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Ask for Sourdough or Naturally Leavened Loaves from an Artisan Baker

 

Fermentation is hot! It’s everywhere—in kombucha, kimchi, and miso; in all kinds of alcohol; in cheeses and yogurt; in coffee beans for our favorite morning beverage and cocoa beans for chocolate; in pickles; and of course in naturally leavened (sourdough) bread. There are bookshelves full of cookbooks on how to ferment all sorts of things (look up Sandor Katz, who has led the most recent fermentation revolution). For those of us who prefer to learn by doing in a social setting, there are even weekend festivals about fermentation—check out the 9th annual Fermentation Festival held in Wisconsin. The last two summers we’ve even hosted Amanda Feifer of the website Phickle at BAKE! to teach fermentation classes (they sell out in a matter of hours!).

 

What’s all the brouhaha about? Fermentation is all the rage because it seems to be great for our bodies and fermented foods taste delicious! Health and flavor together? Can’t beat that! Probiotics, created during fermentation, are purported to improve our gut health, possibly leading to better digestion, stronger immune systems, and a healthier weight. Fermentation may take care of our microbiome, which, when healthy, seems to have a remarkably positive influence on the rest of our body. 

As is often the case, the newest fads frequently have long histories. Fermentation is an ancient food preservation technique that humans have been using intentionally for literally thousands of years. It extends the life of food and can make it taste better. It’s a natural process through which microorganisms like yeast and bacteria convert carbohydrates—like starch and sugar—into alcohol or acids that give food a distinctive flavor, ranging from tart to savory. The fermentation process promotes the growth of good bacteria, known as probiotics, and their by-products, such as organic acids, keep the bad microorganisms out, which can otherwise make us sick. Fermentation can occur naturally, no human hands needed, and we can harness it ourselves in an attempt to control the outcome, giving us the level of sour or the spectrum of flavors and textures we prefer. 

As artisan bakers, we are very happy to tell you that many of the breads we bake are naturally fermented. These breads don't use any commercial yeast—the sourdough starters are kept alive and fed daily in preparation for addition to the final mix. They start with the fewest ingredients, but thanks to the fermentation time (anywhere from 14 to 18 hours, depending on the type of bread) they have the most complex flavors.

 

We’ve noticed lately that customers don’t know what to ask for when they want a bread with a long fermentation and sometimes people think the word sourdough must be in the name to be the “right” bread. So what do you ask for if you’d like a naturally fermented bread? At Zingerman’s Bakehouse, we use the terms “sourdough” and “naturally leavened” interchangeably for our naturally fermented breads. I personally prefer to say naturally leavened because sourdough implies that the bread will taste sour, and that is not always the case. 

Fermented bread can come in the full range of sweet to very sour depending on how the fermentation process is handled and what kind of ingredients are used. For example, the Italian Christmas bread panettone is traditionally naturally leavened and it is definitely sweet and milky in flavor, not sour. Our Better than San Francisco Sourdough is the tangiest of all of our naturally leavened breads, and our newest bread, State St. Wheat, isn’t sour at all, but they are both fermented breads made with natural starters. Our Cinnamon Raisin and Chocolate Cherry are certainly sweet with a slight background note of tanginess and they are also both naturally leavened. Pecan Raisin is another naturally leavened bread with a not-so-pronounced tang, but just enough to add an unmatched savor to the delicious pecans and raisins. Whether sweet or tangy, or somewhere in between, we as bakers strive for fully fermented breads to give you the best experience in terms of flavors, textures, and aromas as well as nutrition and digestibility.

So if you’re looking for breads made from natural starters, with no commercial yeast, and long fermentation times, we bake almost 20 different choices—with lots of flavor and texture variations whether you want to call them sourdough or naturally leavened. Need a few names to start your personal research? Farm, True North, Pecan Raisin, Cinnamon Raisin, Country Miche, Walnut Sage, Chocolate Cherry, 8 Grain 3 Seed, Vollkornbrot and Freekeh Fougasse are all naturally leavened breads.

