We use the age-old method of long fermentation for our breads and laminated pastries. This means that after the dough is mixed, it is given a long time at a controlled temperature to develop flavor and strength. Fermentation coaxes flavor from the wheat. This process can take hours or even days. All of our breads are made with four ingredients: flour, water, salt and yeast or sourdough starter. To those ingredients we add nuts, raisins, cheese, olives—but never preservatives. The fermentation itself helps to act as a preservative to extend the shelf life a bit. Have you ever noticed how some “freshly baked” loaves you buy at the grocery store are rock hard and stale by nightfall? This is because they use lots of yeast and shorten the fermentation times for quick production time. This results in flavorless bread with a very short (sometimes only hours) shelf life.
INGREDIENTS
We use unbleached, untreated all purpose flour for most of our breads. This flour is unique in that, unlike most other white flours, it is processed gently at the mill, keeping most of the nutrients naturally found in flour. Enriched or treated flour needs these nutrients re-introduced in the milling process. Our whole wheat flour, rye flour and all of our whole grains are organic. We use whole fresh eggs, high butterfat (83%) butter and all natural ingredients in all of our pastries. We never use mixes or pre-made anything.
PRE-FERMENTATION
A pre-ferment can be a sourdough starter or a yeasted starter. It is a dough that can be stiff or soupy or anywhere in between. We use 3 different types of pre-ferments: a stiff, whole wheat sourdough, a soupy rye sourdough and a stiff, yeasted Italian style starter called a Biga. All of our breads contain at least one, if not two pre-ferments. The main job of a pre-ferment is to jump start the long fermentation process. It gives a tremendous amount of flavor, texture, strength, shelf life and character to our breads. They behave similarly in all breads, except that the sourdough brings additional acidity to the final loaf because the starter is perpetuated over time. A chunk of this already formed and fermented pre-ferment is added to the dough in the initial mix.Our sourdough starters began life on the front shelf of our old Llopis brick oven at our Hope Street store several months before opening the bakery! Keeping a sourdough starter young and healthy, through a series of “builds” or “refreshments,” creates complexity and strength without an overbearing tang in the finished loaf. We work hard to create sourdough bread that is complex in flavor, with a mild tang, but not too much.
In contrast to the sourdough, which has been kept healthy and active for years, our Biga is created daily by mixing a very small amount of yeast into a stiff mixture of water and flour. This is allowed to ferment for up to 30 hours before being used in our yeasted breads and laminated pastry. By using a yeasted pre-ferment, we are able to cut back the total amount of yeast dramatically, creating a more natural, long fermentation, while creating none of the acidity, or sourness, found in sourdough bread.Many customers have commented over the years that our bread is not very sour, but has a tremendous amount of flavor. They are always surprised that sourdough bread is not necessarily sour. This is a quality we strive for by keeping our sourdough starters young and healthy. They are always ready to raise the bread and contribute flavor and texture. In fact, many French bakers consider excessively sour bread a defect. We prefer to pull as much flavor out of the wheat, while giving a slight tang that compliments the bread and the other
food at the table, rather than overwhelm the palate with what we call “battery acid!”
LAMINATED DOUGH
Croissants and Danish are made by a process called lamination. Butter is literally folded into a piece of fermented dough. We start by mixing and fermenting slightly sweet, rich dough. We then begin the process of “folding” butter in. The chilled butter is encased in the dough and repetitively rolled out and folded onto itself until there are many distinct layers of butter and dough. In between folds, the dough is given a chance to rest. When the dough is finally shaped and proofed and put in the oven, the steam created from the dough in the oven helps create the layers of light flaky pastry that we love. If the pasty is not flaking all over your lap, we either did something wrong, or it’s a humid day!
