Finally, I got the crumb I've been looking for, and it came about by accident.

To enlarge the crumb, I've been gradually reducing the kneading time, lowering the flour strength and increasing the hydration of my baguette doughs. Finally, I got it right on New Year's Eve, when we were having some friends over and decided that crostini would be on the menu. My wife and I were both very busy that day and I was in a rush to get the bread done, since one of our ovens went on the fritz the day before (naturally!) and so we only had one oven to work with and lots of baking.

To make a long story even longer, I mixed the dough (Giusto's Artisan Flour, 75% hydration, 2% salt, 1% IDY) in my KA and worked it under the paddle for about a minute, when the dough started coming together and the gluten clearly was forming. Without thinking, I put it onto my kneading board, and only when it was there did i realize that I'd intended to work it under the dough hook for another couple of minutes.  "Oh, well," I thought, "No time like New Year's Eve for an experiment." So I let the dough sit on the board and gave it four stretch-and-folds about 20-25 minutes apart.  The dough came up beautifully.

Handling it very gently, I scaled it to 225 g/8oz and let it rest for another 20 minutes or so before rolling it out and arranging the six loaves en couche for about 75 minutes of proofing. Oven preheated t0 500F/260C. I steamed the oven, slashed and loaded the loaves, then steamed again at 3 minutes, reducing the temp at that time to 450F/230C. Baked for about 10 minutes longer and got terrific oven spring, as the photo shows. What the  photo doesn't do justice to is the gorgeous yellow color of the crumb.

All in all, a very satisfying bake.

Next batch will be at 80% hydration, and I'll also see how other flours (i.e., Sir Galahad, Harvest King, La Parisienne) behave under these same conditions. Will keep you all posted.

Stan Ginsberg
www.nybakers.com

Actually, I posted this elsewhere, but am not sure how many have seen it, so I'm reposting under its own heading.

It's been a good while since I last chronicled our adventures and misadventures in the world of publishing, and a lot has happened in the interim.

Many of you know that our publisher wasn't entirely happy with our original title -- The New York Bakers Jewish Bakery Book -- and so after putting out several suggestions for informal feedback, we finally settled on Inside the Jewish Bakery: Recipes and Memories from the Golden Age of Jewish Baking. Looking back at it, Norm and I both agree (as does the publisher) that this title is much more indicative of the contents of the book and leaves a lot more room for Norm's stories and reminiscences of how it was back in the day.

It's also amazing how content inflation works: originally, our contract called for a 70,000 word book, which translates into about 250 pages. In September, when the manuscript was due, it came to about 90,000 words, but the publisher didn't make an issue of it. With additions -- more Norm stories and a whole section on Passover baking -- and revisions, we suddenly found that we had 100,000 words -- about 350 pages -- and the publisher freaked.

Someone once asked Ernest Hemingway to name toe most important quality of great writing, and he answered, "a willingness to murder your children." And so I murdered about 28,000 of my kids and got the book down to around 72,500 words -- which probably isn't a bad thing, since the discipline of self-editing made me think about what was really essential -- the must-includes versus the nice to includes. So basically, most of the background info in ingredients, techniques and equipment went bye-bye, along with redundant recipes and those that people can find elsewhere.

I expect that a lot of the cut material will end up on the NYB website at some point. Norm suggested that we try to sell it as Volume 2 -- The Lost Chapters. We'll see ....

Also, it looks at this point like the pub date will be more like July than the March-April timeframe Camino Books was thinking about before ... understandable, given the complexities of editing, design, marketing, etc etc.

And speaking of marketing, one of the things we're also learning is that being an author is different from being a writer. Writers write and get paid for it; authors become public personas and have to go out and do signings, shows, media, etc etc. More than that, if you're an unknown at a small publishing house, you have to pay for it yourself. Fortunately, we found this terrific publicist who not only has done a bunch of cookbook work, but whose father owned a Jewish bakery in West LA in the 50s and 60s. So not only did we get a great professional; we also got a member of the family, so to speak ... and we even got a great photo of her dad rolling bagels that's gonna appear in the book.