Come in and do a tasting to experience the breadth of flavors possible from fermentation in naturally leavened breads. Feel free to ask us for samples and find your personal favorites!

By Amy Emberling, Bakehouse managing partner

Second photo by Antonis Achilleos

…Porridge is ready
Delicious and ruddy
With pleasure, I relished
That my hunger has perished.

From Porridge Nursery Rhymes by international poet, Goodness Lanre, 2013

With whole grains at the forefront of our mission, it seems only fitting for the Bakehouse to delve into the world of porridge. And what a fascinating world it is!—with its long culinary history stretching back to the Agricultural Revolution of the Neolithic Era (between 8000 and 5000 BCE), and the countless variations of the hot, whole-grain cereal that people all around the world have been concocting ever since.  Throughout history and within every culture, porridge has been a dietary staple. As one historian of early human history, Alistair Moffat, proclaimed a few years back, “The great invention, the greatest revolution in our history was the invention of farming. Farming changed the world because of the invention of porridge.” 

For many around the world, porridge (also historically spelled porage, porrgie, parritich), represents nourishment: whole-grain goodness, healthy nutrition, and ultimate comfort, served up in a bowl. An added bonus is that it’s easy to make—simply boil or bake ground, crushed or chopped whole grains in water or milk. As food writer, Mary Luz Mejia, notes,  “A big bowl of porridge can rev your internal motor at breakfast, help you unwind after a late night, or ease the previous night’s excesses. It can be made sweet, savory, thin or thick, with toppings or without. The only rules for entry into the ‘porridge club’ are that it needs to be made with a grain and it’s usually a dish best served warm to hot.” 

 

The most humble and universal of dishes, porridge was our first and simplest way of cooking grains to release the arsenal of nutrition and burst of flavor locked inside. Grains, served up as porridge, fed our earliest civilizations and “sustained empires because they were powerhouses of nutrition, relatively quick to plant and harvest (unlike fruit and nut trees), easily stored in cold, drought, or rain, and capable of feeding armies,” so notes Rachel Laudan, author of Cuisine and Empire—a sweeping chronicle of the rise and fall of the world's great cuisines. “The early Romans built their empire on barley porridge,” she says. In Asia, “the Chinese built theirs on rice porridge, the Indians on rice and lentil porridge.” The list of grain porridges throughout world history is prolific and global: in Scotland and Ireland, barley and oats; in America, oats, wheat, and corn grits; in Asia, rice; in Russia, the pseudograin, buckwheat; in Norway, rye; in Africa, millet, corn, and sorghum; in Italy, corn and millet polenta, to name but a few.  Within the rich, diverse histories of food in every culture, almost everyone eats porridge; it has been and continues to be the everyday food of everyday people. 

Wheat Porridge in the American Midwest - A Brief History

From babyhood to old age CREAM of WHEAT brings a smile of welcome.
Palatable, wholesome, nourishing, good at all times for all people.
Served in many tempting forms, -- dainty breakfasts, delicious desserts.
CREAM of WHEAT CO., Minneapolis, Minn.

Cream of Wheat print advertisement, 1909 

...When was the last time you cooked your old friend Cream of Wheat?
...Remember the mornings you woke up to a light new taste that lets the flavor shine through. It’s as good as you remember, Cream of Wheat

Nostalgic Cream of Wheat television commercial jingle, 1970s

Here in the United States, porridge has been a nation-wide breakfast staple since the late 19th century. Among the hot breakfast cereals to take America by storm in this period was farina, a form of milled wheat made from the germ and endosperm of the grain, which is milled to a fine consistency and then sifted. The porridge, branded Cream of Wheat® in 1893, was created by a group of enterprising millers based, initially, in Grand Forks, North Dakota and, eventually, in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Cream of Wheat started in a very small way, but with a sound idea and the vision and determination to build a successful and worthwhile business. 

