Melissa Weller Transcript
Jessie Sheehan:
Hi, peeps. You're listening to She's My Cherry Pie, the baking podcast from the Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. I'm your host, Jessie Sheehan. I'm a baker, recipe developer, and author of four baking books including “Salty, Cheesy, Herby Crispy Snackable Bakes.” On each episode, I hang out with the sweetest bakers around and take a deep dive into their signature bakes.
Today's guest is Melissa Weller, the chemical engineer turned baker and author of the new baking book, “Very Good Bread.” Melissa was on the show last year to talk about babka and I'm so happy to have her back to talk about, drum roll please, baguettes. I've wanted to do a deep dive into this French bread for a long time and Melissa is the perfect person to do it with. She was, after all, the head baker at restaurants like Per Se and Roberta's, and she's been a James Beard nominee for Outstanding Baker. Melissa and I talk about what it means to identify as a baker versus a pastry chef, her deep love of Dorie Greenspan's iconic cookbook, “Baking with Julia,” and the importance of a sturdy piece of cardboard when bread baking. Then we discuss her recipe for Per Se baguette from her new book. Melissa explains the importance of pre-shaping and scoring a baguette, the difference between baguette leavened with a poolish versus a sourdough starter, and why a roasting pan lid might not be a bad investment when baguette making. Melissa brought me a baguette when we recorded this interview and it was utterly delicious. Melissa is full of bread wisdom and I can't wait for you to hear all she has to say, so stay tuned for our chat. You can find today's recipe at cherrybombe.com.
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Let's chat with today's guest. Melissa, so excited to have you on She's My Cherry Pie again and to talk baguettes with you and so much more.
Melissa Weller:
I'm so excited to be here, Jessie.
Jessie Sheehan:
In the intro of your very good new book, “Very Good Bread,” you say that you are not a pastry chef, you are a baker. Can you explain the distinction between the two and why it's important to you to make that distinction?
Melissa Weller:
Yes. I guess the distinction for me is, when I started my culinary career, I studied pastry at the French Culinary Institute, and then you could choose what career path you wanted to go on. You could work in restaurants doing plated dessert work or... In my mind, these were the two options... You could go work in a bakery. And I started working at Babbo. That was my first restaurant job, my first job after culinary school, and I did plated desserts and-
Jessie Sheehan:
You want to tell people what Babbo is just in case they don't know?
Melissa Weller:
Babbo, oh, that's nice. It still is, I haven't been in a while, a fine dining Italian restaurant in New York City, and at the time I started working there, which was 20 years ago now, it was one of the nicest Italian restaurants in the city. It was a great place to get restaurant dessert experience. And so in my mind, restaurant desserts, those beautiful desserts that you order at the end of the meal where you've got a cake or a tart and it's artfully designed on the plate, I am awful at that. I only did it at Babbo, and then after that I started to work in bakeries. And so I think in terms of pastry, I'm not the person who's going to make multi-layer mousse cakes. That's just not where my forte lies. My forte is in pure baking, like baguettes, breads, viennoiserie, croissants, anything that comes out in the morning that you go to the bakery to buy. I think that's why I think of myself as a baker. I bake things. My skill set isn't plated desserts.
Jessie Sheehan:
As we discussed when you were on the show before, you baked when you were little with your mom, but you did not fall in love with bread specifically, I don't think, until your junior year abroad in France where you discovered French bread for the first time, particularly baguette and brioche. Can you tell us about that experience and discovering those things?
Melissa Weller:
Yes, that's so true. I was a teenager in the eighties. There wasn't much good bread around in the small town that I grew up in in central Pennsylvania. When I was a senior in high school with the French Club, we went to eat at a very fancy restaurant in State College, Pennsylvania. It was called Le Papillon or something, like the Butterfly, and I remember having a piece of bread there, a baguette. I was pretty blown away by it. I was like, "Oh, this is really tasty. What is it? Why is this so good?" But I didn't really experience that again until I was in France. I was just obsessed. Well, I was also a poor student, so poor students can buy baguettes pretty easily and not really go out to eat at fine dining restaurants, so I was buying baguettes and bread and brioche and it was just so flavorful and so tasty to me, and I loved it. I kept eating so much of it and I think that that's where my love of the pastries came in. I have never experienced such delicious pastries.
