The Art of Bread Making

At Companion Breads, a community-supported bakery, the process of bread making begins well before the ingredients for the dough are combined. The first step occurs the day before baking day, with the lighting of the fire in the brick bread oven Bryce Johnson built in his backyard. Bryce, owner of Companion Breads, has collected and been given wood from various sources, typically involving kind donations. Downed limbs and fallen trees often spark a call to Bryce. Hardwood, specifically oak, is best, but he’s not picky. The fire is usually kindled the evening before baking, but cold Minnesota winter days require the fire to be started in the afternoon to give the oven time to heat before baking the next morning. Bryce tends the fire throughout the evening and stokes it a final time before heading to bed. The fire burns all night, and by morning the oven has reached 600–700 degrees.

With the fire started, Bryce turns his attention to the dough. Depending on the type of bread he’s baking and its preparation schedules, parts of the process may take place the night before or all may happen the morning of baking day. Starting with the basic mixture of flour, water, and yeast, he adds the remaining ingredients and combines them using a commercial mixer. If the mixing is done the night before, the dough is set aside to rest in the refrigerator. When the dough is ready to be worked, Bryce stretches and folds it, divides into portions, lets it rest, shapes it, and then puts into baking pans or proofing baskets for its final rise before baking.

“Baking, which I’ve come to understand, is all about getting your hands messy.”

The rhythm, physicality, and sounds of the process are a beautiful mix. Jazz music provides a soft background to the movement of the dough on the floured surface and the rasp of the scraper on the wooden table. Using the bench knife scraper, his favorite tool, Bryce scoops up the dough via a method he learned from his son Brennan, who is also a baker and currently works in Asheville, NC.

When the oven is ready, Bryce cleans out the embers and ash and mops the brick surface. The loaves go into the oven, up to 14 at time, where they bake, depending on the temperature, for 20–30 minutes. Baking outdoors provides its own challenges. On early fall mornings when Bryce is getting bread ready for farmers’ markets, he often bakes by headlamp until the sun comes up.

“One of the great challenges and delights of baking in a brick oven is that there are so many variabilities in a non–climate-controlled environment. Every day is different. I love the variability, and I love the challenge. Most of the time it works.”

Bryce finds the beginning and the end of the bread making process the most rewarding: mixing the small batches of levain until it begins to smell like over-ripe dough, and taking the finished loaves out of the oven, dusting off the ash, and admiring the breads’ color and shape.

Ingredients, skill, heart, and art combine to create the beautiful loaves that emerge steaming from the brick oven. Bryce’s devotion to his craft is revealed in his artful and tasty bread. Eating fresh, handmade bread is a simple pleasure yet seems decadent. What simple pleasures of your life exhibit an art and craft that you appreciate?

[Photography by Moon Lake Multimedia. All rights reserved.]