The story goes that Emery Mapes (b. 1853), a former newspaper publisher, printer and editor, decided in 1889, with his partner George Bull, a Grand Forks farm manager, to go into the milling business in Grand Forks by purchasing the milling machinery from the Diamond Flour Mill, after a fire destroyed the company’s milling facility near Mankato, Minnesota. Knowing nothing about the milling craft, the two partners hired Tom Amidon, an experienced miller, to supervise the operation of their facility as head miller.

As the Grand Forks Diamond Flour Mill struggled to find its footing in the dark days leading up to the Economic Panic of 1893, Amidon came up with the idea of producing for profit, a “breakfast porridge,” made from milled farina, the whitest part of the wheat, which he had taken home and cooked into a cereal for his family, much to their liking. The milling partners, Mapes and Bull, loved the porridge’s delicious taste and creamy smooth texture, prompting them to name it, “Cream of Wheat.” 

 

Confident they were on to something, the partners then agreed to let Amidon pack some of the cereal and ship it to their New York brokers, Lamont Corliss & Company. With the milling company barely afloat, financially, at this time, Amidon was left to his own devices in preparing the cereal for shipment; he cut the cardboard for the cartons by hand, labeled the packages himself, and crated them in wooden boxes he made up from waste lumber. With no money to spend on package design, Mapes, a former printer, drew upon his stock of old printing plates for an appealing illustration to brighten up Amidon’s makeshift cereal cartons. The image he settled on, which he ended up creating himself, happened to be a figure of an African American chef holding a saucepan over his shoulder, the precursor to the present-day, widely-known Cream of Wheat trademark personage. 

In October 1893, the Diamond Flour Mill sent 360 boxes of Cream of Wheat to New York, along with a carload of milled flour. Within 3 hours of the shipment’s arrival, the New York brokers sent a telegram to the Grand Forks mill stating, “Never mind shipping us your flour. Send us a carload of Cream of Wheat.” To fill this order of nearly 2000 boxes, and even larger shipments in the future, the Mill came up with a strategic plan that entailed renaming their enterprise the Cream of Wheat Factory and packaging the cereal in assembly-like fashion so as to maximize the number of boxes they could churn out daily. They also enlisted Melvin Brannon, a biology professor at the University of North Dakota, in developing an electrolysis treatment to eliminate contaminants and provide longer shelf life for the cereal.

1893 also saw Cream of Wheat making its manufacturing debut, to great popular fanfare, at the World’s Columbian Exposition in Chicago. To generate further national interest in their new cereal, not to mention market share, Mapes began running ads for Cream of Wheat in the Ladies Home Journal in November of 1896, promoting an image of wholesomeness, family, home, and security; this message, published as illustrated print ads in scores of national magazines, went on to become one of the most successful and transformative cereal advertising and marketing campaigns of the early 20th Century. The demand for the new cereal was extraordinary, so much so, that by 1897 it had outgrown the producing capacity of the small plant in Grand Forks. The company thus relocated the Cream of Wheat Factory to Minneapolis, which had become a major grain hub and distribution center for the growing cereal market. Cream of Wheat had arrived, giving oatmeal a run for its money as America’s favorite hot breakfast porridge! 

Wheat Porridge - Some Local Michigan History

On a more local note, a perusal of the Ypsilanti Daily Press in August 1909 reveals that the Ypsilanti Milling Company, located on Cross Street along the east side of the Huron River, sought to tap into the extraordinary success and popularity of Cream of Wheat with their own take on the creamy wheat porridge, which they branded as Wheat Hearts. 

