I am a great pregnant woman.  Aside from eating too many sweets, I follow the doctor's advice exactly.  I go so far as to adhere to the maybe's as well as the facts.  If tuna is questionable, no problem, I can give up anything for nine months.  The day I found out I was pregnant with Josie, I gave up my pack a day smoking habit, my gallon a day coffee habit and my pint (or five) a day Guiness habit.  My thought was that it's only nine months, why take a chance on anything that could harm the baby.  I kept up with a lot of mom sites where people write in about their woes and other moms support them.  I never understood the 'I made it down to 5 cigarettes a day' moms and the moms who supported them.  There were also lots of 'I just can't give up my coffee...it gives me a headache' moms.  You think your head hurts now, what's it going to feel like when that baby is born early, underweight and with ADD?  This is the first of many times to come where baby comes first!  It's ONLY 9 months!!!

When I carried Keegan, I was a little more relaxed.  I drank one cup of green tea a day.  Technically, the FDA recommendation is 150mg of caffeine a day which amounts to one cup of coffee.  Tea has about 50mg of caffeine and green tea has even less.  I have to admit, one of the reasons I cut out caffeinated beverages was to keep my conscience clean when I consumed mass amounts of chocolate which also contains caffeine, about 30mg for a 2 ounce dark chocolate bar.

With both babies, I was very strict about the fish thing.  I know there are certain allowable fish but I could never keep them straight.  I cut out fish entirely for both pregnancies.  However, with both children I did have a one time only serious crab feast.  I grew up on the Eastern Shore of Maryland, how could I deny myself?  I called my midwife from the crab house and asked if it was okay.  She started flipping through books to find blue crabs on her list.  They were safe! Yes!!!  I probably would have indulged anyway.  I also pigged out on clams.  During Keegan's pregnancy, I bought a bunch of clams to cook on the grill, knowing that Kevin didn't like them.  I had to eat them all myself because we didn't want them to go to waste.  With both kids, I craved tuna melts and I knew I couldn't give in.  This was the first meal I ate after giving birth, both times.  Kevin and I actually packed a cooler to take to the hospital with all the components for after the birth.  With Keegan, it was by chance but much appreciated.

I have to say, the hardest thing of all was giving up coffee.  I really enjoy the first cup of the day.  Being a baker and working crazy hours, I feel I need it to survive.  With Josie, I was scared to drink coffee because I thought it would be harder to stay nicotine clean.  Coffee and cigarettes just go together.  After she was born, I allowed myself one cup of good strong coffee early in the morning.  I was nursing and caffeine still passes through to the baby.  Now that Keegan's on board, I have a few cups of coffee a day.  He's a pretty good sleeper and he's much more calm than Josie ever was so I don't feel it does him any harm.  Leafy greens, however, make both of my kids puke buckets if I eat them and it passes through the breast milk.  I haven't enjoyed a salad in two years.

Back to the coffee...I take my coffee with milk, cold milk.  I hate getting a cup of coffee that is too hot to drink immediately.  Cold milk seems to solve the problem.  Having a toddler in the house means that we go through more milk than I ever could have imagined.  Kevin takes it in his coffee too and he drinks about 25 cups a day.  I would say we use about a gallon of milk a day or at least close to it.  We live 25 minutes from the closest grocery store so we have to be careful to have 'milka milka' for Josie's bedtime bottle and her wake up bottle on hand.  There are times we don't feel like driving into town in the evening so we make sure there is enough for Josie and we plan on taking the trip first thing in the morning.  This means I don't get milk in my coffee and Kevin doesn't get milk in his.  For him, this means that he won't drink the coffee and he will be a total grump until he satisfies his need.  For me, I get creative.  This morning, I stirred whipped cream into my cup.  It's the Cabot kind that is actual cream and not who-knows-what chemical concoction.  I used the last of the bottle and my coffee wasn't quite light enough.  There's peppermint ice cream in the freezer...that may be yummy.  Here's the big confession, there's gallons of breast milk in the freezer, why not?  I haven't tried it yet but I am seriously considering it for cup  #2.  If it weren't my breast milk, it would be in my coffee right now but there's something weird about drinking my own milk, maybe it's just me.   I can't be the only mom, right?  There's got to be a few out there who have already resorted to this.  Let me know if it's you and I'll keep you posted on my desperation level.


 

That's what she said...he, he, he.  Clearly, my new found love for 'The Office' has gotten the best of me. 

Almost every bread recipe you find will tell you to let the bread rise until it has doubled in size.  I let bread rise every day and this still baffles me.  How are you supposed to remember the original size in order to know if it has doubled?  If you're anything like me, ie impatient, you check the dough every five minutes to see if it is ready to go into the oven.  Okay, maybe I don't check it every five minutes when I'm making a couple hundred pounds of dough but if I'm just making a small batch...I check it every five minutes.  I actually tell my students to find something else to do for a couple hours when they are baking at home.  Forgetting about the dough is the best option, sometimes.

