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The argument is simple and rational. Overheated dough and high proofing temperatures result in decreased fermentation times. This over oxidizes the dough, reduces the development of organic acid compounds, and reduces conservation. Bread with no flavor, no texture, that stales quickly is a poor product. Intensive mixing and short fermentation is the realm of industrial mass production, the results speak for themselves. What is the rational for making industrial bread at home? Professional bakers have a greater need to save time than the home hobbyist and yet none of the great bakeries of the world have adopted these wonderful techniques. Why? Bakers who are concerned with quality are happy to use technologies and techniques so long as they don't sabotage the final product. Unfortunately breads don't benefit from being made in 90 minutes or less. If only it were so, bakers could instantly increase production and make more money, or sleep 7 more hours a day, or go to a movie, or spend that saved time with their families. My problem is that you don't have even a basic understanding of the bread making process and you are encouraging people to adopt a methodology that produces compromised results. In short you are promoting eating less well and less critically. This is especially troubling when there are other bread baking methods that take less active time, less equipment and produce a vastly superior product. None of these products can be made very well using this technique. You need to taste a properly made bread in a side by side comparison and you should be able to understand this. In my admittedly limited experience of doing demonstrations to baking amateurs, all of them can identify rapidly made bread as vastly inferior. If your point of comparison is industrially made bread these techniques may produce favorable results by virtue of it being fresher, hotter, softer, but if you compare it to the same product made with sound techniques they will always fall short.

No flavor, no crust, no mouthfeel, in what way is this good bread? Is there a single classic bread of any tradition, French, Italian, German, etc. that can be made competently using this technique? As a professional baker I've had to make breads as fast as possible on occasion, but I don't delude myself into thinking this makes a respectable product. So why promote it? It's one thing to say if your really screwed and need to make bread in 90 minutes here is what you can do, but after you do it you should hope it never happens again. (At times like this you're thankful that most people aren't that attentive and won't realize the difference, but secretly you know you've committed a small crime.) It's truly getting a bit depressing seeing all these "incredible breakthrough" bread books that are essentially bread for dummies with no time and no taste. I saw the Artisan Bread in 5 Minutes authors claiming "their" technique can be used to make Panettone, of course it all works perfectly providing you have no idea what an even mediocre Panettone tastes like. "Oh but it's warm and sweet!" I made scones at home with my son the other day, in all the process can be done in 45 minutes. So in half the time it takes you to make marginal crap a 3 year old can make a legitimate product without any specialized equipment or spending money on a fad cookbook. Please god kill me if I have to learn to program a microwave to make bread. That is just wrong.

The pretzel at Almondine is more or less the same at the The French Laundry, except bigger and without the black pepper. Call Almondine and find out when they come out of the oven, they're really good when they are fresh. Roger

Mitch: The price controls for baguettes were eliminated in 1987, I believe. Nevertheless as a result of the long standing controls people became accustomed to paying a low price for bread. This is why so many, of even the really good bakeries still offer an inferior baguette ordinaire for the sizable clientel who will never pay more than one euro for a baguette. As far as the "racing stripes" I think it's both that bakers are trying to squeeze out as much bread as possible and that most people want really light baguettes. Bear in mind also that in Paris space is at a premium and most bakeries are going to be relatively small, have a smaller oven and as a result the decks are nearly always overcrowded. Of course not all bakeries do this. As far as straight dough vs. poolish: my preference is for straight dough baguettes, as much for the simplicity of production as anything else. Roger

Boulak: It's a shame you weren't able to find meunier's bakery, it's worth a visit for his signature baguette, his rye bread and vienoisserie. I have two street maps for paris and neither one has his street on it. I stage'd there several years ago and the precision and skill with thich he works is mind blowing. It was also the best organized place I've ever worked in. A few thoughts on your trip: I think it's very difficult to evaluate baguettes without either direct comparisons or repeated visits over time. Lord knows in the last three months I've made baguettes that would rival the good ones I've had in France and a few sad days where if you had the misfortune to visit you would think I was barely competent. On my last trip to Paris I stopped by Gosselin and was somewhat dissapointed, so much so, that I returned a few days later and got a really excellent baguette. When I worked in Paris a few years ago I found that I favored the straight dough baguettes, so I was surprised that on my most recent visits the two baguettes I liked the most were hybrid's, made with some levain. I imagine on my next trip I'll find that a bakery that was a previous let-down, will be my new favorite. It really makes me hesitate to draw any conclusions from such small sample sizes. The biggest problem I noticed on my last visit is that most of the bakeries seem to be baking lighter and lighter. This is particularly a problem with the retrodor's which I find without some color taste like raw flour. I was really surprised that even though it was raining I visited good bakery after bakery where I couldn't find any well cooked baguettes. Roger

