How We Make Our Bread
What are the characteristics that define good bread, both in terms of the process and the ingredients? Here’s our two cents:
Freshly Milled.
Why go to the extra trouble of milling the flour yourself? That's an excellent question, and I've asked it myself a hundred times.
The short answer: it tastes better. Think about coffee or pepper—the pre-ground stuff just doesn’t compare to the flavor and aromas you get when you grind it fresh.
A longer answer is that whole grain flour starts reacting with oxygen the moment it’s milled. Compared to white flour, which is all starchy endosperm, whole grain flour contains bran and germ, which oxidize and degrade rapidly once milled. (Part of why white flour became so common is that it’s much more shelf-stable.) Since we at JBB use mostly whole grain flour, we want the freshest stuff. How to have the freshest stuff? Mill it ourselves.
But, truthfully, we're also just insatiably curious bakers—we want to be as involved in the process as possible, and having control over the transformation of grain into flour is something we're proud to have as part of our everyday baking practice.
Whole Grain.
We bake whole grain bread. While we don’t exclusively use whole grain flour—some of our breads contain up to 45% sifted (aka white) bread flour—our favorite breads are the ones made exclusively with stone ground whole grain flour.
These breads are both more interesting to make, and more interesting to eat. We work with a bunch of different grains: einkorn, rye, spelt, khorasan, corn, oats, buckwheat, a bunch of different wheats such as Sonora, Cabernet, Cristalo, Bolero, Merica, and more. Whole grains are also better for you, with more fiber and nutrients (hello, B vitamins!) than processed grains.
Our stone mill allows us to control the granulation, and then use the flour immediately in whatever fashion we dream up: mixing it directly into dough, or soaking it overnight, or toasting it and mixing with boiling water, or cooking it into a porridge... you name it.
Sourdough.
This is where things get a little wild.
Our breads are all made with wild yeast, which is to say they’re all sourdoughs. A sourdough bread is one made with wild yeast (a starter) instead of commercial yeast like you buy in the store. Most bread is made with commercial yeast because it’s designed to make bread rise quickly and dependably.
But sourdough starter is a magical little thing. It’s a combination of flour and water, along with wild yeast and bacteria that are naturally found on flour and in the environment, floating along on the breeze.
Starters, through fermentation, produce more flavorful (and possibly more healthy) bread. But they can be tricky to work with, as you need to “feed” and constantly monitor them in order to make the bread you’re after. They’re sort of like having a pet, if your pet sat on a counter most of the time and made bread the rest of the time.
All of our loaves are made exclusively with a wild yeast culture as the sole leavening agent. In fact, it’s the same starter that Josey made his very first loaf with.
Fully Hydrated.
We fully hydrate our grains because it’s a lot easier to end up with moist bread if you start out with moist dough.
A lot of water in dough makes it very sticky and hard to hand, and well, that can just be a pain in the ass. This is especially true if machines are dividing the dough, or shaping it into loaves. A very wet dough is really meant to be handled by hand, and even then, it takes hundreds or thousands of practice loaves to get the hang of shaping "high hydration" dough.
Most breads out there have 60-70g of water for every 100g of flour. Our breads have between 75-125g of water for every 100g of flour, depending on the type of flour we’re using.
Slowly Fermented.
We don't rush our bread. Because good things take time. But also because the flavors and textures of a long-fermented loaf are just flat out better than those of a short-fermented one.
The timeline for most of our breads goes something like this: 16 hours for our sourdough culture to get ready to be mixed into the dough. 4 hours for the dough to relax before being shaped into loaves. 18 hours of fridge time for our loaves before they’re baked.
By giving the yeast and bacteria of our sourdough ample time to perform their magic, they can produce the perfect mix of chemical compounds to make really great bread.
Boldly Baked.
When a loaf goes into the oven, it’s the moment of truth. We bake our breads anywhere from 30-120 minutes, depending on the size and type.
Our loaves are ready when the crust is dark and substantial and their insides are fully cooked. To some, our bread may appear almost burnt because we bake significantly darker than most bakeries. The flavors and textures created by caramelization in a bold bake are singular, and we encourage folks to follow their taste buds. We love our bread, and we think you will too.