To promote the venture, which ended up being very short-lived, the flour mill ran the following advertisement in daily issues of the paper over the course of a week in August 1909 (August 9-16), never to be seen again:

 

Around the same time that the Ypsilanti Milling Company was pitching their Wheat Hearts, in the daily paper, George Parker, in Ann Arbor Township, was transforming his father’s 1873 stone grist mill on Fleming Creek, off Geddes Road, from a family farm-based operation into a commercial flour mill. Beginning in 1910, following his father’s death, George milled, packaged, and sold to area grocery stores pancake mix, graham flour, buckwheat flour, cornmeal, and cracked wheat breakfast cereal, similar to Cream of Wheat, all under the brand name,  “Parker’s Fleming’s Creek Mills.” The wheat cereal was packaged in 2-pound bags that bore a printed illustration of a couple of sheaves of wheat as the backdrop for the insignia and preparation instructions:

                                              

George continued to run the mill as a commercial enterprise until his death in 1956, at which point his son, Fred Parker, and other family members took over, but only for a few more years. By 1960, the mill had ceased operation and was sold, along with the family farm and other buildings on the property to the Frederick Mattael family. In 1983, the Washtenaw County Parks and Recreation Commission purchased the Parker Mill property and restored the mill back into full operation as the primary feature of Parker Mill Park, which opened to the public in 1984 and is still running to this day.

 

Now that we’re milling some of our own wheat at the Bakehouse on our stone mill, we decided to try freshly milled whole grain (FMWG) cream of wheat. It’s as comforting as the red box version and more flavorful because it contains the entire wheat berry. We are using coarsely milled, soft white wheat from Ferris Organic Farm in Eaton Rapids, MI and cooking it with local Guernsey Dairy milk. Come in and try some—it’s delicious with toppings or just on its own. But if embellishment is your thing, we currently have on hand Michigan dried cherries, California walnuts, Michigan maple syrup, muscovado brown sugar, milk, and cream to top your creamy whole wheat porridge.

Watch for new porridges and more porridge history in the coming months.

 

By Lee Vedder, Bakehouse Historian

Cream of Wheat photo via their Instagram, Wheat Hearts ad via YpsiNews.com, Geo. G. Parker packaging via HMdb.org

When I find Hazim, Bakehouse bread baker and expert conceptualist, in the Bakehouse courtyard, he’s unshakably focused on his work. I often find him in this state—dusted in a light layer of flour, scribbling in a notebook I can only assume contains endless delicious ideas waiting to be brought to life. He is relentlessly dedicated to the development of new, innovative, and delicious breads, and his Green Olive Focaccia is no exception.

Those who’ve tried it know what craveable secrets the humble slice holds. A bounty of fruity Castelvetrano olives crown a crisp-crusted, chewy, bubbly slice of deeply colored whole grain focaccia. A single bite unlocks innumerable layers of flavor. Warm, twangy raw and roasted garlic! Bright, poppy lemon! Fruity, herbaceous coriander! It’s a celebration of simple ingredients inspired by Hazim’s upbringing on the island of Cyprus. 

Intrigued by the story behind my new favorite midday snack, I sat down to talk with him about how this savory treat came to be.

 

Can you tell me a bit about the process of coming up with this focaccia? It’s really such a unique bread.

We went to the Grain Gathering at Washington State University last year and tasted lots of wonderful stuff, and one thing that stuck out was this whole grain focaccia. It was more like a flatbread, not quite focaccia—it’s kind of a blurry term—but it tasted great. I’d tasted things kind of like that before, but it was a good reminder. Here, we’re always talking about what new breads to work on, and when we came back, Amy (Bakehouse managing partner) said, “I think I want a whole grain focaccia.”

I love working with naturally leavened doughs and freshly milled grain, so this was just perfect. I also tried to base it on what we had in-hand. Hard red spring wheat is strong and very flavorful, and spelt is also very flavorful. It’s an ancient grain, but it also has this extensibility that you don’t get with the hard red spring, meaning it’s great for stretching a dough into a flatbread.

I had the formula in my head: a wet dough that gets fermented overnight with a very little bit of starter in it as the jumping-off point. A bit of olive oil, because that’s what focaccia is typically associated with. But the other part of the equation was the sheet pan, which is what we typically bake our focaccias in. I’d tried that once, but I knew these breads would require a lot of heat and our sheet pans don’t necessarily work that way. 

