Say a Prayer For The Perfect Loaf

The next time you’re baking bread, say a prayer for The Perfect Loaf in the sky. As you slide your pillowy loaves into the oven, ask The Perfect Loaf for:

• A burnished, chestnut-coloured crust;
• An open and airy crumb;
• A lofty loaf with generous oven spring:
• Score lines that are charred gently along the edges;
• Whole grain flavour with a hint of sourdough tang;
• A heady, bready aroma that transports you to a warm kitchen where you are loved unconditionally
• Where angelic choruses can be heard when your loaves emerge from the oven into the world

Seal the prayer in a golden thought bubble and watch it float into the sky. And maybe, when the bread emerges from the oven, The Perfect Loaf will have answered with a glorious golden boule that is too perfect even for Instagram. 1

Instagrammable

Excuse my satiric tone. You should know that every time I load an oven with bread, I utter some version of this prayer, whether I realize it or not. I don’t intone the Te Deum, no In nomine sourdough sanctus. But I do hope for the best loaves possible. It really is like a prayer when you think about it.

My track record of turning out perfect loaves, though, is poor. They’re delicious most of the time; a few look OK and may be “Instagrammable,” but the majority of loaves have some perceptible flaw: finish colour that isn’t dark enough, burned loaves, ones that explode through the scores, crusts that are too hard to cut, over-proofed loaves with no oven rise — they’re flat as frisbees.

Chad Robertson, the bread-making author and hero of the Tartine Bread empire, was asked if all his loaves were as beautiful as the photographs in his books. “No,” he said. “The bread in the book photos are “aspirational” loaves. In reality, there aren’t that many of those.”

Trifles, dalliances

But these are mere trifles. Bread is bread. We’ve consumed it for thousands of years. It’s sustained us and inspired us. All these concerns about colour, aroma, and the look of score lines are so much falderol. A modern dalliance. Superficial.

Bread-making is part of life. It’s inextricable from the panoply of human experience.

My problem is that I’ve read too many modern baking books that describe the Perfect Loaf, and part of me still expects to make one. When I began baking, I thought if I followed a recipe to the T, I’d soon be a bread-baking master. Exact measurements of ingredients to the nearest tenth of a gram, more kneading or folding of the dough than the instructions. The closer I followed a recipe, the more I set myself up for disaster.

Baker wisdom

Being open to other factors offered wisdom that made me a better baker. Such as when I finally realized how much room temperature matters when I mix the dough. If the room’s too warm, the dough might rise faster than the recipe suggests. Now, I’m constantly measuring dough temperature vs. room temperature. If it’s not ideal, I must find a way to get the dough closer to the desired temperature. It’s like keeping the baby warm and fed until it’s time to scale and shape.

My mood is also a factor in how well the bread turns out. If I’m brooding or distracted by something, I’m more apt to make a mistake. And I wonder if anger, anxiety, or some endless thought loop might find its way into my dough as I knead it. Do they have the power to manifest in the finished loaf in some undesirable way?

Confronting the mysteries

These questions sometimes occupy my thoughts during the long process of mixing, folding and proofing dough. I notice transformations: the change from a hard kernel of grain into soft and fluffy flour; then, with the addition of water, yeast and salt, the ingredients transform into something else entirely, something that literally feels alive. Sometimes, from the corner of my eye, I swear I can see the dough mass rising and falling as if it’s breathing. It’s a piece of magic that impresses me all the time. Sometimes it intimidates me.

Two years ago, I wrote of the New York baker Lexie Smith. She’s also an artist, poet, and even a reasonably successful fashion model. Her baking credentials, however, are the real deal.

Her descriptions of bread-making allude to some of this bread mystery:

Combine all flours in any bowl big enough for a newborn. Use your hands. On this, we don’t negotiate. The measurements, though, are firm in total but not proportion. Everything will make a difference, but changes here will unlikely derail you entirely. Candidly, I’m not certain where the threshold lies. Formulas so appeasing make people less comfortable than, say, “You cannot stray without consequence.” What do you think of that?

“You can tell yourself it’s cathartic, even if the act [ of mixing ] feels plain and fundamentally uncomfortable.”
“You’ll already feel the dough pulling away from you, so young. Its strength is not a threat.”

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Sparkling words

Lexie’s descriptions underline the relationship a bread-maker has with ingredients and dough. On the one hand, her delivery sounds plain and mechanical, but her descriptions and words sparkle with life and humanity. The act of mixing dough is rife with meaning.

She gets it about “the mysteries.” These descriptions could fit into recipe instructions, urging the new baker to look for their relationship with ingredients and process. It opens the way to intuitive baking, knowing when to add more water and knowing that the dough needs to rest an extra 10 minutes.

Bread is ancient; it goes back through millennia and is inextricably woven into the human fabric. On some level, we all know about bread and how to make it. Reading bread instructions will jog our memories, and once we’ve read them a few times, made a few loaves (and made a few mistakes), we’re back on track. It’s easier than you think because it’s old; it’s part of who we are.

So saying a prayer to The Perfect Loaf, asking what we wish for in our bread (or envisioning it), opens our hearts to part of who we are.

Besides, there’s nothing wrong with asking.

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