Baking together – and especially making our own bread – brings us all
closer, says the French baker Richard Bertinet
Richard Bertinet's three children know all about real bread. Jack,
nine, Tom, six, and Lola Maude, three, can tell a decent sandwich from
the filled layers of pappy, additive-laced squares sold in most shops.
If you ask them, they will tell you that they prefer sourdough to
sliced white, which many parents would say makes them fairly unusual.
But their father, who is French, believes that all children would say
the same if they were given the choice between real bread and what he
calls the "bread-type product" with which we fill our supermarket
trolleys. For millennia, bread has been the most fundamental basic of
the human diet and if we get our bread right, Bertinet believes, the
rest will follow. He even believes that it can bring parents closer to
troublesome teenagers.
Born in Brittany, the son of a gendarme, Bertinet was introduced to
the joys of baking by his grandmother. "She used to make wonderful
doughnuts. She had a massive bowl of dough rising on the table and I
used to hide beneath and steal little bits. The smell, the first bite
of the doughnut ... it's my first memory as a child."
After he left school, Bertinet did shifts at a local bakery before his
national service, then continued his training as a baker in Paris. He
came to the UK in the late 1980s, made his reputation as a chef in
London and then moved to Bath six years ago with his wife, Jo, and
their young family, to set up a cookery school.
He is angry at the way in which bread that is barely nutritious is
marketed to parents and children in this country. During the one-day
introductory bread-making course at the Bertinet Kitchen, a pass-the-
parcel-style game is played.
Bertinet gets learner bakers to read aloud the ingredients off the bag
of a cheap white sliced loaf, one by one. It's quite fun, horribly
revealing and takes a good few minutes, not least because some of the
preservatives are almost unpronounceable. His point, of course, is
that it should take only a moment to recite "flour, yeast, salt,
water".
"We've created a culture of convenience," he says. "If you go shopping
once a week, bread has to last a week. But there's no excuse for
buying bad bread for your family. Read the packaging – you can buy
good bread in the supermarket. Even better, find and support your
local artisan baker."
If his evangelistic zeal makes Bertinet sound over serious, he is
actually very warm and funny, too. He has the "safe pair of hands"
quality that a good teacher (and baker) needs, and the charisma and
patience to convey and encourage new skills. His books and DVDs
demonstrate a revolutionary (to me, anyway) method of working dough,
which involves less desperate flour-dusting and more deft,
controlled flinging. The first two books, Dough and Crust, are all
about bread; his new one, Cook, is a complete cookery helpmate, full
of simple, delicious recipes and judicious advice on the basics.
The surest way to learn about nutritious bread, Bertinet says, is to
make your own. He's talking about getting your hands doughy, not
turning blindly to a bread machine: "Those bricks can be as bad for
you as white sliced." And he is a huge enthusiast for kitchen activity en
famille. "If your children are uncommunicative, baking together
breaks the ice. It changes the routine. And to make and eat your own
home-made pizza or breadsticks – it's not a chore, but really
positive."
Bertinet suggests that many people who believe that they have problems
digesting wheat (victims of bloating, rather than diagnosed coeliacs)
might notice a difference if they chose bread made with natural
ingredients. As an ambassador for the Real Bread Campaign, part of the
Sustain alliance for better food and farming, he champions bread that
benefits health, local community and the environment.
And as a Frenchman, he understands the aesthetic pleasures of a
chewy-crusted, properly fermented sourdough. But he refuses to
encourage knee-jerk rejection of the sliced stuff. "We need to work
with the big bakeries," he says. "We've created this culture of
convenience and we need to change it. Cheap bread is the last bastion
of poor eating. Look for good bread and support your local baker. And
always read the packaging."
Richard's recipes
Basic white dough
10g yeast (fresh, if possible)
500g strong white flour
10g salt
350g water
Rub the yeast into the flour using your fingertips, as if making a
crumble. Add the salt and water. Hold the bowl with one hand and mix
the ingredients with the other for two to three minutes, till the
dough starts to form. Lift it on to your work surface. Do not add
flour! Begin to work the dough by sliding your fingers under it like a
pair of forks, thumbs on top, swing it upwards, then slap it back down
away from you. It will be almost too sticky to lift at this point.
Stretch it towards you, lift it back over itself to trap air, tuck in
the edges, and repeat the sequence. After a few minutes it should
begin to feel alive and elastic in your hands. Keep on working it
until it comes cleanly away from the work surface. Now you can flour
the worktop and form the dough into a ball by folding each edge in
turn into the centre and pressing down well with your thumb, rotating
the ball as you go. Now you're ready to attempt all manner of white
loaves.
Olive, herb and cheese breadsticks
Makes about 12
White dough, rested for one hour
(half the above quantity)
100g purple olives, such as
Kalamata, stones in
50g grated pecorino or parmesan
5g good herbes de Provence
Maize flour for dusting
Stone the olives and cut each roughly into three, then mix with the
cheese and herbs in a bowl. Turn your dough out on to a lightly dusted
surface, then flatten into a rectangle, about 2cm thick. Sprinkle the
olive and cheese mixture on to it and press into the dough with your
fingertips. As if you're folding an A4 letter to put into an envelope,
fold one third into the middle, pressing it down to work the olives
in, then do the same on the opposite side. Cut the dough widthways
into 10 or 12 x 1cm strips. Flour the work surface, then twist and
roll each strip to stretch it to the length of your baking tray
(non-stick, or covered in greaseproof paper). Place them on the tray,
leaving a good gap between each one. Cover with a tea towel and leave
to prove for 30 minutes. Bake in a preheated oven (as hot as it will
go) for 10–12 minutes. Lift the breadsticks carefully on to a wire
rack to cool.
Richard Bertinet's books Dough (£19.99), Crust (£15.99) and Cook
(£19.99) are published by Kyle
Cathie. For details of breadmaking classes, go to thebertinetkitchen.com.
Join the Real Bread Campaign at sustainweb.org/realbread
The
family that bakes together …
