A Baking Summit in the Loire Valley

A recent New York Times article described an impressive get-together of nine Europe-based bakers — a kind of summit of baking innovators gathering in a picturesque location, the Loire Valley in France.

They were celebrating the publication of a new book, New European Baking, by Berlin-based American baker Laurel Kratochvila and the conclusion of her promotional tour.

Kratochvila’s book features many of the bakers that attended the gathering. The idea was to exchange ideas and experiment with local flours, with each of the nine bakers (including Kratochvila) showcasing at least one new loaf.

Showcasing skill and creativity

Each baked loaves of bread throughout the weekend and presented them at one big lunchtime feast. It was a showcase of the participant’s skill and creativity and the variety and quality of the ingredients in the Loire Valley.

Thus, bread, usually a mere accompaniment to a meal, was the meal’s starter, main course and dessert.

Lovely!

I want to know when I’ll get an invitation to an event like this! Who do I have to talk to? Who do I bribe?

The generosity of bakers

There’s a bit of magic when bakers get together. It’s a chance to talk shop, which is fun — and sometimes cathartic for those of us who spend long hours toiling over our doughs, managing the heat in our ovens and getting loaves into the hands of customers.

But I’ve learned there’s also an outpouring of generosity and sharing among bakers. I haven’t felt it to this degree at get-togethers for other professions.

I’ve rarely met a baker, for example, who wouldn’t be anything but delighted to share a recipe or roll up their sleeves to problem-solve a baking issue. 1 Or bring you behind the counter and show off a bit of dough or some new equipment.

Baker-to-baker

Often when I visit other bakeries, I’m given the royal treatment by the resident baker: complimentary loaf, a taste of a canelé 2, pizza on the house! “Baker-to-baker!” they say with a smile.

Sure, there’s a bit of boasting in these exchanges. Well-deserved pride might be more accurate! It’s an honour to be sampling another baker’s work, an opportunity to be effusive with your compliments! The generosity goes two ways — kind words and admiration in exchange for an offering of a baked good a colleague has toiled over.

Paysan-Boulanger

The Loire Valley gathering included some eminent bakers. They met up with Kratochvila at the bakery and farm of Franck Perrault, a paysan-boulanger from the village of Saint-Aubin-de-Luigné.

A paysan-boulanger is a farmer-baker, which means he controls all aspects of his bread-making process, beginning with the soil where his grains grow. Perrault uses heritage grain varieties, then harvests and mills them into flour with a small mill on his property. 3.

“There is no one I know who is more dedicated to the idea of perfecting an entire ecosystem around bread than Franck,” says Kratochvila in the NY Times article, which appeared this past weekend in the NY Times Style Magazine.

Kratochvila apprenticed under Franck Perrault before attending the boulanger program at Le Cordon Bleu in Paris.

A multi-faceted gathering

Other guests at Perrault’s residence included bakers from Italy, Poland, Israel, Japanese and France. Kratochvila was the one U.S. representative.

And, in a field largely “dominated by white men,” nearly half the bakers were women.

“Women are not only helping to redefine what healthy bread is but also what healthy work-life balance is,” Kratochvila says.

The baker group spent day one mixing levains (natural yeast starters) and doughs while discussing modern bread trends. They talked about the growing use of wholegrain flours in bread and pastries, a trend I’ve been aware of in North American baking for the past decade but not so much in Europe.

The taste of bread

White all-purpose flour is milled to extract only the endosperm portion of the grain. The bran and germ — the healthiest and most flavourful parts of the grain — are sifted off and often used for animal feed. Bakers on both continents are now trying to exploit the flavour and health benefits in wholegrains instead of relying on the blandness of white flour.

Endosperm is rich in gluten and protein and great for baking. The perfect white baguette, for example, is the gold standard for bakers and bread lovers but is woefully lacking in the nutritional potential of wholegrain bread.

The wheat grown by Perrault on his Loire Valley farm is milled to include all parts of the grain for maximum taste and health. And that’s what the Loire Valley bakers focused on.

Real bread emerges from the oven

On day two, the group loaded the oven 4 and continued their discussions.

In the early afternoon, bakers began to pull their creations out of the oven. That included Kratochvila’s modern take on Boston Brown Bread made of rye and wheat flour and cornmeal and molasses. Another baker produced baguettes with a high-than-normal percentage of whole grain. Another presented an einkorn loaf.

Some bakers accompanied their loaves with condiments to highlight their bread’s best qualities. Perrault featured butter from Normandy and goat cheese from a neighbour.

Dessert and counterpoint

The last of the bakers presented dessert, buttery sugar-coated brioche buns filled with pumpkin jam.

Ironically, brioche, a pillowy soft enriched bread made with eggs, butter and milk, is mainly made with white flour! The husband-and-wife bakers that produced the buns offered them as a counterpoint to the discussion about wholegrain flour. Highly refined white flour, they suggested, has its advantages!

The NY Times article was sent to me by a Happy Monk customer, and was a salve to my soul. As I work into the night and rise before the dawn, I often crave interaction with other bakers described here — the in-jokes, the stories, the sharing of ideas, bread formulas and techniques. It’s lovely sharing notes!

I listen to baker podcasts and audiobooks about baking (footnote). Mark Dyck’s Rise Up Podcast is excellent. And although not solely about baking, Dirt by Bill Buford is rewarding for its discussions on flour terroir and working inside a Lyon boulangerie. (/footnote). But they leave me wanting more, if only for the live connection with other bakers.

The bread that could result would be worth it! A happy baker makes happy bread!

To the Staff of Life!

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