Normally, when you bake in a wood-fired oven, you can use sheet pans to cool down the stone hearth. If you imagine putting something in a sheet pan and then putting it on the deck ovens, it’s not going to get as much heat as if you put it directly on the hearth. I tried that and it didn’t really work. I needed really high heat, not the heat that we have going on in these deck ovens. I’d use my little Rofco oven in Cyprus, and when I was making pizzas, I’d just crank it all the way up to 300°C. As I was thinking about that, it just immediately clicked that I should use Detroit-style pizza pans—they have higher sides than a sheet pan, plus they’re made out of cast-iron so they retain heat more efficiently. So you plop the dough in there, let it relax, stretch it out, proof until it gets super bubbly and light. That’s what I really like—you can really push the proof, so the flavors explode and the texture becomes super-tender. The more you ferment, the softer and more tender it gets. Then, when you bake it in a super-hot oven, they’re ready in 15 minutes.

Once we figured out the dough piece, I had to figure out what we were going to top it with. Immediately, the first one in my mind was the combination of halloumi, raw onion, and fresh mint, which we use in Cyprus a lot. Back home, we prepare this dough in round metal pans. It’s not quite focaccia; it’s just a plain dough that’s usually a little yeasted, with a lot of olive oil, and then topped with raw onions, mint, and all that. I had a lot of it when I was growing up. So I ran with that idea, baked it, and we all tasted it and said, “oh… this is GOOD. It’s very good.”

Definitely. I don’t think a lot of people around here are familiar with halloumi or that flavor combination, but it’s really delicious. It’s often only available seasonally though, so how did you land on the winning combination we currently have at the Bakeshop?

Initially, I wasn’t sure what to do. I remember trying a roasted broccoli-sausage thing, and it just didn’t work. But then I thought, “I’m using halloumi, so why don’t I try another thing we make a lot in Cyprus?” Something that’d typically go along the same breakfast table: marinated olives. If you came to our house for breakfast, there’d be a little bowl of cracked green olives with coriander, garlic, and lemon, sitting in olive oil, and you could just nibble. And then you’d take your bread and dip it in all the juices at the bottom of the bowl. We don’t have cracked green olives here, but we do have Castelvetrano olives. I love them; we buy them a lot for my daughter.

They ARE so delicious. I love olives, though; I’ll eat them like candy.

Right? The cool part of this bread is that even people who don’t like olives think it’s really good. Beyond the olives, raw garlic was a given, but then I remembered we have roasted garlic, too. That’s just another flavor explosion. And then great olive oil, lemon juice, lemon zest, and crushed coriander seeds. We tasted it, and... that was that. When Amy and Frank tasted it, they were both like, “Yep!” I’m used to going back to the drawing board a little bit to rework things, but these two combinations got the thumbs-up right away.

Awesome. So you had mentioned that it would be part of a breakfast spread. Do you envision the focaccia as part of a breakfast spread? What are some other serving ideas?

I think that would be great. You’d have to have super fresh, in-season tomatoes and cucumbers, the focaccia, a little bit of cheese, a little bit of coffee or tea. What more do you need? Or, if you want, you can fry up a sunny side-up egg and put it on top of the green olive focaccia. But I think they can be a snack during the day, too. The cool thing about this focaccia is, even if you take it home and take it out the next day at room temperature, it’s still great on its own. If you warm it up it’s even better, but it’s not like a bread that dries out that much for the first two days. After that, though, it would be better if you warm it up. Just snack on it as-is.

Agreed. I’ve only ever eaten it as-is, and I’ve never wanted for anything. I think that it’s super-satisfying, largely because of the whole grain. 

I agree. But even though it’s whole-grain, the crust is very mild-flavored. You can taste the grain, but it’s very subtle and the toppings just sing. Recently I’ve tried making it with a whole-wheat starter that we have in-house, and then the crust flavor is amped up even further. And then you can just eat that on its own! Bread so good you just want to eat it plain!