Jessie Sheehan:
While you were there, they were probably cheaper, so maybe that was the reason, but did you find yourself more drawn to the boulangerie as opposed to the pâtisseries because you just wanted the taste of the bread or the croissant or the brioche or was it more like, "I can't even afford that beautiful eclair, I'm getting-
Melissa Weller:
I could afford the eclairs. We all eat lots of eclairs. I remember there was a pastry called religieuse, do you know that one?
Jessie Sheehan:
Remind me.
Melissa Weller:
It's like an eclair, but it's like one round shoe on top of another one and they're filled the same way. That became a favorite pastry to eat. What else? A mille-feuille-
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, yum.
Melissa Weller:
I would eat a lot of those, but I really love the baguettes. It's that chewy, crusty part of the baguette that I was really drawn towards.
Jessie Sheehan:
And maybe you're not 100% a sweet tooth person?
Melissa Weller:
I might not be. Generally, no. If you looked at what I eat now, I get tired of the sweets, but I never really get tired of bread. I can always eat a lot of bread.
Jessie Sheehan:
This very special intro to French bread and pastry in France eventually later in life inspired a move to San Francisco. Tell us about your time there because you were working in restaurants, falling in love with the industry for the first time, and you ate a lot of amazing bread and baked goods.
Melissa Weller:
I did. I left my engineering job. I started working as an engineer, didn't like it. I moved to San Francisco. I found an apartment in Berkeley, California, and I just checked off all the different places where I could eat bread and pastries and desserts. I was still trying to figure out what it was that I really liked. I remember there was this place in Berkeley called the Cheese Board and Cheese Board Pizza, and I just remember getting cheese and bread and pizza too and just really enjoying myself and really embracing that and just buying a lot of cookbooks and experimenting at home and trying to get my first restaurant job and it was a really great time for me in my life.
Jessie Sheehan:
When you moved to San Francisco, did you already think you might want to pursue a career in food?
Melissa Weller:
I did. All of my friends were going to get their MBAs and I did not want to do that, and I decided to try to follow my passion, which meant working in restaurants, which I knew I knew nothing about, but I knew I loved San Francisco and so I intentionally moved there to just try it out.
Jessie Sheehan:
So I know that you collected and read a ton of cookbooks while you were there and baked out of them. You learned to make puff pastry from Dorie's “Baking with Julia,” and you learned to make sourdough from Nancy Silverton, and they've both been guests on the podcast. Was there a absolute favorite cookbook that you loved and were you watching any food TV? I feel like a lot of guests were very influenced often when they were much younger, but I just wonder at this moment when you were discovering baking and food and reading so many cookbooks, which one did you love and did you turn to your television at all?
Melissa Weller:
I didn't watch food TV. I think this was in the nineties, the late nineties, and there was food TV on. I liked “Martha Stewart Living” on PBS. I liked the “Baking with Julia” series on PBS too. I mostly got my information from reading cookbooks and my favorite cookbook at that time was “Baking with Julia” that Dorie wrote. Absolutely learned so much from that cookbook. I did my first puff pastry out of that cookbook. I did my sticky buns that I became known for in New York City, originated from that cookbook.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my gosh, I love that. I've had those sticky buns. That was at Sadelle's, yes?
Melissa Weller:
Yes, Sadelle's. That was the cookbook that I learned the most from. The baking from La Brea Bakery book that Nancy wrote, that was too complicated for me at that time. I couldn't do it. It was sourdough starter and that was at a different level from where I was. I was still new. I couldn't grow a sourdough starter. I didn't really start to love that cookbook until later, but I definitely liked the pastries from La Brea Bakery too, that cookbook that Nancy also wrote, that was really one of the cookbooks that I learned a lot from too.
Jessie Sheehan:
I don't think we've ever talked with a guest about “Baking with Julia,” Dorie's book.
Melissa Weller:
Interesting.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love knowing that this was such an important book to you. I feel like that's something... That's not in my library.
Melissa Weller:
Oh, wow.
Jessie Sheehan:
I have a lot of Dorie books, but I don't have that book.
Melissa Weller:
It came out right at the time when I wanted to explore baking and she wrote it and she did it with Julia Child, but it had recipes from all of the preeminent bakers at that time. So I think the sticky bun recipe that's in the “Baking with Julia” book is actually based on Nancy Silverton's recipe. So Nancy would come in, they would do these shows with Julia, and then the recipe would be featured in the book. There were all sorts of recipes in this book. I actually probably baked, not just the breads and the pastries, the viennoiserie, I definitely baked the other recipes in the book too, and I think it was the first time that somebody had, at least for me in the nineties, had written about viennoiserie in a cookbook for home bakers.
