardcore than thou, read this Bible in the original French (Le Goût du Pain), which is about 1/3rd the price on amazon.fr. Read it alone, in the dark, with some Enigma playing. And think of me?