So that's what's been going on ... except for one more great thing.

We had to re-shoot a bunch of the photos, including rainbow slices and French cookies, and Norm was having some health issues (all resolved now), so it was up to me to do the baking. Unfortunately, I couldn't find glace cherries, needed for the French cookies, in quantities less than 30#, so I went to a local bakery and asked if I could buy some. The woman at the counter went in the back and came back out, telling me there was no problem with that. The baker himself followed, with 1/2 a pound of the cherries and told me "no charge."

I thanked him, introduced myself and told him what I was doing and we talked shop for a bit, then his wife came out. "Ooooh, rainbow slices, I love them. He made me a tray for my birthday!" Jerry, the baker, smiled. "A lot of work," he said. So cherries in hand, I went home and baked. You can see the results here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/21485/some-recent-baking-and-book-update.

After the cookies were finished and photographed, I took a plate over to the bakery and got huge smiles and thank you's from both Jerry and his wife -- talk about positive reinforcement: I floated on air for days!

So okay, that's where we stand coming into Valentine's Day weekend. Stay tuned!

Stan Ginsberg
www.nybakers.com

hi all,

thought you might be interested in what i've been up to lately, so here are some recent pics.

the book is moving along.  the editing is done and i'm going over the corrected manuscript and getting some more photos together.  our publisher has a designer working on the internal design, and i gather that the finished book is going to run somewhere around 320-360 pages.  we're moving toward the prepublication home stretch and i can't believe it's actually happening.

besides all that, some of you have probably noticed that we did a radical redesign of the website.  after over a year in business, we decided it was time for a more polished look ... the idea being that we're pretty sure we'll be in business for a while.  thanks to everyone in the TFL community for your support and encouragement.

Stan Ginsberg
www.nybakers.com

so here are the pics:

Baker Ben suggested that since the testing is over and we had such a great group come together, that I continue to blog about the actual process we'll be going through to actually get the book into print.  I think it's a great idea, so, with thanks to Ben, here goes:

July and August were simply insane.  I was putting out a couple of dozen recipes each month, keeping track of all the testing and feedback and trying to get all of the other stuff written.  It was madness, to the point where everything else on my to-do lists (several) simply had to be pushed aside so that I could get the manuscript done by the 9/1 deadline.  

Norm and I were on the phone at least weekly -- usually more often than that -- going over recipes, fine points and all of the background stuff that needed to be included in the book we wanted to write.  If I tell you all that I got very little sleep over the last couple of weeks, it wouldn't be an exaggeration.

Those last 2-3 weeks are a blur now, writing, researching, fine-tuning, making sure all of the measurements and conversions were right, all of the steps and procedures consistent and all of the narrative smooth and where it was supposed to be.  

9/1 came around and I had about 99% done ... everything except for the Acknowledgements, Picture Credits (since we hadn't yet made final picture choices), and a couple of last-minute recipe tweaks.  Nonetheless, I assembled what we had -- about 280 pages, including somewhere around 130 recipes -- and emailed it off to our publisher and our agent.  

So of course the publisher said, "Well, no rush.  Just put everything together, print it all out, burn the files into a CD and send it off to me when you can."  When I met with him back East the beginning of July, he didn't seem like he was terribly concerned about deadlines, but I like to honor my commitments.  

So Norm and I went back at it, doing illustrations of the challah braiding, strudel dough stretching, and a couple of other recipes, including the rye flour honey cake (lekach) and revised plum cake (flomenkuchen). I figured I'd take a couple of weeks to make sure we got it all in shape. So naturally, less than a week later, I get an email from Edward (the publisher) asking, "When will we get the package?" Shift into high gear, put the final touches on it.

At that point, my laptop died.  I mean really died: motherboard, display, keypad, who knows what else?  Of course, I'd been backing up to spare hard drives, pen drives and whatever, so I had three or four backups and didn't lose a thing.  Switched to an old Dell that we had lying around ... slow as honey on a cold day ... got the manuscript all put together and start printing .... now at 260 pages, after some cuts and consolidations.  