Hungry to taste our Green Olive Focaccia for yourself? Find it in our Bakeshop Friday-Sunday, or meet us at the Westside Farmers Market on Thursdays!

By Emily Hanka, Bakehouse Marketing Manager

Photos by Emily Hanka & Hazim Tugun

The 2019 Kneading Conference

Earlier this summer, my coworkers, Kyle Purcell, Frank Carollo, Hazim Tugun, and I traveled to The Maine Grain Alliance’s Kneading Conference in Skowhegan, Maine. A car full of bakers, we were excited to spend two days talking, sharing, and learning about grains. Yes, we were looking for a moose on the side of the road, too, but we were most ready to pick up any tips, tricks, or facts that others wanted to share about bread making. 

Attending the Kneading Conference for the first time was a great example of a vision actualized—their goal is to bring back the grain economy through with the contributions of farmers, millers, bakers, and customers. This is also right in line with some of the goals in our Zingerman’s Bakehouse 2023 vision—we’re committed to becoming grain experts and incorporating freshly milled whole grain (FMWG) into a variety of our products to share with our community.

 

The conference started off with a great speaker. Kimberley Bell is the owner of Small Food Bakery in Nottingham, England. As soon as she started telling her story, you could tell she was a passionate person who believed in what she was doing in her bakery. Supermarket monopolies are the main food source for the UK and she is an advocate for breaking them up. She believes in keeping ingredients traceable and local—that was her mission when she started her bakery and she makes every decision based on that vision. “Be more than a baker,” is a motto she tells herself, that is supported by the friendships she’s made with farmers and other vendors and the stories behind each product. That all makes the work more fulfilling for her and her team.

 

The message of bringing community and thoughtfulness to one’s work was the theme that would continue throughout the next two days.  A variety of demos and presentations filled the sunny days with topics spanning from sourdough pastries and bagels to baguettes and wood-fired pizza, and, of course, grains. 

One of my favorites was given by Kerry Hanney of Night Moves Bread + Pie and Blair Marvin of Elmore Mountain Bread. Both women presented their way of making their bakery’s country loaf. One would do a step in the process and then throw it back to the other. They would compare the process they were taking with the knowledge in mind that both lead to great bread. Even while they were presenting their own method, they were just as fascinated to learn the other’s method. Not that it was going to result in a change to their current production, but for the pure purpose of learning, respect, and support. Both women are trying to make their community better with their food and it is a good lesson to remember that though we may have done things a certain way for a long time, the practice of making bread is ever-changing.

 

To be able to go to a bread conference is always a great opportunity to talk to both professional and serious home bakers, and hear what brought them into the world of grain. So while we spent two days in the middle of Maine taking in nuggets of information, it was also about the renewing of passion and knowing that other bakers are out there, too, turning on their ovens at 2 in the morning, just trying to create the most flavorful, nutritious, traceable loaf they possibly can. Bell really captured the feeling of bread baking and why we enjoy it so much, saying, "The overall sense of nourishment is enhanced when others are smiling at the table."

 

By Amanda Benson
Bakehouse Bread Supervisor

Photos by Amanda Benson & Frank Carollo

Every year, on May 16, the French celebrate the Feast of St. Honoré, honoring the 6th-century French bishop who eventually became the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs. And since the French hold their corner bakery right up there with the Catholic Church, the celebration is not complete without a big bite of the show-stopping confection named for the revered saint.  A classic French torte, the Gateau St. Honoré is a tasty marriage of the fundamental elements of the pastry baker’s craft: pâte feuilletée (puff pastry), pâte á choux (choux pastry), crème pâtissière (pastry cream), whipped cream, and caramelized sugar. The torte has a puff-pastry base, topped with pastry cream and whipped cream, surrounded by profiteroles (cream puffs) of pâte á choux, which have been dipped in caramelized sugar, their sugary tops resembling saints’ halos.