Jessie Sheehan:
Can you define viennoiserie for those that may not know what that means?
Melissa Weller:
French word that translates into Viennese pastries. So you think of Marie Antoinette and she came from Austria and she brought these cooks with her, these bakers with her that would make pastries that were from Vienna, and they are basically... It's not all laminated dough, but it means brioche and croissants and puff pastry, things that you would find in a bakery in the morning.
Jessie Sheehan:
Let's take a quick break and we'll be right back.Peeps, have you heard about Cherry Bombe's Jubilee? It's our annual conference for women in food, drink, and hospitality, and it's happening Saturday, April 12th in New York City. I always love being at Jubilee and connecting with other bakers, pastry chefs and cookbook authors. If you'd like to join us, you can get tickets atcCherrybombe.com. If you're an official Bombesquad member, check your inbox for special member pricing. I hope to see you there. Now, back to our guest.
After San Francisco, you moved to New York, you went to pastry school, maybe one of the reasons was to learn to make the perfect baguette. And although you did learn to do so at school, when you were auditioning to be the head baker at Thomas Keller's Per Se restaurant, you still felt like you needed a little more schooling on baguettes before you did your audition. I understand that for these incredible pastry and baking jobs, you have to audition.
Melissa Weller:
Yes. Per Se, it's a restaurant owned by Thomas Keller. It opened in 2004, and I was auditioning to be the head baker in 2008, so it had literally just opened. At that time it was a four-star New York Times restaurant and a three Michelin star restaurant. I knew that the head baker job had opened up and I was speaking with the current head baker there about the position and what was required of me to get the job, which meant a tasting. Tasting is like an interview for a higher-level culinary position. A tasting at Per Se meant... And it was very, very defined. It was four or five different breads of different types, so it had to be enriched dough, which is like a brioche.
There had to be some type of baguette, there had to be a fruit and nut bread, a sourdough, all of these different types. And they had to be similar to what you would find at Per Se at that time. And at Per Se we baked bread for Per Se the restaurant and for Bouchon Bakery, and Bouchon Bakery had regular-sized breads and Per Se had miniature-sized breads.
Jessie Sheehan:
It went in a bread basket when you first sat down.
Melissa Weller:
In a bread basket, exactly. And so I had been in the culinary industry for a little while at that point. It was 2008 so I had about five years of experience, but I had one year of bread-baking experience and I had zero experience really making professional baguettes. I knew what it was. I had mostly worked at Italian restaurants, Sullivan Street Bakery. I made pugliese and stirato but no baguette. And so I was pretty nervous hearing about all of these requirements, and so I signed up through the Bread Bakers Guild of America to take this three- or four-day baguette class in Minneapolis. And I remember Amber Gunther was there. She was pretty much the daily operations person at Amy's Bread. She was the biggest superstar I had at that class. She knew I was auditioning for this-
Jessie Sheehan:
Was she the teacher?
Melissa Weller:
She wasn't the teacher. She was attending just like me.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, wow.
Melissa Weller:
I think this was a class... This was a while ago now, so I'm trying to remember. It was being taught by people who had competed in a baguette competition, and so I knew I was going to really learn how to make baguettes there. And I did, and I remember using the recipe that I learned in that three-day class for my Per Se audition. I think for the Per Se audition, I bought a sourdough starter from King Arthur Flour online because I was worried about my sourdough starter. I was so very stressed out for this audition, and obviously I passed. For the audition, there were four or five different chefs who were there tasting my bread and critiquing.
All of the bread tasted good, but they were critiquing me, "Oh, you think you overmixed that bread a little bit, Melissa?" And I'm like, "Oh, my gosh. Oh, my gosh." But the interesting thing about the audition is that Thomas Keller, Chef Keller wasn't able to make it for the tasting, and so I didn't meet him until I was already into the job by a week, a month maybe, and I had to do another tasting for him. Can you imagine the stress?
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my gosh.
Melissa Weller:
I just remember being so stressed out. I didn't have to do five breads for him. I think I had to do just one. I was so stressed out. I used a recipe from Nancy's book. Again, I went to “Breads” from La Brea Bakery, and I modified it just a little bit with something that I had learned at this class in Minneapolis. It was a change of an add-in. And I'll never forget, I was so stressed about him tasting my bread. I think he's like, "This is one of the best breads I've ever tasted." My jaw dropped. That was the last thing I was expecting to hear. I was expecting more critiques and instead I got this beautiful compliment. I just couldn't believe it. I was over the moon.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's so special. And you did perfect baguettes there.
