Mistreated by diets, industry and modern life, bread –real, crafted, traditional, ecological or creative bread– is making a comeback. Now a batch of enthusiastic young bakers have recovered bread’s true virtues and taste.
Bread, the staff of life, has been reborn, with bread-making courses, tastings, and new bakeries offering time-honoured varieties made with sourdough and the stone-ground flour of all but extinct cereals. Bread has even won itself a place in haute cuisine and the best restaurants pair their dishes with just the right types.
Indeed, bread has made a round-trip journey. Modern life filled people’s homes with industrial sandwich bread and frozen loaves. The journalist and bread expert Ibán Yarza says “bread served warm at home at any time of the day seems to be a great idea. It appears to be fresh-baked but its warmth conceals its tastelessness”. Yarza holds courses all over Spain and has published his own manual, Homemade Bread (Larousse, 2013). He has also created food-lover forums and is one of the people behind the growth in the number of our country’s ‘bread fanatics’. “My courses are always a big success because people are really eager to do things with their hands in today’s technological world”.
Ibán Yarza’s passion for bread led him on a journey across Spain to document the breadmaking process in village bakeries, which are tending to disappear because of a lack of successors. This Herculean task cost him many a sleepless night, observing the people at work in bakeries throughout the country. He has presented this experience in his book Village Bread (Grijalbo, 2017), which is full of stories about Spain’s bakers and their overwhelming diversity of breads: rosca, hogaza, mollete, bollo, bica, pan de moños, lechuguino, talo… Yarza says sadly: “the rural world is vanishing and so is village bread. A bakery in Toledo closed down four days before I got there and they saved the last loaf for me so I could take a picture of it”.
Fortunately, “gastronomy is in fashion and now there’s a rebirth of bread underway here, a process that began some years ago in countries like England and the United States”. Young highly-trained bakers have recovered natural processes and use technology to make bread like it was in the past or even better. Sometimes they belong to the fourth or fifth generation of families devoted to this craft, while others who were simply fond of making bread at home decided to turn their passion into a profession, opening bakery shops in Madrid or Barcelona to share their crafted loaves. And they’ve been quite successful.
A few names stand out in particular in this revolution, like those of Xavier Barriga (Turris), Anna Bellsolà (Baluard) or Jordi Morena (L’Espiga d’Or) in Barcelona; Tomeu Arbona (El Fornet de la Soca) in Mallorca, and Beatriz Echevarría (El Horno de Babette) or Javier Marca (Panic) in Madrid, and in many cases they supply bread to Michelin-starred restaurants. In addition to being excellent bakers, they are good communicators in the social networks and they publish manuals and hold courses to reveal the secrets of sourdough, fermentation and flours. “Until not long ago, —Ibán explains—, most courses were held by manufacturers of bread improving agents: additives that boost the speed with which dough rises or its workability to produce good-looking bread. But now bakers are being trained better than ever and today’s top breads are the best that have ever existed”.
To judge bread, Yarza says you should buy it as if you were blindfolded in order not to be misled by its appearance and then “taste it without toasting it or spreading butter or tomato on it. Bread should have the taste and aroma of... bread! It’s as easy as that. So don’t look... just taste and smell!”.
Bakers 2.0
Wheat, rye, corn, oat, buckwheat, spelt, bread-wheat… White flour has been over-rated for decades but the new bakers are bringing back flours that are very little refined, ecologically produced and stone-ground. Jordi Morera, who belongs to the fifth generation of bakers at L’Espiga d’Or (Vilanova i la Geltrú, Barcelona Prov.), joined the bakery after obtaining his university degree and went on to recover his family’s wood oven, built during the Spanish Civil War. He has recently published The Bread Revolution (Montagut Editores, 2017), a compendium of bread-making philosophy and technique. His goal is “to make bread that’s great to eat and great for your health”, basing his products on natural sourdough, long slow fermentations at mild temperatures, and a crafted process respecting the pillars of ‘slow food’: proximity, sustainability and ecology. In addition to promoting the bread-lovers’ forum culturadelpa.com and holding classes for professionals, Morera shares bakers’ everyday concerns on the social networks. “We bakers are small fry and don’t have much pull so all we can do is tell our story”.
“Actually, more than ‘revolution’, I look at things in terms of evolution”, says Morera. Now we’ve got science, we know why things happen and we have technology to help us. He advocates a “wild breadmaking scenario” in which “bakers will finally forget all about chemistry and use natural processes and stone-ground flours to make bread that really meets the expectations of today’s consumers”.
Jordi gives us the keys to recognizing good bread: “You should ask the baker where and how his bread is made”. He agrees that it’s not a good idea to judge a bread by its appearance: “It should have weight, it should make a statement, and its crumb should be moist and a bit rubbery. The crust should be crisp, even though crafted breads often have thick ones. There should be something tart to its flavour and it should have character resulting from a long fermentation. And it should keep – quality bread should stay good for three or four days”.
He sees bread as a sensory thing, a healthy food with added value. “If you work with wheat from the other side of the world, you’re leaving an enormous carbon footprint. But if you use stone-ground grain from your own area, you’re making a sustainable product that helps to create jobs for people and to restore the local environment”.
The best bread in Madrid
Beatriz Echevarría, a journalist and historian, switched careers to devote herself to breadmaking. At El Horno de Babette she offers bread that is tasty, nutritious and long-lasting, using sourdough, stone-ground ecological flours and very slow fermentations. At Panic, of Javier Marca, every day there are specialities like palo, chapata, and seed, spelt and rye breads; he also sells the flours he works with so that customers can make their own bread at home, and every Thursday he surprises customers with new bread. Darío Marcos, the winner of the Golden Crumb 2017 Award for the Best Bread in Madrid, runs Panadarío, where you’ll find exceptional loaves with raisins and walnuts, and others of spelt or seeds. And at La Miguiña, Begoña San Pedro works with her sourdough, ecological flour and a stone oven to offer delicious bread that can be tasted at the bakery itself.
Pairing with bread
With the recovery of its authentic taste, bread is acquiring a gourmet status on the level of the dishes of the most prestigious restaurants, where it is growing more and more common to pair bread, just like wine. For a dish with a substantial sauce, a dense white durum bread is a good choice. To accompany charcuterie or strong cheeses, a tart rye bread creates a good contrast, while corn bread or crafted sandwich bread forms the perfect match for marmalades or smoked foods. Airy breads of the pa de pagès type are enriched by rubbing them with tomato and sprinkling on a little virgin extra olive oil that penetrates the crumb. Whole grain bread is good for accompanying fish and cold soups, while the baguette is ideal for rice dishes and greens. Seed breads harmonize with smoked foods and patés. All told, bread forms a universe of aromas, flavours and textures.