Jackal, The reason purists object to the perforated pans is not the little bumps so much as they indicate that the baguettes weren't baked on a hearth. The rack oven will invariably result in a less open interior crumb as well as a less attractive baguette. Jeffrey Hamelman has a series of photographs that illustrate this perfectly in his fine new book, "Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes". Roger

Try this: 1400 gr water 2000 gr flour 18 gr yeast 40 gr salt combine flour and water and mix until the dough comes together. Let this rest for 20-40 minutes. Add the yeast and salt and mix another 3-4 minutes. Put the dough in the hotel pan and let ferment at 23-25 degrees C for 2.5-3 hours, give it a fold every 45-60 minutes (2 total). Divide and pre-shape. Rest 15-30 minutes. Shape and proof at 23-25C for 45-60 minutes. Good luck, Roger

James: Unfortunately I see the sytematic misuse of ascorbic acid on a regular basis. Where I work it's done both after the baguettes are divided and the pieces are left to rest (actually proof) for up to 1.5 hours and again in the final proofing. The result it seems, and perhaps you can confirm this, is a tighter more regular interior, and a whiter crumb. But the loaves are huge. With regard to your response to the yeast question, if one were to make the basic french bread (ex 10-9 from the Taste of Bread) one batch with the ascorbic acid and one without, all other things being exactly the same and assuming a good quality flour: -would the AA dough have a shorter first fermentation and a longer proof? Would the longer proof in any way compensate for the indirect limitation of organic acids as a result of the accelerated maturation? Or is it entirely wrong to reduce the first fermentation with the AA dough? Any advice on a resource to learn how to read and better understand an Alveogram? Thanks for taking time to respond. Roger

I got there at a little after twelve and bought cuepons at 23rd street when there was no line. I was with five other people and we split up, within ten minutes I had tried the snoot and blue smoke's ribs as they had no wait. Without being too aggressive about it by 2 oclock I had gotten a taste of everything except the sausage, which my bastard friends ate all of while I was waiting for pork shoulder. I even scored some bones for my dog from the pitmaster at Big Bob Gibsons. My advice would be the same as Fat Guys: arrive before 12 with friends, buy your cuepons at 23rd, buy some custard and walk to the north end of the park, pick a meeting place while your walking, and then split up and get the food. Maybe for tomorrow they will figure out a better way to organize the lines, but even with all the chaos today, with the nice weather, the music, and some beer the wait was no big deal. Virgil's is no substitute. Good luck, Roger

Mick, They were definitely using that oven, at least when I was there 4 years or so ago. Why do you say the bread you had hadn't been near it? It's not the greatest bread in the world but I found it to be better than the other bakeries in that area. This isn't necessarily saying much. If your familiar with Eric Kayser's bakeries in Paris, Le Fournil Borriglione uses similiar techniques and the breads I mentioned earlier are all very good. It's just a little bit further north than Ave Malaussena, which is a huge market street. Roger

James: What if any are the negative aspects of using ascorbic acid in proper amounts either by the miller or by the baker? Kaplan mentions people denouncing it as a killer of flavor and Phillippe Viron mentions that it penalizes conservation, is there any evidence supporting either of these views? Thanks, Roger

Hello James, First thank you for your work in bringing about an english translation of "Le gout du pain". This is a minor issue, but one I hope you could explain. The majority of baguettes pictured in the english version appear to have been baked with little or no steam, especially in comparison to the bread in the french version. Is this a reflection of how you prefer them to be baked or is there some other story? Thanks, Roger