Melissa Weller:
I did there.
Jessie Sheehan:
And the recipe we'll talk about today is Per Se baguette-
Melissa Weller:
Yes, exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
Which I love. But before we do, I just want to talk about your brand new book, “Very Good Bread.” Now, first tell us about the title, because clearly the word good is a theme since your last book was called “A Good Bake.”
Melissa Weller:
I think I use good as a way of... the first book was called “A Good Bake” because normally, as a baker and as somebody in charge of a bakery team, you'll go in the morning after the bakers have already been there for a while and you'll see the bread, the bread that's been baked, and you'll look at it and you're like, "Oh, you had a good bake," or, "Oh, that wasn't a very good bake." So I think the title from the first book came from that, oh, a good bake. And then “Very Good Bread,” I like the word good. It's not the best bread. I think I just want good bread. It doesn't have to be perfect bread. That's different. Even though I'm a perfectionist, I just want to have good bread.
Jessie Sheehan:
So you've said that this book is even more special to you. Can you tell us why?
Melissa Weller:
First of all, I wrote this book all by myself, and that's important to me because I didn't believe in myself. I didn't think I could do it, and I could, and I did. And it was really important for me to do that because if you continually think, "Oh, I can't do this, I can't do this," that's not good for yourself, your whole self and your self-esteem. And it was really important for me and my own self to believe and to see that I could do something even though I thought that I couldn't do it. So I think that that, number one, is why this book is so special to me. And then number two, it's really about what I really love, which is bread, which is a complicated subject and a scary subject for everybody, even professional bakers. It's hard. Bread baking is hard. Maybe wedding cakes to me are the hardest thing. I can't do wedding cakes, but bread, it's my baby. It's what I love the most.
Jessie Sheehan:
In the book are all these bread recipes that you've accumulated over your culinary career. It's full of knowledge gleaned from being the head baker at some of the country's most celebrated restaurants, focuses on science behind bread making, plus the recipes. I'm sure all of those reasons set it apart from other bread books because it's so personal to you. If somebody was saying, "Well, why this bread book versus this bread book?"
Melissa Weller:
That's a good question. This is a bread book where I'm just sharing all my information, and so I think that that's important. I think that even if you're a beginning baker, there's so much information you can get out of this book. This book might not be the book that you go to for your everyday loaf of bread, although there is an everyday loaf of bread in there that is, I think, pretty doable and easy. This book just gives you all that information that maybe you have a beginner's book and you just want a little bit more of a how and why, this book will have the hows and whys in it.
I think that that's important. I think it's important to share information. When I decided to do the book, it was important to me to just share everything I know, share the recipes as I have them. I didn't change the book around and say, "This is a book for somebody who's afraid of sourdough starter." I said, "No, these are the recipes. This is how I use the sourdough starter and this is what you need to succeed to make the sourdough starter and to make all of the recipes that I've made throughout my career."
Jessie Sheehan:
So before we jump into the recipe, tell us about a new professional adventure for you. I believe it might be called Bub's.
Melissa Weller:
Bub's, yes. Bub's Bakery, it's opening in Manhattan in May, and it is my new bakery and I've partnered with the team from Fish Cheeks and Bangkok Supper Club for this new bakery, and we're really excited about it. It is for everybody. It is free of all allergens. It's gluten-free, it's vegan, it has no nuts, no soy but-
Jessie Sheehan:
Wow.
Melissa Weller:
It has a lot of flavor.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, how exciting. Was that your idea for it to be gluten-free?
Melissa Weller:
It wasn't. It was my partner, Jenn's original idea, and her husband has a lot of allergies, and so she and her partner Chat approached me about this new bakery idea. And at first I was like, "I don't think so." But then I was like, "Yeah, I want to try. This sounds really exciting."
Jessie Sheehan:
It's a great challenge, right?
Melissa Weller:
And challenging and...
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, so exciting.
Melissa Weller:
I'm very excited about it.