I find the best way to know if the bread is ready to bake is the finger poke test.  This is so easy and it works every time.  Simply poke a fingertip into the dough and watch it spring back.  If the dough immediately springs back and holds its original shape, it's not ready, not even close to ready.  If the dough deflates when you touch it, you have over-proofed dough that will not rise again.  If the finger dimple springs back slowly and still leaves a slight impression in the dough, it's perfect.  You can bake away.  This works every time with every kind of dough.  There you have it, doubled in size - demystified. 

Don't worry if you don't get it right.  I still jump the gun.  As a matter of fact, just last week I grossly under proofed a batch of brioche buns.  The hotel next to the bakery wants brioche buns to use for their burgers.  They want them ASAP.  They have, after all, been waiting for a month for the bakery staff to return from winter break.  There was not much wiggle room for product development, just get the buns to the tables.

Last week I had sick babies and my husband's truck is in the shop.  I had to bake extra early in the AM so I could be home in time to get him off to work.  I was pressed for time.  Friday morning, I mixed a batch of brioche for the big bun test.  After 5 hours of poking and waiting, the buns still didn't seem proofed enough.  I should always trust myself but in this case I didn't.  I thought, gee these things have been in the warm, steamy, proof box for 5 hours, they've got to be ready, right?  Nope, they sucked!    I baked them off thinking, well, I don't know what I was thinking but they weren't light and fluffy.  They were dense and they split open because they were, drum roll, under proofed! Don't worry, they didn't go to waste but they weren't ideal either.  Apparently, someone from the hotel wanted to come talk to me about what brioche is supposed to be like.  I am so glad he didn't and I bet he is too.  I will be the first person to notice and the first person to admit when one of my breads doesn't turn out the way it should.  I will also be the first person to correct the problem and send out a stellar product the second time around.

Sunday morning, I mixed another batch of brioche.  I tweaked the formula a little so the dough would be slightly more forgiving than the very delicate brioche I normally mix.  I shaped the buns and let them do their thing.  Five hours later, my baking was done but the rolls weren't ready (yes, I used the finger poke test).  I tagged out and tagged Mark in.  Mark had, after all, proofed and baked thousands of rolls very similar to the two dozen I made, when he was responsible for the 2, 30 pan convection ovens at Amy's Bread.  I left a big sign on Mark's work station so he wouldn't forget the little guys.  Later in the day I got a text message saying that the buns were beauties!  Mission accomplished.

Just as there is a special place in my heart for brioche, there also lies one for a perfect baguette.  What makes a baguette perfect?  Well, the industry places certain standards on the baguette.  It must weigh 350g, 14 oz pre-baked.  It must be 22 inches long and it can only be scored or cut 5 or 7 times.  Easy, right?  Not on your life!

There are so many opportunities to screw up the baguette along the way.  I'm amazed and excited when mine turn out the way I hope.  It starts with a dough.  As I've mentioned before, I use poolish in my French dough.  The poolish is 50% water and 50% flour with a pinch of yeast (technically 1% of the flour weight).  This mixture sits for 18 hours before it is mature enough to use in the dough.  I know it is mature when I see big bubbles beneath the surface and there isn't too much resistance in the gluten network.  Each morning, the first thing I do is to dump my poolish tub (a rubber maid trash can) into the cold steel mixing bowl.  Then I add the appropriate amount of water and flour for the batch size I'm mixing.  These days my batches are about 60 pounds.  I mix these three ingredients at a very slow speed just until there are no big flour lumps.  I stop the mix, cover the bowl with a garbage bag and wait for at least 20 minutes.

Waiting....this is called autolyse.  Autolyse is a method developed by the grandfather of bread, Raymond Calvel.  He is a Frenchman who wrote 'Le Gout du Pain.'  'The taste of bread,' is a scientific approach to baking and one of my all time favorite books.  At any rate, during autolyse the protein in the flour starts to digest itself lending to a more extensible gluten network.  Extensiblity is important when you're striving for 22 inches! During the baking world cup, Team USA, autolysed their dough overnight.  I have to admit, I didn't think that autolyse was a needed step until I started using it.  My dough is much happier now that I take the proper time to let it do it's thing.

After the 20 minutes are up, I add the salt and the yeast to the dough and continue to mix on a slow speed.  My dough is only mixed on high speed for a minute or two.  I don't want to fully develop the gluten in the dough because I want to leave that up to time.  This method of slow fermentation will help to bring out the flavor and the texture of the bread.  Think- ciabatta versus bagels.  I then cut the dough out of the mixer with a sharp knife, into oiled tubs (again, gotta love rubbermaid).  If I were to pull off pieces of dough rather than cut it, I would be damaging the gluten network.  The dough sits in the tubs for about an hour before I fold it, punch it down, turn it...whatever the lingo, I'm simply stretching out the dough and folding it over itself.  This process evens out the temperature of the dough and gives the yeast a brand new source of food.  It is also a gentle way of developing the gluten a little more.

