Richard Hart Bread

Good Bread

There are a million bread books and bakers out there. Why pick this one by me?

I can easily be outgeeked. I meet a lot of bakers who want to talk to me about bread baking in a very scientific way, but to be honest, my eyes glaze over in seconds. There are plenty of books that go deep into this stuff, if you want to go there. It’s quite easy to find online forums where you can argue about the effect of a half-degree temperature difference on a specific flour’s storage protein glass phase. Looking to compare the phylogenetic distribution patterns of wheat species between Asia and North America? F*** me—I’ll be in my bakery, mixing together flour, water, and salt.

I understand and respect the science, I admire the enthusiasm, but that’s not the kind of baker I am. I look at the dough, I put my hands in it, I smell it. I see how it behaves when I touch and stretch and shape it. I watch how it rises in the oven. I assess the baked bread. And I compare it to what I’ve done before. I go by my experience and my senses. I’m more of a sensualist than a scientist, and in this book, I’ll show you exactly what I look for, so you can see, smell, touch, and taste your way to your own great bread.

I’ve been baking bread professionally for fifteen years. I still get nervous every morning, waking up with my first thought being, “How did my dough do overnight?” I worry every single day about how well my bread will turn out. There are only two or three days a year when I can honestly say I’ve baked a perfect loaf. I can make great bread, but each new day brings the possibility of perfect bread. It’s never not exciting. I truly love being a bread baker, and I’m so lucky that I can make a living out of this.

In my late twenties I left behind a career as a chef and the clean-shaven, regimented precision of London fine dining kitchens. I started baking bread in California, in a rustic barn with two wood-burning ovens. The first time I walked into that bakery, Della Fattoria, I was completely gobsmacked. I couldn’t believe that people still made bread like that. It felt so old school, so honest. I’d imagined that professional bakeries were full of modern machinery, all stainless steel and white tile. At Della, if you took away the one big mixer, it could have been a bakery from a thousand years ago. Here was an ancient art that I could still explore, as relevant and as important to human happiness as it has always been.

When I first quit working as a chef, my mum said, “You’re going to be so bored. You’ve gone from working with tons of different ingredients to just a few.”

But the truth is, I’ve never been more engaged. After all these years, I still can’t wait to get up in the morning (or even the middle of the night) and start baking. A lot of what makes me a good baker is how much I care. I really do give a shit. Giving people freshly baked bread, as good as you can possibly make it—bread that you’ve made with your own hands, and put all your heart into—is magical.

And there is something profoundly humbling about making bread. You can’t get cocky about it. (Well, you can, but the minute you do, it kicks you in the arse, and you’re back to being humbled.)

There are so many tiny variables. You fed your starter ten minutes later today, or your dough was half a degree warmer last night. Maybe there was a storm and the air pressure changed. Perhaps the flour was milled from wheat that came from a higher-elevation field on the farm. Trying to account for and adjust to all the variables—it’s endlessly challenging, fascinating, and rewarding, and no one day is exactly like any other.

There will be days when you make your best bread ever, and then the next day, something intangible changes, and the dough just isn’t the same. The trick is to embrace the changes, not get freaked out, and you’ll still learn how to make bread that’s just as good.

Absolute devotion to consistent methods and exact recipes is useful when you’re running a fast-food franchise or a fine dining kitchen, but when you’re baking bread, the most important thing is to understand your dough and be ready to make adjustments.

When I first started baking, my day was managed through increments of time. We’d mix and shape the dough and bake bread strictly according to the recipes and the clock, with no variations, and sometimes the quality of the bread suffered because of that.

But when I joined the team at Tartine in San Francisco, I was amazed by the way Chad Robertson, the founder, made bread by reading the dough. For me, it was a chance to dive deeper into understanding why things happened. It wasn’t about following recipes. We made bread using our intuition and collective experience, to do with it what it wanted. I started to appreciate that the dough is a living thing; it’s alive, constantly changing, and like all living things, it wants to be taken care of, and treated with love and respect.

When I set up my own bakery in Copenhagen, Denmark, I faced new challenges that have deepened my understanding of breadmaking. The flour in Europe is so different from the flour in the US. And I know that you and I won’t necessarily be baking in the same climate, with the same ingredients, but don’t worry. Whether you’re a home baker or a professional, wherever you are in the world, the way to make good bread remains the same if you learn how it behaves and you learn to develop an intuition for it.

Learning to take care of your dough requires a bit of dedication and work. You’re unlikely to get it spot-on straightaway. You need to form an intimate relationship with the craft, and the only way to improve is through practice, repetition, and learning through your experience—your successes and your mistakes.

You’ll need to start asking questions of your environment, your ingredients, and the dough. Is it humid outside, or dry? How hot or cold is it? How does the flour feel in your fingers—dry and powdery, or slightly damp? What can you smell in the starter, the flour, the dough? How big are the bubbles in the fermenting dough? How sticky is it? How does the dough react when you touch it? What does it look like when you divide it? How does it act when you shape it, score it, and bake it?

You probably do this kind of intuitive, observational caretaking and problem-solving all the time. If you’re a parent, you can often tell what’s going on with your kids just by looking at their faces, or the way they’re sitting. You can tell when your bike needs a tune-up by how it rides. You know when your knives need to be sharpened by how they cut, without having to touch the blade. We all have examples of an intuition developed through experience, repetition, and some trial and error.

I have written this book to share everything I have learned about baking bread, and all the experience I have gained. I’m not going to hold anything back. I believe it’s good to give away all your knowledge, to help others and not be afraid of their successes. Everyone who knows me knows I can’t keep a secret anyway. It doesn’t stop me from growing. I’m always thinking and evolving.

I want to help you develop your intuition and become a baker of great bread that has amazing flavor and texture. It will look beautiful, too. I want us all to make good bread—and this book is about how to do that.