Jessie Sheehan:
I can't wait. All right, baguettes. So your book provides a literal master class, you label that and you do so throughout the book with different baked goods. But your book provides a master class in baguette making, and I thought we would go through just some of your excellent master class tips before we jump into the recipe itself. So first you write that baguettes are some of the most difficult breads to shape. Can you just tell us why? You have a lot of great tips for how we will be able to shape them, but why are they so difficult?
Melissa Weller:
Well, they're long and skinny. I think they're difficult to shape because you want it to be taut, because if the bread is not taut when it bakes, it'll bake flat in the oven, spread out in the oven. And then you want it to be even. It doesn't have to be even, but when you think of a baguette, it's usually even, so it's hard to shape something that's long and narrow in a very even way when you're new at it.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you've said that one way to deal with the fact that the shaping is so hard is to make sure the pre-shape is as even and uniform as possible.
Melissa Weller:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us what the pre-shape is.
Melissa Weller:
Ah, yes. You have your dough, it's in a big bowl. You spread it out on your counter and you divide it into smaller pieces. Bread bakers would shape those pieces into a rough shape of what the shape will eventually become. And by shaping it into a rough shape, so if it's a baguette, you shape it into an oval football shape, it's easier to get it to be even as a final shape.
Jessie Sheehan:
Tell us about what the baguettes sleep in. They have this flower-dusted, thick linen couche. Tell us about a couche.
Melissa Weller:
That's another French word. Baguettes are French, so couche is from the French verb to sleep, coucher. And so it is something that the baguette proofs in, so that's the second rise. It proofs in it and it helps it stay so it doesn't slack out. It keeps it upright. It helps it stay in its shape so that when you bake it it still stays in its shape. It's a piece of linen cloth and usually with a couche, the thicker the better.
Jessie Sheehan:
You explain that if you don't buy one, you can do it at home. It's an involved set of directions that you have that have to do with how you fold it and how long the piece of linen is. But is there any way you could paraphrase it for us or describe it generally?
Melissa Weller:
Just roll up the piece of fabric and then you unroll it, you dust it with flour and you lay a baguette down. And then you make sure that the baguettes aren't touching each other, so you pick up a piece of fabric in between each baguette.
Jessie Sheehan:
Perfect. Imagine it this way, it's like when you're making a sourdough boule and you have your banneton, and you have your linen in there and you dust it, except you're doing... Because there's no free-form baguette shape, there isn't a banneton-shaped baguette.
Melissa Weller:
There might be.
Jessie Sheehan:
Baguette shaped banneton.
Melissa Weller:
I don't think so. Not necessarily. There are definitely lots of things to help bakers. There's something that you can bake a baguette in that's perforated that has the curved baguette shape, but I don't think that there's a banneton that's a baguette shape. And sometimes for me, I'm a very visual learner, and so there is a photo of the baguettes proofing in the couche in my book.
Jessie Sheehan:
You also give us some tips. Besides the couche and about the pre-shaping, you talk a little bit about scoring the baguette and the importance of that. Can you tell us what scoring is and tell us a little bit about the lames?
Melissa Weller:
Yes. So when you're baking bread in an oven, it will keep expanding in the oven from the heat. The water's going to evaporate, it's going to turn into steam, it's going to expand your bread, so your bread expands. What happens in an oven is the outside of the bread will bake first, but the inside isn't completely baked. It's going to keep growing and it's going to keep expanding. And if you don't put a cut somewhere into your bread, it's called a score, and you use a razor blade with a handle called a lame to make that score, the bread's going to break open wherever it feels like. And so it could be ugly that way. And so the scoring is to help guide the bread where the bread opens up as it's baking in the oven.
Jessie Sheehan:
The shape that the bread forms after it's baked in those little lines, in those little scores is the ear?
Melissa Weller:
That is the ear on the baguette. It's that little thing that pops up from where you scored it.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. So this is the recipe for the Per Se baguette. This is a classic recipe for baguette, meaning that it uses only a poolish and not a sourdough starter, and that's because a poolish is a faster process. Can you tell us a little bit about what a poolish is?
Melissa Weller:
A poolish is, it's dough that's fermented before you add it to your regular dough. It's usually equal parts flour and water. So when you say dough, you think of something thicker. This is going to be loose and it's fermented ahead of time. It adds flavor and it adds that stretchy part that helps with the baguette forming.
Jessie Sheehan:
The shaping. And the poolish is easy to make and you don't need to maintain it like a sourdough starter, so that's why it's the classic baguette. First things first, we're going to make the poolish, so the night before we're going to start making our baguette or the 12 hours before we want to mix our dough, we're going to pour some water into a quart container, sprinkle with instant yeast. Do you prefer instant to active?
