Most artisan breads are based on the same four ingredients: flour, water, salt, and a leavener. The first step to making great bread is to choose great versions of those ingredients.
Better Flour
Let’s start with flour. At Zingerman’s Bakehouse, the “house” flour is an organic AP flour that comes from a single mill in Colorado—most of it grown on a single farm. The bakers use more than 20,000 pounds of it each week. It’s included in baked goods from Farm Bread to Hummingbird Cake.
For many breads and pastries, the team at our Bakehouse also use locally grown, freshly milled whole grain flours. Many of those flours are milled in the bakery on the in-house stone mill, including the rye flour used in the Vollkornbrot and Roadhouse breads. The freshly milled flours are more variable and perishable, but used well they contribute exceptional depth of flavor.
Natural Leavening
Let’s talk about leavening, too. While some Zingerman’s breads, like Paesano and Sesame Semolina, are made with yeast, more than a dozen of our breads are naturally leavened. Naturally leavened breads are made without the addition of commercial yeast, relying instead on the “wild” yeasts present in the sourdough starters the Bakehouse team has been feeding daily since 1992. Zingerman’s naturally leavened breads range from the tangiest Better than San Francisco Style Sourdough to sweeter loaves like Cinnamon Raisin and Chocolate Cherry.
Time
The most important ingredient is one you’ll never see listed on a label: time. At Zingerman’s, making bread is a slow process. A loaf of Farm bread takes 18 hours. A loaf of Paesano bread takes a whopping 20 hours. All that time allows for incredible flavor development, the same way that a broth simmered all day has way more intense, complex flavor than one that’s only been cooking for a couple of hours.
Those flavorless artisan breads from other bakeries probably suffer from being made in just a few hours, not allowing enough time for flavor development. And incidentally, those bags of sliced white bread at the grocery? Thanks to industrial dough developers and oxidizers, they can go from raw flour to oven- ready dough in four minutes flat. No wonder they don’t taste like much!
Stone
The method of baking matters, too. Zingerman’s breads are baked in a stone hearth oven. The stone allows for more even distribution of heat, making for a crisper, more flavorful crust.
All the little steps add up. Zingerman’s breads are deeply aromatic, with complex flavors of grain. You really can taste the difference.
Photo credit: EE Berger