Bread and Memory

November 1, 2020November 1, 2020

Bread and Memory

Pan de Muerto.

I’ve never actually baked it, and to be honest, until this morning I didn’t even know it existed. (I say that with a certain amount of shame). Pan de Muerto is a “…round loaf shaped like a skull” that is, as I understand it, commonly placed on altars for the dead during Día de los Muertos.

I learned all of that from this article: https://www.washingtonpost.com/food/2020/10/26/pan-de-muerto-recipe/

It was particularly interesting to see that article this morning as I have, for the last several days, been thinking about bread and memory, both personal and cultural. In the Jewish culture, the one that I know best, bread is central to how we remember who we are and where we came from .

The holiday of Passover centers around matzah, the unleavened flatbread over which we tell the story of the genesis of the Jewish people. At the Passover seder we wrap the long and complicated telling of our history around this most simple of loaves.

And there are other cultural connections. Every Friday night many Jewish families around the world bake Challah. There are a whole world of different recipes, yet each family makes a loaf that connects them to their ancestors back through the years. I strongly remember, when I was at the early stages of deepening my Jewish practice, that I was holding the two loaves over which we say a blessing on Friday night, and the strongest sense came over me that this simple blessing over these two loaves connected me to my grandparents, and their parents, and their parents, and on and on back and back to…the matzah baked when leaving Egypt, or the pita that my Syrian great, great, great, great grandparents blessed and ate at their Sabbath table.

Every time I go into a proper bagel shop (this is usually in New York, even though I believe that it is possible to make a decent bagel in other places), the smell reminds me of the many times I’ve stood in line buying bagels for family and friends. It also reminds me of going into a bagel shop with my father when I was a little kid and him telling me that the smell reminded him of the bagels of his youth.

Connections. It is one of the amazing things about food, and breads in particular. A croissant can remind you of a particular breakfast in bed 30 years ago, and a loaf of cranberry bread can remind you of celebrating holidays with people who are no longer with us. Or the drives my wife and I took when we first moved to Sonoma County, stopping at Wild Flour Bread for a loaf of their cheesy fougasse on our way to the ocean.

And a loaf of Pan de Muerto can connect you to ancestors who are gone, and yet not gone.

I think this is why they say when you are selling a house that you should bake bread before showing a house. The smell, they say, will make a house feel like a home. And no wonder, the smell and taste of bread can connect us to our memories, and histories like few other things.

These are some of the bread memories – both personal and cultural – that I have. What are yours? I’d love to hear of the cultural and personal connections that you have when smelling or eating bread.

Image from: https://www.wideopeneats.com/recipes/pan-de-muerto/ – (Let me know if you don’t want me to use it)

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June 18, 2020June 18, 2020

I Don’t Bake Olive Bread!

I’m looking online at a list of great bakeries around the country. Not for any really good reason. Sometimes I just like to look around and see what people are up to and see if any good ideas pop into my head. It’s usually a nice way to pass some time.

But today, deep down, almost below perception, I feel a rant welling up inside of me. I want to keep it down. I try sucking on ice chips and drinking something bubbly and taking deep breaths, but it just won’t stay down.

Here it comes…

Why is it that in the descriptions of all of these bakeries, they are praised for making some fancy-ass bread?

“Beer-infused Olive Bread”
“a white boule studded with Callebaut chocolate chunks”
“Multi Grain covered with rolled oats and the Cherry Pecan”
“Rosemary-Meyer Lemon bread” “Asiago Parmesan Cheese Bread”

Doesn’t anyone just make plain bread anymore‽

Of course they do. And I’m sure all of these bakeries also make amazing Baguettes, Sourdough or Rye loaves. But it makes me wonder, what is this obsession we have of making a whole meal in a loaf of bread, or making something fancy and shiny, instead of simple and perfect? How come, no matter how spectacularly a baker pulls together simple ingredients, carefully measures time and temperature, mixes it with patience , attention and care to create a spectacular loaf that makes your heart sing, people are still more impressed by an ordinary loaf of olive rosemary bread?.

A simple, perfect loaf is incredibly difficult! To wow people with sparkle-berries and chocolate star-chips is easy. It’s the baking version of the photographer Lord Snowdon’s quote, “if you can’t make it good, make it big”.

Why should I make Olive Cheese bread? A perfect, simple loaf, you can eat with whatever kind of olives and cheese you want. Why should I make a chocolate baguette when you can eat a beautiful, plain baguette with whatever delicious chocolate you have around?