Melissa Weller:
Yeah, although you can use both. I found you can use both pretty much interchangeably.
Jessie Sheehan:
I know.
Melissa Weller:
Really.
Jessie Sheehan:
You mean without even trying to activate the yeast, the active first?
Melissa Weller:
This is such an interesting thing because even with the instant yeast, I found it does better if you dissolve it first.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, really?
Melissa Weller:
You don't necessarily have to sprinkle a little bit of sugar on it, especially with home recipes where there's not a lot of friction to help dissolve it into the dough. If you're not mixing the dough a lot, I found it just works a little bit better if you dissolve it in water.
Jessie Sheehan:
So you'll put it in a little bit of water before you-
Melissa Weller:
I like to, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
Ah, interesting.
Melissa Weller:
I think that's why I wrote the recipes the way I did because I felt that it just did better dissolving it first.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to sprinkle our instant yeast over some water. Then we're going to sprinkle in some bread flour. Is there a brand of bread flour that you like?
Melissa Weller:
I use King Arthur.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to sprinkle the bread flour on top of that. We're going to mix with a spoon. Should I picture a kitchen spoon or a wooden spoon?
Melissa Weller:
I usually use a metal spoon because it's easier to clean.
Jessie Sheehan:
Mix with a spoon until no flour is visible. Then we'll cover with a lid and set aside at room temp to ferment for about 12 to 18 hours until it can pass the float test.
Melissa Weller:
Yes. You gently pick up a piece of dough and you put it into a bowl of water, and if it floats, that means that enough yeast has been produced. And when yeast grows, it makes carbon dioxide, which causes it float.
Jessie Sheehan:
Great. Next, now that our poolish is ready, we're going to autolyse our dough. Before we go through the process, what is autolysation?
Melissa Weller:
It's like a little rest. It's letting the flour and the water, letting as much gluten can form without any other interference possible.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to, in a stand mixer fitted with our dough hook, we're going to combine... This is not the poolish... We're going to combine some water and some bread flour. We're going to mix on low speed for two to three minutes until no flour is visible and really not very lumpy and then cover that bowl with plastic wrap or a linen kitchen towel and just leave it in a warm place to autolyse. About how long?
Melissa Weller:
Two hours would be amazing. I'm also a pragmatist and I'm a realist, and so if it's not two hours, it's okay if you do for 30 minutes.
Jessie Sheehan:
30 minutes to two hours?
Melissa Weller:
Yes. Minimum is two hours.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then we'll add the poolish to that autolysed dough, mixing on low speed for about three to five minutes to incorporate. Then we'll turn off the mixer, re-cover the dough, and we'll let rest for about 30 minutes.
Melissa Weller:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Now we're going to mix yeast and salt into our dough and let that ferment. So we're going to uncover the dough, sprinkle with some yeast and fine sea salt. And just so people understand, a little bit of yeast went into our poolish, and now a little bit of yeast is going into our actual dough.
Melissa Weller:
Exactly. That's great.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we'll sprinkle the yeast and some fine sea salt. Do you ever use kosher when baking or are you-
Melissa Weller:
Of course.
Jessie Sheehan:
You do?
Melissa Weller:
I do.
Jessie Sheehan:
Do you interchange?
Melissa Weller:
I use kosher when I'm working somewhere and that's all I have. It is fine. It's all by weight. It's not going to make that much of a difference. But as a baker, kosher salt in a bakery generally comes in boxes, but baking salt, fine sea salt comes in a 50 pound bag. And so I've always just used fine sea salt for that reason.
Jessie Sheehan:
Is there a brand of fine sea salt that you like?
Melissa Weller:
For home baking, I use the Baleine-
Jessie Sheehan:
Yeah. Pretty.
Melissa Weller:
In the blue container.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. So we're uncovering our dough, sprinkling with yeast and fine sea salt right on top. Returning the bowl to the stand mixer and mixing with the dough hook for about two minutes on low speed, increasing the speed to medium and then mixing for about four minutes more to develop the gluten. And I love this tip. We remove the dough hook and wipe it clean with a wet hand. I didn't know that tip, but that makes perfect sense because I'm always trying to pull off the dough from the dough hook when it's sticky, but the wet hand is brilliant.
