Anytime a person goes into a delicatessen and orders a
pastrami on white bread, somewhere a Jew dies.
- Milton Berle
The
first time I heard the term "artisan baking" I thought of
the great ceramic artists I have known, and about firing clay in a
kiln, not dough in an oven. Artisans are craftspeople who produce exquisite
works to be enjoyed and appreciated. But in my opinion, bakers
are not really that kind of artisan.
Why am
I quibbling? Because the unfortunate reality about American culture
is that whenever something gets a certain cachet,
it becomes fair game for the Business People - folks whose talent
lies in the various illusions
of sales and marketing rather than skill and craft.
Let's look
at what is happening to the term "organic". In the Sixties
some guys I know took part in the establishment of what would become
the OCIA standards - the foundation of how we now determine what's
organic and what isn't. They started a store in Northern
California around that time - small, sweet, homey -- never even got close to getting
rich, but the legacy they leave is incalculable. All because
they are driven by a passion for the Earth, for good food, and
for the well-being of the their fellow creatures.
Then the Business People discovered organics. The Department of Agriculture
tried to gut the standards so the Business People could market practically any food as "organic" and
cash in on the bonanza. And if there hadn't been a massive outcry from consumers, the term "organic" would
have become as meaningless as the word "ultra" that appears on
every single package of laundry detergent.
And that's
what's happening to the term "artisan bread". I have seen
loaves in chain supermarkets with
the label "Artisan Bread".
I know for a fact that the rubbery-crusted "french-style" loaf
is made by rapid overmixing
using chemically processed flour, too much yeast,
and put through a mechanical divider and shaper. The only fermentation going on is from highly refined baker's
yeasts, so there's little in the way of flavor, other than what we've
come to expect from supermarket bread.
Given this wholesale co-opting of
the term "artisan" by marketing specialists, about the only definition
of "artisan bread" might be "free-form loaves with little slash marks on the top".
Good bread, on the other hand, is made from flour which is ground from
high-quality grain and
used relatively fresh with a natural starter, good clean water, and
untreated salt. The one element great bread has going for it
is TIME. A proper
leaven has several types of bacteria and yeast which are perfectly
adapted to the process of rendering ground grains digestible and nourishing
for our consumption. And the only way to let these amazing agents of
fermentation do their work is to leave them alone for a while.
So if there is really anything that might
distinguish an "artisan baker" from the rest, it would have to be this element of
giving the dough enough time. And because long fermentation often does not fit the schedule of
large commercial bakeries, the other factor would be scale, the size of the operation.
Owens-Corning is obviously not your village glass artisan. General Motors is hardly the local carriage maker.
So likewise a certain L.A. based par-baked
bread operation (for example), with nationwide distribution could scarcely be called an "artisan bakery".
I think it's marvellous that even after all the advancements of technology,
some things are still best done on a small scale, and, in some cases, with ancient means. Such is the craft of fine baking:
nothing yet can beat the quality of heat in a simple masonry oven, and there's no 'new and improved' way to ferment good wheat flour.
It still takes patience, care, and love.