Print, print, print.  At page 243, my printer dies <sigh>, so I load the finished file into a pen drive, take it downstairs and finish on my wife's printer.  That's Monday morning a week ago (9/12).  Then I discover that the old Dell's CD drive can only read; it doesn't burn.  Back downstairs to burn the CD on Syl's puter.  Pack it all up into a FedEx box and drive it down to the local Kinko's/FedEx office. 

A week earlier, I had asked our agent, Stephany, about typical production schedules and she said, "Be patient.  It usually takes a publisher 9-12 months to get a book into print." Nine months to a year ... feels like an eternity.

At that point, I had such mixed feelings ... so much intense work, suddenly ground to a halt, all this energy with no place to go and exhaustion suddenly setting in.  For two days, I could barely think.  But at the same time, I felt the same way I did when I took my kids to their first day of kindergarten:  proud, full of anticipation, a little bit afraid that they wouldn't do well and also sad that in an instant I was no longer as needed as I'd been the day before.  Norm and I spent a lot of time on the phone, talking about the closure of that part of the process, which he said was less real for him, since he wasn't involved in any of the writing.  

It was strange, the sense of loss finishing the book created -- first the dissolution of our tester group, which had brought together well over 100 people and created a very intimate bond of shared experience, and then the departure of my youngest child (the book). 

I waited until today (9/23) to phone Edward to find out how things were going with the book and whether he could give me more information on the production schedule, other next steps and how much more work would be needed.  Instead I got Brad, the head editor, a very kindly man who clearly loves books.  "It looks very good," he said.  "We just need to get it to copy editing and then we'll have a better idea of what else needs to be done, but I don't think it will be very much."

Then I asked the question I really wanted answered:  "Any idea of the publication date?"

"We want to get it out before summer ... probably in the March-April timeframe.  We want this book to look terrific, so we're choosing our designer carefully."

March-April! Six or seven months!  Wow!  .... Other things to think about now ... promotion and finishing up all the remaining tweaks and revisions (there are still a few), getting all of the photo permissions in place ... 

We've entered a new level of reality.

Stan Ginsberg
www.nybakers.com

(to be continued)

On top: black pepper and parmesan

Underneath: fresh rosemary and garlic

12.5% protein flour, 66% hydration, 5% olive oil, 2% salt, 2% fresh yeast, baked on a stone at 400 for 18 minutes.

Stan Ginsberg
www.nybakers.com

It occurred to me that I wasn't clear about how the NYB free shipping offer works, and that anyone who orders will see shipping added onto their total. Unfortunately, I haven't been able to figure out how to turn off the Paypal shipping calculator, so as I've explained to those who've phoned me, you need to pay the full amount, including the shipping, which I will then immediately refund. It's a bit roundabout, but for the moment, it's the best I can do. NYB is a work in progress, and I apologize for any misunderstandings.

Stan Ginsberg
www.nybakers.com

I recently got a message from someone here whom I respect a great deal, both as a person and as a baker. However, one part of his message stung me: the part where he says, "I don't remember seeing any original recipes or methods from you." That got me thinking about what I bake, how I bake, and most importantly, why I and others bake, and whether "original recipes or methods" are or ought to be a measure of bona fides as a baker.

Obviously, there are as many reasons people choose bread baking as a hobby or occupation as there are bread bakers, but I think we all fall into a few broad groups, which naturally overlap.

- The first consists of knowledge- and mastery-seekers - bakers who strive to extract maximum flavor from wheat berries, using traditional methods and minimum ingredients, augmented by modern knowledge and the evolution of sustainable technologies. They are the people who are committed to unlocking the secrets of flavor and the magical interplay of flour, water, yeast and salt.

- The second group is made up of people who want to go back to an earlier time, to recreate breads and other foods that may be personally or culturally meaningful to them, or who want to experience another culture through this most basic of foods.

- The third group finds its motivation in the intimacy and personal engagement that's implicit in breadmaking, which is not only about nourishing the people one cares about, but also the simple fact of getting one's hands covered with dough, experimenting with new flavors, and personalizing the process of transforming an assortment of disparate ingredients into a single exquisite experience.

