Baking is the first form of magic I ever discovered. To this day, when I drive by an Entenmann’s® or other baking facility, the smells transport me 1000 miles away and 40 or more years into the past.
Baking itself is very interesting, with nuances about the ingredients, the treatment of products as they are being prepared, and the mechanisms used in a craft bakery. In this column I will describe some of these, in a way that does not distract from the main flow of the book
The differences between the smells of a good craft bread, a sweet dough, and a commercial bakery sandwich bread are as clear and distinctive as the differences between professional football, baseball, and hop scotch.
The bakery formed the backdrop of my growing up, a life and a lifestyle that is more and more rare in today’s America. The bakery represented one of a thousand different kinds of small, sole-proprietor or small corporation businesses that were the backbone of our way of life; the character of a city or town made up of the distinctive shops and foods it offered.
And wafting from the bakery is the foundation of that character.
In our homes, there is usually one type of flour: All-purpose.
In a home engaged in bread-baking, there may be a “Better for Bread” flour.
If you are in-the-know, you may even know that the “Better for Bread” flour is high in gluten, the cohesive protein that binds flour together and makes for good cellular structure in a bread.
But unless you have been in the grain or baking business, you may not be aware of the wide variety of flours used in craft bread baking. And I’ll bet the farmers of the wheat we use for baking have a different take on this altogether.
Family owned and operated for over 50 years.
I live in Denver, now, and though the bakery has been closed for over 35 years, I still receive compliments on both the products of the bakery, and the gratitude to the family.
Growing up, people always tried to explain how important an institution our family business was, and the legendary generosity of the Schwartz family. Invoking the hard years of the depression, the refrain was always the same,
“More bread left by the back door than ever went out the front,”
they’d tell me, and repeating the memory inwardly, a second time
“More bread left by the back door than ever went out the front.”
There are six types of wheat: hard red winter wheat, hard red spring wheat, soft red winter wheat, hard white wheat, and durum wheat.
They each differ by protein and gluten content. The hard wheats have higher amounts of protein; the softer wheats a lower amount. Soft wheats are associated with the South--cakes and biscuits and pie crusts are best made from soft wheats; hard wheats are associated with the Midwest--breads and rolls. Durum is associated with pasta.
When I used to ask about getting Schwartz Bakery recipes with my Dad, he would always explain to me that it was so simple: 2 bags of flour, a bucket of water, a pound of yeast, mix it up and there you go!
While this was funny, when I did get a copy of the bakery recipes, it is also very true. There are measures and amounts that simply do not match what we small-quantity bakers do in the kitchen.
Significant energy goes into finding the right amounts that match bakery quantities!