Mick: Near the cours saleya, there is: Le Four a Bois (Chez Espuno) 35 Rue Droite, as the name implies they have a wood burning oven, which is visible from the boutique (beware I think they're closed during the early afternoon). North of the train station, there is imo better bread, but with a gas deck oven: Le Fournil Borriglione (Boulangerie Jean-Marc Bardonnat) 20 Ave Borriglione (good baguette de tradition, miche and on fridays seigle). Have fun, Roger

Solo: I imagine there are very few bakeries that proof dough on a table top. If they do, they're either not very busy, or have an enormous amount of table space. In the majority of french bakeries the baguette dough never touches a wooden table at all- it goes from the mixing bowl, into plastic buckets, divided by machine, into a balancelle, shaped by machine and then proofed on couche. The flour plays a role, and it is different in france, but bakers in america, japan, canada, etc. have shown that excellent french bread can be made in various climates and with different basic materials. Roger

FWIW the gosselin baguette method does not involve a cold "delayed fermentation". This is an invention of Reinhardt's and if it works so be it, but it shouldn't be attributed to gosselin, who following both steven kaplan and ed behr doesn't do anything like it. As far as the bread in Paris is concerned there is a lot of crap, but I would venture to guess that in almost every neighborhood you are in walking distance of extremely good bread, and in some places you may have the choice of two or three places that produce exceptional products. This is probably not true of any city in the US, certainly not to the same degree. It is definitely not true of New York City where I live. As far as the baguette goes, I have yet to have a baguette here that would be in the top 10 that I've had in Paris. Altho I recognize these comparisons are extremely subjective I feel I can say with confidence that the majority of the NYC baguettes from the better bakeries aren't at the same level of Paris' best. Of course, your taste and idea of what constitutes a good baguette may be different than mine. As a professional baker I have yet to see any clear consensus on whether sourdough or commercial yeast produces better bread. Perhaps this is because bread plays so many roles in cuisine; it is eaten alone, with condiments and as an accompaniment to various types of food. A hearty sourdough that goes well with a rustic dish may not be the best choice for a more refined dish or maybe too sour for certain sweet jams. One could go on and on coming up with favorable and unfavorable combinations for both types of bread. In general I am in agreement with Calvel that a well made commercial yeast bread, with the subtle taste of wheat and fermentation, goes better with a wider range of foods. That said I love a mild sourdough, like at Poilane, as well. One of the enlightening things in Kaplans book, "Le retour du bon pain", is that he details the methods of a handful of his favorite bakers. Their radically different techniques and philosophies make it abundantly clear that blanket statements like "sourdough is better" are insupportable. At the very least before holding to one side or the other you should make an effort to try the best examples of both approaches (when you begin to factor in hybrid methods even this excercise becomes decreasingly worthwhile) and try not to confuse not very well tested preferences (or even well tested preferences) with the mythical consensus of world bread nuts. Roger

Badthings: You can order coffee from George Howell, they do mail order. The website is at: http://www.terroircoffee.com/ Not much of a website, but you can download their list and give them a call. They only roast and ship on monday, I believe. Hope this helps, Roger

Perhaps you are thinking of Bannette, which I believe is the most well known brand, Baguepi is another that has been already mentioned. It's my understanding that these are brands created and marketed by the big flour milling concerns. I believe that in some cases the mills play a role in the financing of the bakeries, and in return the bakeries are obligated to buy flour from the mills as well as execute certain breads according to the mills specifications. I've always assumed that this control does not extend over all of the bakeries products, so that these bakeries have more indepedence than a Paul or Pain Doree boutique which all sell the same thing, and have the same decor, which is dictated by a central command. Roger

