Years of daily work in the bakery grew my tiny trees of skill and competence into forests, forming regions, continents, and connected plates in my small universe of bread. When a woodworker gains proficiency with the plane and band saw, the tools recede to the background and a door opens to let in creativity and expression. After many, many repetitions I grew to where I could feel doughs and sense what they needed, and my hands began to adjust in gentle increments while shaping. I wrote formulas in my head, foreseeing outcomes and making adjustments to improve results before even trying them in the bakery. Through the syntax, structure, and language of baking, I slowly gained the ability to speak through bread and shifted my focus to expression. I didn’t know where this path would lead, I had heard of the “world cup of bread baking,” but I was busy enough and content to follow my heart, exploring the delicious world of bread, finding my own way and words.
In the beginning of this exploration I wanted the greatest hits. I played my way from French baguette and pain de seigle north into Germany for Vollkornbrot and down to the Mediterranean for Italian schiacciata, and to points beyond, all in an attempt to learn a corner of the landscape before working in my own backyard. When I did begin to do my own design work, I found it helped to think of bread in the abstract; a loaf was like a house to be built or a theater production to be mounted. I considered the elements, balancing them as if on a design board with the requisite cohesion and contrast. When we bite, we sense in waves that roll in, forming the totality of the eating experience. As bakers we can guide this, making choices at each intersection of crust and crumb, fermentation and grain choice. We can push sweet against salt and find shapes that affect the interior structure of bread; or we can choose visual options from stenciling to decorative scoring with a razor blade before baking, all of which tease the eyes with beauty—for visual richness is the first bite we take. There are endless opportunities to play and grow and express.
Durum wheat—appropriately named, meaning “hard” in Latin (think “durable”)—is primarily grown in North Dakota and is used in making pasta. It is so hard that it resists pressure to become flour, and when crushed during milling, initially only shatters into small sandy pieces that many know as semolina, literally, “half-milled.” But if pressed further with stones, rollers, or hammers it will eventually yield, producing a flour with the yellow hue of butter and wildflowers. I wanted to make a bread that celebrated this color—a loaf whose slices could shine across a room, sending the sunlight of last summer from the Dakota plains to our table. And wouldn’t the loaf be even better with yellow raisins dotting the field here and there, glistening jewels of bright sweetness? To contrast with the raisins I wanted a clean tone, a refreshing push, so I added a small amount of fresh rosemary, so small as to raise only a question mark of taste, not an exclamation point. I mixed the base dough, and while it rested in the bowl I sprinkled the raisins and rosemary on top. The soft yellow, pooling mass of durum flour forming a background, with yellow raisins and green rosemary flecks for garnish, was enough. If bread making stopped at this point, I would still be doing it. It is enough to simply look and touch, with the supple glistening stretch of dough and rich colors of nature transforming in the mixing bowl. But it doesn’t end there; it gets even better. Before baking, I rolled the loaf in semolina to add an exterior texture to the crust that browns and toasts beautifully in the oven. When baked, the loaf gives a sweet aroma with the faintest whiff of rosemary.