 

The torte’s namesake, Honoré, also known as Honoratus, became bishop of Amiens, in the north of France, in 554 AD. According to tradition, a number of miraculous events occurred during his service, which spared farmers, millers, and bakers from natural disasters. After his death, processions in his honor supposedly stopped both droughts and deluges, ensuring good wheat harvests. This won Honoré the admiration of bakers across France. In 1204, a Parisian baker built a chapel (no longer extant) to commemorate him, and in the 17th century, the French baker’s guild anointed him the patron saint of bakers and pastry chefs. In religious and popular imagery,  Honoré is often depicted holding a baker’s peel—the flat wooden paddle used to move loaves to and from a hot oven—often with loaves of crusty French bread nearby and with bakers at work, in the background, kneading dough and manning wood-burning ovens. 

Fast-forward to the 19th century, when Parisian pastry bakers began bringing glory to the saint's name in the best way they knew how—with a fabulous show-stopping confection. The Gateau St. Honoré was developed at the legendary Chiboust pastry shop on Paris' Saint Honoré Street, which, alas, no longer exists. It started out as a ring-shaped brioche filled with pastry cream that Chiboust lightened with an airy Italian meringue, creating a new kind of filling that came to be known as crème Chiboust, which French bakers still use. According to Parisian pastry chef, Pierre Hermé, one of Chiboust's bakers, August Jullien, came up with his own version, replacing the ring of brioche dough with a ring of little cream puffs. 

 

By the late 19th century, the Gateau St. Honoré had taken its present form, incorporating a disk of puff pastry filled with pastry cream, topped with a crown of cream puffs dressed up even further with a crunchy cap of caramelized sugar, and draped with swags of whipped cream. The plain version of the torte—simply flavored with vanilla and the bittersweet notes of burnt sugar—is most common, but you can find fanciful seasonal variations, showcasing everything from tropical fruits to green tea.

In modern-day France, the Feast of St. Honoré still survives as a time to appreciate all sorts of breads and pastries. French baker Dominique Geulin, who grew up in Normandy and is now based in Portland OR with his bakery St. Honoré Boulangerie, fondly remembers how bakers in France (including his parents) would open their doors on May 16 for community festivals, school field trips, and public demonstrations. The modern-day French baker's organization, Confédération Nationale de la Boulangerie-Pâtisserie Français, also takes that week as the occasion to hold its annual meeting during a full-on festival of bread.

 

This fall, in October and November, BAKE!, the Bakehouse’s hands-on teaching bakery, is offering two classes on the Gateau St. Honoré, where you’ll learn all the classic French techniques—pâte feuilletée (puff pastry), pâte á choux (choux pastry), crème pâtissière (pastry cream), whipped cream, and caramelized sugar—that go into making this show-stopping dessert, a six-hour project well worth the effort! (Don't worry, we provide a great Bakehouse lunch, too.) Any dessert that is built out of other desserts is a winner in our book and the Gateau St. Honoré is sure to impress your guests! (Check out the Bakehouse’s Instagram highlights for more behind-the-scenes shots from this class!)

By Lee Vedder
Bakehouse Historian

The history of the crisp, crescent pastry we all know and love is quite a storied tale. People often think of France when they hear mention of the croissant, but its origins are actually Austrian–Viennese to be precise. In fact, as recently as the 19th century, the French viewed the croissant as a foreign novelty, sold only in special Viennese bakeries in the more affluent neighborhoods of Paris. The pastry’s Austrian origins and how it came to France in the first place are shrouded in legend.

 

Culinary historians concur that the modern-day croissant was inspired by the Austrian kipferl, a crescent-shaped morning pastry made with brioche-like dough, which is denser and less flaky than the croissant we know today. According to popular lore, the kipferl originated in 1683 as a comestible celebration of Austrian victory over the Ottoman Turks at the siege of Vienna. The story goes that a baker, up early to make bread, saved Vienna when he heard the Turks tunneling underneath the city and sounded an alarm to the Viennese authorities. The kipferl’s curved shape, said to mimic the crescent moon of the Ottoman flag, would then seem to pay poetic tribute to the indomitable spirit of a city that resisted a powerful invading force. But the kipferl existed long before the Ottoman siege of Vienna. A poem mentions it as one of the Christmas treats that Viennese bakers presented to Duke Leopold in 1227. Moreover, crescent-shaped breads in general date back centuries earlier.