Loufood: I think there are a lot of romantic notions surrounding the French and bread, and while undoubtedly bread plays a more important role in their culture than in America, it's worth noting that bread consumption has been declining there for decades. If the "average" Parisian cares so much about quality, how does one account for all the point chaud's, depots, and all the insipid white panini bread? If your willing to walk 10 or 15 minutes you probably can find some excellent bread in most neighborhoods in Paris, but on your walk you'll probably pass 2,3, or 4 or 10 bakeries selling average to completely crappy bread. Outside of Paris my experience has been the situation is even worse. How do you explain that the majority of bread in France is garbage? That the average person can tell the difference is not the point, the average American can tell the difference between a great hamburger and a fast food one, but for the average person price and convenience are more important than quality. I can't agree more with Bux's post, it's been my experience working in bakeries in France and with french bakers that there are many places in France where people will absolutely not pay a reasonable price for a baguette. As a result the production must be more mechanized, corners cut and the products quality suffers. I worked in a bakery in Paris that offered an excellent but more expensive baguette ancienne as well as a typical cheaper less good Parisien baguette, the cheaper baguette outsold the better one four or five to one. Look around France and you'll see that as far as bread goes what's cheap and hot is what's ruling the day, in spite of the resurgence of better bread thats taken place in the last twenty years. Roger

Joe: How serious are you about baking and what type of bread are you interested in? This info will help in giving a recommendation. For serious regular sourdough bakers I found "The Bread Builders" to be the best combination of technical and pratical info for maintaining a starter and baking at home. Fields' book is good for Italian breads and the Ortiz book covers a wide range of styles. The Silverton book is impratical for home bakers altho I've found that the recipes that I've tried worked. As a professional baker I can say Reinhart's frequently recommended "The Bread Bakers Apprentice" is a major let down. God help the students of Johnson and Wales if they're learning how to shape bread as he demonstrates in this book. That would really be sad. It really bothers me that he would call the book "The Bread Bakers Apprentice" when rather than do a one week stage where he actually would have baked bread, he preferred to do a crash tour of several bakeries so he would have more time to sightsee and shop. For christ sake if your not even capable of being an apprentice for one week you can't really be serious about baking, much less teaching baking. I can still remember quite clearly the expression I received in return for asking a French head baker what his apprenticeship was like. His look said: you would be ground down into the finest dust if you experienced only five minutes of what I went thru. He mumbled something like, "one hundred hours a week in the shit for no money." If you could see the the speed, rhythm, precision and consistency with which he shapes bread you would understand what it means to be a baker. It really depresses me to see the crap technique and faulty logic that Reinhart is peddling to an unsuspecting and ignorant public. For example: How is it possible that you include a photograph of how to score a baguette which is actually the perfect example of how not to score a baguette? How do you charge $35 for a book and include full color photos of old and stale bread? How do you make the centerpiece of your book Gosselin's method for baguettes when the version you present is so mangled it bears no relation to what Gosselin actually does? Why coin phrases like "delayed fermentation method" when there are already common words in the baking lexicon which accurately describe this technique, other than to give your misunderstandings the veneer of newness and uniqueness? I could rant on and on... I'm glad people are getting good or better results from this book, and I'm sure there are many worthwhile things in it, but eventually if you become more serious you will quickly run up against its limitations, mistakes and confusions. I suggest you start elsewhere. roger

I would second Michael's recommendations. Mulot is a busy, but still pleasant shop. I remember having an excellent simple chocolate tart the last time I was there. It was my favorite of the seven or eight I tried during an informal survey of Paris patisserie. They also have surprisingly good bread for a good patisserie. In my limited experience I preferred Herme to Peltier, but both are well worth the visit. If I had to pick one place to go to I would probably pick Herme, because he's constantly introducing new things. I'm surprised to hear that people hate Poujauran. Personally I prefer the pastry to the bread, but what's to hate? An added bonus is that his shop isn't far from Michel Chaudun an excellent chocolatier. In the same bakery pastry vein as Poujauran, Poilane offers a very simple rustic apple tart worth trying. Roger

sam: thanks for the tip about storing the saf in the freezer, once I run through my current supply of dry yeast I'll go with the saf. bill: i would be cautious about buying any yeast thats been repackaged, as in the case of instant active there will be loss in activity once the vacuum seal is broken especially if it's not stored properly. Still it doesn't sound like that was the problem. Perhaps because you use a rolling pin where as I stretch the dough, you need a much more active dough at the end. Could the dough have been overproofed? FWIW there doesn't seem much point in having a half hour poolish. In general it takes around 45 minutes for the yeast to adapt to its environment for ideal fermentation. Conventional wisdom is that the minimum time for a poolish is three hours although it seems more common to see 8-12 hours. Why not lower the yeast, lengthen the poolish and shorten the dough fermentation time or eliminate the poolish altogether and use a straight dough with a long fermentation? Roger