As you may have guessed, I’m a purist. Not just in baking, but in most things. I prefer a guitarist who can play one beautiful note to one who can play blindingly fast. I prefer a painter who can tell a story with subtle color choices to one who has so much going on that you don’t know where to look. I also prefer a baker who puts all of their energy into making a simple, beautiful loaf.

…and I hope you disagree with me completely. Because here’s the truth. The thing that’s going to make you a great baker – or musician, or sculptor, or whatever your medium is – are different from the things that work for me. Your art – and I believe bread along with the other food arts are every bit the art that music or painting are – is going to be great because it’s an expression of who you are and what your tastes are and what you believe. The passion to rant about some subtle distinction of color or flavor to friends and strangers alike, is also the passion that will inspire you to work to perfect your vision. Perfecting your vision and putting it out there is what it takes to be successful in any of the arts.

It’s the delightful paradox of art: different people can take completely opposite ideas and make great art out of them. So, as much as I want to rant about fancy-bread, I also completely concede that there are some bread-artists out there making amazing fancy bread. That’s their art; it’s not my art.

To be both artists and good citizens of an artistic community we may have to live in tension between knowing we are absolutely right about something, and knowing we are absolutely wrong about that same thing. As my great teacher, Jonathan Omer-man used to say, part of the spiritual journey is the ability to live in paradox. Being an artist can also be a spiritual journey, if you want it to be (and sometimes even if you don’t).

Or you can just make a great loaf of bread.

Finally, a confession: I love to make olive cheese bread sometimes. While it kind of goes against my purist notions, sometimes it’s just what I want to make and eat. And more importantly, my wife loves fancy bread.

When we first moved to Sonoma County in the early aughts, my wife and I used to drive out to the coast on Sunday mornings and take long walks along the beautiful, rocky, Northern California coast. On our drive out we would stop at Wild Flour Bread in Freestone (wildflourbread.com) and pick up at least one loaf of their beautiful, cheesy, fougasse to eat at the beach. We would inevitably devour it in the car on our drive, arriving at the coast covered in crumbs, with big smiles on our faces.

There’s a time and place for a fancy loaf, and I’m glad someone is committed to baking them.

What’s my point? That’s often a good question with me. I guess it’s that I hope that while you’re pursuing your vision and passion for your art, that you don’t get so locked in that you can’t see and try other things. Maybe you’ll learn something, or at least have a nice lunch.

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April 22, 2020April 22, 2020

Matzah, my love

I love matzah. My wife loves matzah too. in fact even our Beagle Winston loves matzah.

Is that strange?

How much do we love it?

There is a custom not to eat matzah for a period before Passover – from 1 to 30 days – so that when you first eat it at the Passover seder it’s with extra joy and excitement. In the Rubinstein household, the month before Passover when we don’t eat matzah feels like the deprivation of something essential and life-giving. However, like winter in Pittsburgh (where I grew up and went to college), where the first spring day when it’s warm enough to go outside in a t-shirt is so glorious that it almost makes it worth the way-too-many months of winter spent indoors worth it, the first bite of matzah at seder after not eating matzah for a month is so delicious that it’s worth the month of deprivation.

Though I can’t imagine it, some people think matzah is something to endure once a year at Passover, and then block from their minds until faced with it again next year. They think of it as a flat, white square that tastes like cardboard and constipates you for days. Sure, you can grind it up and make it into matzah balls, and almost everyone likes matzah balls…that is unless the only ones they have had are the hard, dry, sit-in-your-stomach-for-days kind. (Yes, it’s true, some people like their matzah balls this way, but that’s something for them to take up in therapy).

In terms of cooked matzah, at lest traditionally, the highest form is Matzo Brei. The lowest, if you care about my opinion, are those soggy sponge cakes served at passover. (I’m sure your bubbie’s was great. No need to write.)

Did you know that not all matzah is white and square? Many people eat beautiful, hand-made, round, baked to a deep brown, shmura matzah. Other than being cracker-hard and dry, it shares few qualities with the square machine-made matzah that you are probably thinking about.

And here’s a shocker (to some people at least), it’s likely that the original matzah was probably not hard like a cracker, but was likely soft like a…well, like a middle eastern flatbread (which it is). In fact, there are still communities that eat soft matzah, and an increasing general acceptance that soft matzah is okay to eat at Passover.

I thought of writing about matzah during Passover, which just ended, but I never got around to it. Perhaps I was too busy eating matzah to write about it. As my beloved wife always says, you don’t want to spend more time talking about your relationship than you spend having it. The same thing is true of matzah, it seems: You shouldn’t spend more time writing about it than you spend eating it.