After another hour passes, I start to divide the dough into it's final portions.  Again, I cut off pieces with a sharp bench knife and weigh them out on a balance scale.  These pieces are then shaped into little logs that rest for 15 minutes or so before I start rolling them out into baguettes.  The baguette shaping is in line for the most difficult part of the process.  If I hadn't spent night after night, shaping thousands of baguettes at Amy's Bread, I would still be an awful baguette shaper.  The shape has to be a perfect line but the propensity to end up with a dog bone where there is less dough in the center, is very high.  Once I shape my perfect baguettes, I line them up on a wooden board, snuggled in a couche , or linen, to rest and rise.  'Coucher' means 'to sleep' in French.  This is where they stay until they've properly risen. 

When they are ready to bake, I flip them onto my oven loader with a 'planchette.'  This board is a gentle way of moving the baguettes to a new surface.  I then score them, the other most difficult part of the process.  These five lines are cuts made with a straight razor called a 'lame' (pronounced like the beginning of 'llama' not like the word for 'uncool').  The cuts have to be a an exact 45 degree angle.  They overlap slightly and they run down the exact center of the baguette.  If I get this right, the baguettes 'ears' will open up, yielding a beautiful final product. 

I leave the soldiers in the oven until they are a a little darker than golden brown.  I'd say it's more of a mahogany.  The dark color is the 'Maillard Reaction' which is kind of like carmelization.  If the baguettes are light in color they will have much less flavor.  Think in terms of sugar...plain, white, uncooked sugar tastes sweet but once it is cooked, the resulting caramel is teaming with flavor.

That's it.  A day in the life of a baguette.  I have to mention, my son Keegan was exactly 22 inches long the day he was born.  Is this nature's way of telling me I chose the right profession? 

Sorry for the delay in posts...again...my little one was sick last week.  Keego had roseola which is a 3 day fever followed by a rash.  He's over it now and life can go on as per usual.  Thanks for reading. -R

I had the good fortune of visiting Sullivan Street Bakery yesterday.  Jim Lahey, of no-knead fame, is the owner of Sullivan Street.  He invited me to stay and watch how his operation works.  Of course I couldn't just stand by and watch so I jumped in and helped mix, divide and shape his bread.  The bakery is different from anywhere I've baked before yet still remains very much the same.  My afternoon started with Antonio, the mixer.  As far as I could tell, he is the longest running baker there.  After twelve years, he can do it all.  Every bakery has an anchor.  The anchor tends to be the person who mixes the dough.  The mixer has to be trusted above all others.  Yesterday, Antonio was mixing 200 kilo batches of dough...that's about 500 pounds.  Imagine if he forgot the salt or worse yet, added too much salt and he ruined 500 pounds of inventory in one swoop.  If the dough is properly mixed, it easily lends itself to shaping and it will have the flavor and structure that Jim, in this case, is striving for.  I tend to get a little bored with mixing (unless it's mixing brioche), shaping is more my game.  I don't know how these anchors can do what they do, day in and day out. 

At Bread Alone, Alex was the mixer.  He came in at 5am every day and mixed away.  That was his only responsibility but he knew it well.  He knew when to add ice to the water and how much to add.  He knew when the flour was a little young and what to do to improve the dough.    Amy's Bread has several mixers.  There is actually a mixing team.  Amy mixes more varieties of dough than Sullivan Street or Bread Alone.  The mixing team is very strong and they too have an anchor.  Orlando has been at Amy's Bread for at least 10 years though I can't remember exactly.  He is the head mixer.   He mixes 6, sometimes 7, days a week as the mixers often do.  The mixing team works in the early morning.  Orlando was always the 'go to' guy if I had any problems over night.  Brioche didn't rise properly, challah was too cold, potato over-proofed....no problem, Orlando would fix it!

After I got to know Antonio, the first shift of bakers arrived to start shaping and dividing the dough.  A couple days ago, Jim had a contest to see if anyone on his team could divide dough faster and with more accuracy than he could.  The prize was $100 to match and $200 to beat.  Antonio's brother, Oscar became a very rich baker that day and Jim seemed pretty bummed that he let his speed slip.  Jim's method of dividing was totally different from mine and it difficult for me to get the hang of.  Oscar divides in much the same way in which I was taught.  Who knew there were so many different ways to achieve the same results?  When dividing the dough by hand, a balance scale is used to make sure all the pieces are the same weight.  It is important to try to get the proper weight on the first cut because it is easier to shape a whole, rectangular lump of dough than to try and shape lots of small bits that occur when the piece is too heavy or too light.  Jim told me the bits signify doubt.  If you doubt your ability to feel the correct weight of the dough, you end up with bits.

Once the pieces were divided, Jim showed me his shaping technique.  Again, this was new to me.  It's been a long time since someone showed me something new in terms of the baking process.  It was total brain candy!  I fumbled with Jim's method of shaping.  Normally, I loosely shape the interior of the loaf and tightly seal the outside.  Jim shapes the exact opposite way.  I use the outside edge of my hands, the lines created by my pinky fingers to my palms, to fold the dough over.  Jim uses the line created by his thumbs.  That being said, I was all thumbs and not in a good way, when I tried to shape like Jim.  It took a lot of effort and I loved it.  My hands had to think for the first time in years.  I didn't get to stay long enough to master the new-to-me technique but I did get to hang around and talk theory with Jim Lahey.  I dorked out with one of the biggest baking geeks in the business!  What a great day.