If you were able to get a ball to form after 2 minutes (one that did not stick to the side of the mixing bowl) you absolutely did not add enough water to the dough. (I would argue that if you can form a ball after 5 minutes or at all your dough is too firm). Try to learn to judge if you have enough hydration before you switch to the dough hook, when the ingredients have just come together. If you feel the dough is still a little too firm after you've begun kneading, then add some more water in a thin stream on low speed toward the end of the mix. If you want to learn fairly quickly how to judge for proper hydration here's a good excercise: scale all your ingredients except water. Just fill a pitcher with some water and add a conservative amount at the beginning of the mix and make adjustments based on what you see and feel and how you want the dough. You may have a few bad mixes to start, but you'll quickly learn to depend on your senses and your dough will become more consistent than if you rigidly followed a recipe every time. Similiarly in the case of your problem dough if you noticed that it's rising slower than usual after a specified time, trust your instincts and let it rise longer. If you normally let the dough rest for 30 minutes after dividing but, the dough feels firm and refuses to stretch let it rest longer. In my experience you can't achieve this level of gluten development with a kitchen aid without overheating your dough or starting with a dough that is too stiff. I find it makes more sense to compensate for the under development of the dough through long fermentations and turns during fermentation. With a professional mixer you will have no problem getting to this stage with AP flour. Conversely if you knead by hand you'll be hard pressed to develop a dough to this stage made with a high protein flour.

According to Plyer's Baking Science and Technology, "in practice, 45 parts of active dry yeast replace 100 parts of compressed yeast." As far as equating the number of yeast cells in differing amounts of compressed or active dry yeast, it is worth noting that the strain of yeast used in active dry yeast has less gassing power than that of compressed yeast, as "some gas production power has been sacrificed in the interest of better activity retention on drying." In addition the active dry yeast suffers losses of cells during drying and rehydration, so it would be perhaps better when trying to find equivalencies to think in terms of gassing power, not number of yeast cells. For what it's worth I tend to use one teaspoon active dry yeast for 1000gr flour and opt for a long fermentation 12-18 hours in general. I can't stress enough that times and techniques in pizza dough making become substantially less critical when you bake in a wood burning oven whose temperature is 800 degrees. You could throw year old matzoh dough in a deck that hot and get oven spring. For pizza the most important ingredient is really the oven. Regarding dough flavor I agree with the other posters that the goal is wheat flavor not yeast flavor, but in the case of pizza where there are usually several others flavors involved, tomato, olive oil, cheese, basil and the dough burning and browning, the dough flavor is far less critical than it would be in say a baguette. I see no reason why instant active yeast wouldn't work in a poolish, biga or sponge or any pizza dough in general. Provided the rehydration temp of the water or bowl is not too cold, according to Pyler this can be problem, although I've never experienced it. Having worked in a bakery that occasionally would run out of yeast, this stuff can be a lifesaver. Over a wide range of doughs I've never had it "burn itself out" in any unusual way. If I did enough home baking to go through a whole package in a short enough time after opening, I would use this in place of active dry yeast.

