From One Baker to the Next

One of my true heroes in the bread world is a retired baker named Jeffrey Hamelman. He was a professional baker for nearly 50 years and a competitor in international baking competitions. His book Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes (initially published in 2004) has won awards and become the standard text on North American bread and baking. A third edition of the book was released in 2021.

I’ve written about Hamelman in a post called “The Honest Baker,” which covered a small part of his journey in the bread world. Baking is an ancient profession, he says, and he readily acknowledges the long line of knowledge he has inherited as a baker.

Generations of bakers

What a wonderful feeling it is to turn and look behind us at the hundreds of generations who have baked before us and realize that we have inherited the accumulation of their experience. When we turn and look forward to the innumerable generations of bakers to come, we realize that we are at the fulcrum of this great balance, imbued with a deep responsibility to the future and hopefully equally imbued with gratitude to our colleagues from the past.

Jeffrey Hamelman, in the acknowledgments to Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes

Hamelman is a wonderful teacher; his numerous YouTube videos can teach you much about bread and baking. He’s also a storyteller!

A minister, a baker, a simple man

I was particularly inspired by the following story about one of his own teachers, a simple man — a minister — who had become a regular customer at his bakery in Vermont. In a preface to one of the recipes in Bread, Hamelman tells how he met Horst Bandel, a man of few words, and how they formed a bond over baking and bread.

One result of their friendship was a rye loaf he calls, “Horst Bandel’s Black Pumpernickel” Here’s the story:

The bakery I owned in Vermont was primarily a retail store, but it was also intentionally a place where people could spend an hour with a pastry and a cup of coffee, visiting with a friend, or spending (not wasting) an unhurried bit of their day in whatever way they wished. Many of the regulars were well-known, not only by name but also by the baked goods they liked.

One such customer, a local minister, bought the same type of bread two or three times a week, and when he was seen striding toward the door, his bread was often bagged before he had even entered.

He rarely spoke beyond the simple words needed to convey his order. In he came with his black garments, white collar, and stern demeanour, bought his bread and left. This went on for many months, and then, one fine day, he asked to speak with me. As I went to the front, I wondered if there was some defect in his usual bread. I was surprised by his request. His daughter was marrying, and he was assembling and decorating the cake. However, his home oven wasn’t large enough for the cakes, and he asked if I would bake several large cake layers for him, as well as sell him marzipan for decorating the cake. Although, as a rule, I did not sell unfinished products, I decided to comply with his request. He was, after all, a regular customer, and more significantly, he was speaking!

A month later, he returned and showed me photos of the cake he had made for his daughter. I commented on how clean and appealing it looked, how skillful the marzipan decorations.

“Where did you learn to do work like that?” I asked.

“My family owned a bakery for 150 years in Germany. As a young man, I became an apprentice and then a journeyman. As I was preparing to take over the family business as the meister, the Nazis came to power and my family fled for America. I became a minister and have not baked since.”

I was intrigued by his story, and we spent several minutes chatting about life, about baking. Then he told me this:

“We used a wood-fired oven for all our baking. After we finished baking the day’s bread, we would bake a black pumpernickel. It went into the oven last of all, and baked overnight in the lingering heat of the oven. Next morning, we would pull it from the oven, dark, dense, and fragrant. Would you like me to show you how to make that bread?” The time that elapsed between the last word of his question and my response of “Yes!” was so small that it defied measuring.

Beginning the following Monday, the minister Horst Bandel began to come to the bakery once a week. Now, however, he was no longer dressed in the tight black clothes in which I was long accustomed to seeing him. Instead, it was loose pants and a T-shirt. Everything about him seemed looser now: His manner was relaxed and smiling, and there was a youthful spring in his legs. Each week, we shared a couple of hours at the bench, and each week, we made a few different things— his style of marzipan roses, little dough figures like those he made in his family’s bakery, his Christmas stollen.

And each week, we made the black pumpernickel of his youth. Once it was consigned to the oven, he would leave, an arm enclosing a bag full of baked goods. When I returned to the bakery early the next morning, I would have the distinct and vivid pleasure of removing the pumpernickel from the oven and being almost overcome with the intensity of the aroma.

Horst came each Monday for a couple of months. Then, one Saturday morning, I received a call from him: His daughter was returning to college, and he was going to drive her. He would not be able to come on Monday. Was I all right alone with the bake? I told him I was, and somehow, I knew that this was also his way of telling me it was time for my independence. We did not bake again together afterward.

Eventually, Horst left Vermont for the coal country of Pennsylvania, seeking a needier flock. I have continued to make this bread over these many years, and always think of Horst when I do. I think he would accept his bread being enjoyed more widely, and so I take the liberty of providing here the formula for Horst Bandel’s Black Pumpernickel.

Hamelman’s version of Horst Bandel’s bread is a reasonably involved formula, with soaked rye kernels, coarsely milled rye, old rye bread and molasses. I’ve attempted making the bread but haven’t yet found success.

But I can attest to the intensity of the aroma when the bread comes out of the oven. It’s a deeply rich smell that I imagine comes out of the old world and into the present, passed along by the hands of generations of bakers.