So, does the croissant’s Austrian ancestry belie its French fame? “Of course not,” says Jim Chevallier, an independent scholar and author of a book on croissant history, August Zang and the French Croissant: How Viennoiserie Came to France. “The croissant began as the Austrian kipferl, but became French the moment people began to make it with puffed pastry, which is a [17th-century] French innovation,” says Chevallier. “It has fully taken root in its adopted land.” Order a kipferl in Austria or Germany today and you’ll likely be handed a crescent-shaped cookie. 

A more romantic tale from the 18th century attributes the origin of the croissant to the French Queen and Austrian Archduchess, Marie Antoinette (1755-1793). Legend has it that the Queen, homesick for the taste of her native Vienna, would often bow out of royal dinners, only to sneak away to indulge in the sweets and coffee of her country. The story thus credits her love of Viennese kipferls and the christening of the kipferl as the “croissant” as having introduced the pastry to French high society. 

 

Legends aside, historical evidence as to the croissant’s evolution in France points instead to August Zang (1807-1888), an Austrian entrepreneur who opened the first Viennese bakery in Paris in 1838. Located at 92 Rue Richelieu on the Right Bank, his upscale Boulangerie Viennoise specialized in bread and pastries from his native Vienna, most notably the kipferl, along with pain viennois (a Viennese-style sandwich bread), both of which became widely popular in the city within ten years. Equipped with his patented steam oven, Zang made his kipferls with noticeably flakier dough than traditional brioche-based versions and the French began referring to the newfangled pastry as a croissant due to its crescent shape. 

References to croissants made with true, yeasted pâte feuilletée (puff pastry dough), however, didn’t materialize until the early 20th century.  For that development, we have the French baker, Sylvain Claudius Goy, to thank. In 1915, he wrote a recipe that specifically mentions pâte feuilletée, calling for the rolled puff pastry to be yeast-leavened and laminated with butter, a technique that remains at the core of how the modern-day, all butter, homemade croissant (croissant au beurre, fait maison) is made in France. 
And it is this traditional French croissant we are dedicated to making here at the Bakehouse. Like bread and other baked goods in America, croissants can be made with shortcuts causing them to fall short of the intended texture and flavor. There are very few places in the world outside of France where you can get a truly great, flaky, buttery croissant—Zingerman’s Bakehouse is certainly one of those places. We pride ourselves on their rich flavor, tender honeycombed interior, and crispy exterior that shatters a little when you bite into it. It’s mostly about taking the time to do it right and not using fake ingredients or pre-made frozen doughs. And we think it's well worth the time and effort to do so. Like we say, you really can taste the difference. Visit the Bakeshop to pick up our 4 variations on the French croissant: classic Butter, Juliette's Almond, Chocolate, or Parmesan and Prosciutto.

 

Or, learn to make croissants yourself in one of our most popular hands-on baking classes: Ooh La La Croissant: French Pastry Class. You’ll learn the key techniques for creating a butter-laminated dough (layering the dough with butter and folding it over), filling the croissants, proofing them properly to achieve the right texture, and finally, baking them to a rich golden brown. In class, you'll make our butter croissant recipe, as well as fill them with both our rich almond frangipane (we'll give you the recipe for that, too) and bars of intense dark chocolate imported to us in Ann Arbor from renowned French chocolatier Michel Cluizel. There are few more sublime things in our book than enjoying a freshly-baked croissant that is still a little warm. We can't wait for you to try it. It's going to be life-changing. Reserve your spot now. 

By Lee Vedder
Bakehouse Historian