Hello all, An excellent resource on pizza and pizza making is Edward Behr’s quarterly “The Art of Eating” no. 22 on Pizza in Naples. In it he gives a simple dough recipe and instructions for home cooks. The basics for pizza dough are the same for almost all good rustic breads: small quantity of yeast, long fermentation, and high hydration. A long fermentation will result in better flavor and aroma and more water in your dough will make for an open, irregular hole-y interior. This is especially nice in the outer ring of crust. The long fermentation also develops the dough so that the initial mixing is less critical, this is helpful as wet doughs are harder to handle and home mixers are not as effective as professional ones. Some tips: re-hydrate your yeast in at least 4 times its weight in water temperature between 100- 112 degrees. You do not need to add sugar or honey to activate yeast this will only help to produce faster results, not better results. Simply make the dough at least 8-12 hours before you are going to bake it (or more if you park the dough in your refrigerator. It’s better to leave yourself more time than less.). I don’t use high gluten or bread flour, as typical Italian pizza flour type 00 has less protein, less than even all purpose flour, but AP works fine and most people have it their house, so why bother clogging your shelves with nine different types of flour when one will do. That said, you can achieve good results with nearly any kind of flour. According to Magee the addition of fat to a bread dough may increase loaf volume and aid in preservation qualities, both of which are not so relevant for pizza. At any rate in such small quantities it’s unclear what if any effect olive oil has. Without personally having done any taste tests I go the lazy route and don’t bother with it in the dough. The number one mistake that people make with bread doughs in general is not adding enough water to their doughs. For pizza start with at least 70% water weight to flour weight, (that is for 1000gr flour, 700gr water, and 20 gr salt, this simple formula plus yeast, will work for pizza, baguettes, and simple rustic breads) as you get more accustomed to sticky doughs try adding more and more water. Bear in mind that the flour you use and the humidity in the environment will have an impact on how much water you should add. This is why there is no such thing as a strict bread recipe, as you gain experience you will learn to make better adjustments to produce consistent results in varying conditions. Ideally after mixing, your dough will be no hotter than 75 degrees. You can add hotter or colder water depending on your environment and mixing method. A kitchen-aid type mixer will heat up the dough more than hand kneading. In very hot climates it may be a good idea to refrigerate your flour in addition to using cold water. Don’t stress so much about this as pizza dough is pretty forgiving and you’ll have oppurtunity to make corrections later on in the process. Knead the dough in a kitchen aid if you have one (and are lazy like me) for 5-7 minutes or so on first speed or by hand 5-10 minutes, maybe more by hand if the dough is extremely wet. The dough will probably be sticky, not shiny and smooth, as the gluten will not be fully developed. You can use a dough scraper or bench knife in one hand if the dough is sticky, to help in kneading. Also dust with some extra flour, but be wary of adding too much flour during kneading. If you want to get fancy you can add the salt toward the end of the kneading, this will shorten the kneading time, but then you run the risk of forgetting the salt entirely. If you want to get even more fancy you can use an autolyse to shorten kneading times even more, but this is not necessary. Afterwards put the dough in a bowl covered and let it rise in a cool place. Here’s where you can compensate for your mixing and kneading. If the dough is really wet, sticky and underdeveloped you can fold the dough every 15-20 minutes for the first hour and again after four or five hours. This will give a slack dough force. If the dough is too firm do not fold the dough or only do one turn after four hours. If you are making the dough the night before for the next days lunch do not worry about the turn mid way. Let the dough rise in a cool place, if it’s rising too fast you can park the dough in the fridge, if you are making the dough far in advance you can put it directly in fridge to slow the process, if the dough temperature after kneading was way too hot you can also use the fridge (you can also freeze the dough directly after kneading, like others have mentioned, let it thaw in the fridge and then rise slowly outside. If you plan on freezing the dough for a long period of time you may want to make the dough less wet and develop the gluten more during kneading as the gassing power of the yeast may be lessened by the freezing). The fridge is your friend, it helps you to adapt the dough to your schedule and not the other way around. After the fermentation, at least a half hour before baking (longer if it’s coming directly from the fridge) deflate the risen dough, divide it if necesary and form it into a ball. This is another opportunity to make adjustments. If the dough is very firm be gentle and do not form it into a ball. Let it rest for a longer period of time. If you find that you are having problems stretching out your dough, if it springs back too much, it is because it’s too firm, hasn’t rested long enough or was balled too tightly. This can also be a problem from using high gluten flour. Conversely if the dough feels too slack you can ball it more tightly, to give it some force. Use a pizza stone, preheat your oven at least an hour in advance and get it as hot as possible (bearing in mind that wood and coal burning pizza ovens are heated past 750 degrees). When stretching out your dough take care to not completely flatten and deflate the dough, particularly around the edges, you want irregular holes in the crust, if the interior is all small tight holes like wonderbread (or like most new york city slices) than the dough was too firm and/or too degassed. Because such a large part of the dough comes into immediate contact with the intense heat of the pizza stone, weak, overly wet or slightly over proofed doughs will still spring up well. If your having trouble with your wet doughs sticking to the peel you can dust the peel with corn meal or best yet a fine dusting of rice flour in place of regular flour. Roger