None of us, I think, is exclusively in one or the other; all of us fall to some degree into each of those groups, and all of those motivations are present in each of us. It is, perhaps, a matter of relative emphasis and where we go first to reap our satisfactions.

I'm the first to admit that I fall squarely into the second group - those who look backwards and use baking to recreate and recapture the experiences of those who came before me. My interest in, and satisfactions from, baking bread are largely about refining what's already out there and rediscovering what may have been forgotten or lost, like those onion rolls everyone's crazy about. I didn't come up with the recipe, Norm did. But I was the one who remembered them asked him for it. My satisfaction came from reliving an experience I hadn't had since my childhood in 1950s Brooklyn and making it part of my life today.

When I bake 100% rye black bread, I do so both for the pleasures and challenges of working with rye, which I love, but also as a means of experiencing for myself what my ancestors subsisted on for centuries in the villages of Russia and Poland, and in so doing, understand at least this tiny piece of their lives. Is that about "original recipes or methods?" Absolutely not. The methods and recipes are centuries-old. Does that make me any less a baker than others here or elsewhere? I think not. I hope not.

I think the one thing we all have in common is our search for authenticity in an increasingly commoditized and alienated world. All of us respect process, respect our ingredients, and, one hopes, respect each other's sincerity and commitment to whatever motivates us to bake bread. Life is tough enough in the world of Wonder Bread without carrying the battle back home.

I've been talking to a potential supplier who's up in the hard wheat belt and produces only certified organic flours. he was nice enough to send me a few samples, one of which is organic high gluten, milled from hard red spring wheat, about 13.5% protein. we were going to have a NY smoked fish brunch this morning, so i decided to whip up a batch of bialys using the flour.

i would love to stock this flour, but i need to know if there's enough demand to justify ordering a couple of thousand pounds of the stuff. can you folks let me know? i promise you this: it will be attractively priced.

it's interesting stuff. first, the color is rather more beige than, say, All Trumps (which i compared side by side) ... very creamy. also, the grind was slightly coarser than AT, both to the touch and to the tongue. taste-wise, the raw flour was slightly sweeter and nuttier than AT, without a trace of that bitterness you sometimes get with raw flours.

the mix was also interesting. i had to increase my hydration by about 2% in order to get the consistency i was looking for. the gluten formed relatively slowly, but came together almost immediately at about 9 minutes under the dough hook, very, very elastic and not very extensible because of all the work it had been getting.

i used a relatively small amount of fresh compressed yeast, and got doubling in about an hour, then divided the dough into a dozen boules and put them in my proofing box. they reached near full-proof after about another hour and i formed the bialys.

i was amazed at how extensible the dough was at that point. the gluten was amazingly well formed and very very smooth, and didn't fight back at all when i stretched the boules into the bialy shape.

at that point, they went immediately into the oven, and since the photo upload isn't working for me here, you can see what they looked like on this link:

http://www.nybakers.com/images/bialys10-4-09a.jpg

the bialys tasted wonderful; the flour itself gave a nice moderately chewy crumb and the color of the flour lightened in the baking, but still had that lovely creamy beige tone to it.

i have to say that this is probably the best batch of bialys i've ever made!

Stan Ginsberg
www.nybakers.com

PS, i'd give recipes, etc., but Norm (nbicomputers) and I just signed a contract to do a Jewish baking book, so I'm afraid our publisher now has first call on all our intellectual property!

With all the focus on artisan breads and uber-ethnic loaves, I thought it might be fun to indulge my contrarian streak and bake a batch of good ol' white bread ... you know, bologna sandwiches, french toast, things like that. Thing is, I have this really nice organic bread flour and fresh compressed yeast that I hadn't used on pan bread before. So I did it: 60% skim milk, 2% salt, 8% each egg, oil and sugar, 3% yeast (to compensate for the enrichments). Well, the dough doubled in less than 45 minutes and proofed in 45 minutes. Baked at 350 for half an hour, and here's the result:

Stan Ginsberg
www.nybakers.com