My hope this year was that I would finish building my new oven just in time to bake matzah in it for Passover, and that we would get to eat home baked matzah this year. (While not going into the Jewish law of matzah baking too much, I wouldn’t be able to use the oven that I used for baking bread throughout the year for making matzah for Passover). For many reasons, that didn’t happen. Truth be told, for other reasons of Jewish law that I won’t go into, I wasn’t sure that baking my own matzah was really that good of an idea anyway.

My Oven — My new, but unfinished oven where I was planning on baking my Passover matzah this year.

But now that passover is over, I can bake all of the matzah I want. So, I invite you to follow me down this strange journey into the land of matzah, where miracles happen, and battle lines are drawn, and the Metamucil flows freely.

The plan is to do three posts: The history of Matzah, recipes for baking matzah, and finally recipes for using matzah.

Buckle up!

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March 19, 2020March 23, 2020

Bread in the time of Corona – Part 1

Normally I would say that paying attention to your bread at every stage, and being present when it’s time to take action, are two of the most important qualities in a baker. Bread dough is a living thing and, if you are listening, it will tell you how it’s doing and what it needs. The key is to be able to pay attention, to listen (metaphorically), to what the bread needs, and then to do that thing.

To say that I was distracted and not paying attention, and not present when I needed to be during my last bake is a fantastic understatement. As seems to be clear at the moment, the world has been turned upside down and everything is not the way we thought it was a couple of months ago, and as a result of my being completely distracted and not present when things needed to happen, I made one of the best loaves I’ve ever made.

Counterintuitive, but true.

I’ve been doing some recipe testing for Fougasse, a wonderful French flatbread. First day I made a loaf using a Paté Fermenté (a kind of pre-ferment). Day two, yesterday, was going to be another test using a sourdough as a pre-ferment (as opposed to sourdough as the leavening agent). I had prepared the levain the night before so I would be ready to go in the morning.

Enter reality…

Because of the spread of the novel coronavirus, most of the Bay Area counties had been given “Shelter In Place” orders the previous day, and rumor had it that it was going to happen to us here in Sonoma County soon, so I wanted to get all of my “out in public” things done before the lockdown. My 84 year old mother needed some food and medicine picked up, and since they are recommending people over 65 stay in as much as possible, I was clearly going to spend the day errand running (which I was happy to do, mom).

My levain – which was looking perfect and ready to go – sadly had to hold on until later. I popped it into the fridge as I headed out the door. This is something I never do; I never retard a levain. When the levain is at that perfect moment it wants to be used (as do we all). But retarding in the fridge slows fermentation down, and since I don’t like throwing things out, I figured I’d just see where the levain was when I got home and figure out what I was going to do then.

Off I went into battle with seemingly all of Sonoma county, trying to buy whatever they could before the world came to an end. At least that’s what it felt like.

Six hours later I was home again and after a thorough decontamination, I pulled my levain out of the fridge to finish what I’d started the night before. Sad face. It was definitely a bit over-fermented – a little too acidic and starting to collapse a bit – but not to be deterred, I decided to proceed.

Bread prep — Image © 2020 David Rubinstein

I put the dough together, put it in it’s tub for bulk fermentation, and sat down to obsessively read about coronavirus. The bulk fermentation was supposed to be around two hours, so I set a timer for 90 minutes (I always set the timer early so I don’t miss The Moment).

I don’t know what happened, either I hadn’t actually set the timer, or it went off and I was just too distracted to notice (wouldn’t be the first time). Two-and-a-half hours later I looked up and let out an expletive when I realized that I had forgotten all about my dough and it had over-fermented, once again.

Again, like the levain, it wasn’t too bad, and I figured I’d continue on. I wasn’t expecting much out of this loaf, but even bad fresh bread is better than no fresh bread.

As I put the bread in the oven, it was clearly over proofed, wet and slack and flattening out before my eyes. “Crackers are good too”, I said to myself.

But in the oven it transformed into something beautiful and unexpected. The parts that completely degassed got crunchy while some of thicker bits, while they didn’t get a lot of oven bounce, were certainly soft and delicious. The cheese, which I had cut into cubes rather than grate, pushed to the surface and crisped up like fried cheese (something I’m particularly fond of).

These loaves were a lovely gift at the end of a long day, and a reminder that sometimes not being in control gives you something beautiful and unexpected. I find this a useful reminder in difficult times when I am particularly aware that we don’t have much control over anything.

Now I have to figure out how to make them again intentionally.

Be safe everyone.

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