Melissa Weller:
You can use your wet hands in a lot of different applications when you're handling dough.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that. Now we're going to cover the bowl and set the dough in a warm place for about an hour to ferment. Now we'll stretch and fold our dough. We'll uncover the bowl and we'll use, again, a wet hand to stretch and fold the top edge of the dough down two-thirds, and then stretch and fold the bottom edge up to meet the top edge. So almost like the dough is folded like a letter.
Melissa Weller:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
It's like a letter fold-ish. Then we'll stretch and fold the sides inward in the same way. And are we doing all of this inside the bowl?
Melissa Weller:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
And then we'll re-cover the bowl and set aside for one hour to ferment. So that's only, we just do that letter fold situation once?
Melissa Weller:
Yeah. Yes, correct.
Jessie Sheehan:
When it's in the bowl, do we need to flip it over so seams are on the bottom? Or it doesn't even matter?
Melissa Weller:
I think it became more practical for me not to flip it upside down. And so that's just what's happened for me is that I don't try to flip it upside down.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to divide and pre-shape the baguettes. So we're going to lightly dust a very large work surface, because they're long, with flour, uncover the dough and use a plastic bowl scraper to scrape the dough onto our work surface. When you use bench flour for a recipe that calls for bread flour, is your bench flour bread or is it AP?
Melissa Weller:
Yeah, I would just use what I have.
Jessie Sheehan:
Great.
Melissa Weller:
So I would use the bread flour.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to dust the top of the dough with some bread flour and then we're using a bench knife. Is a bench knife a bench scraper, like a metal bench scraper?
Melissa Weller:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
I didn't know there was another...
Melissa Weller:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
And do you like one with a wooden handle or a... I have one both that has a wooden handle and one where the metal of the scraper is also curved around to be the handle.
Melissa Weller:
I have that one and I have one with a plastic handle. I think it's all about what washes the easiest.
Jessie Sheehan:
We'll cut with our bench scraper into four pieces, or bench knife. Then we'll place one piece of dough in front of us on our work surface. Do we have to cover the other three with...
Melissa Weller:
No.
Jessie Sheehan:
No?
Melissa Weller:
Because it happens pretty quickly.
Jessie Sheehan:
Perfect. So we place one piece of dough in front of us on our work surface. We dust our hands lightly with flour and we'll gently tuck the edges of the dough inward and form a football-shaped log with a fatter middle and narrowing end, which is unusual just thinking since I've never made baguette. Of all of the bread that I've ever made, usually we're working with a round ball.
Melissa Weller:
That's so true.
Jessie Sheehan:
So this is a different kind of thing.
Melissa Weller:
It's a standard pre-shape for a baguette and it was a hard one to write, to figure out how do you describe that when you're writing a book? I had a really hard time figuring out the verbiage. I worked with my editor, Tom, on the verbiage on the... I still remember working with him on... Because he didn't make baguettes at home and just trying to get the verbiage right.
Jessie Sheehan:
But I think the football shape is really-
Melissa Weller:
Football shape is key.
Jessie Sheehan:
A helpful visual cue. So then you're going to repeat forming these football shapes with the remaining pieces, and then you'll set them aside and let these pre-shaped baguettes rest. Don't need to be covered?
Melissa Weller:
No.
Jessie Sheehan:
For about 15 to 20 minutes to allow the gluten to relax. And this is that moment from the earlier tip we discussed where you really want... It doesn't have to be perfect, but the nicest of football shapes you can get with your narrowing ends and fatter middle, the easier it'll be later on.
Melissa Weller:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to shape the baguettes and proof them. So in a small bowl... Does it matter, is it a glass bowl, is it a metal bowl? We're going to stir together some rye flour and some rice flour.
Melissa Weller:
Oh, it doesn't matter the bowl.
Jessie Sheehan:
The rye is gluten-free, the rice is low in protein. Tell us why that combo of the gluten-free and the low in protein is so good as this flour that we're going to put on the couche.
Melissa Weller:
They're not going to absorb into the dough. They're going to be a nice way to keep the dough... There's going to be a light-
Jessie Sheehan:
Shield or something.
Melissa Weller:
A shield, exactly. I like that. From the dough sticking to the couche.
Jessie Sheehan:
I love that because whenever I make sourdough, I always use rice flour. I learned that from the “Tartine Bread” book. But I loved learning that from you. I didn't know why I was using the rice flour. I was just using it.
Melissa Weller:
I think at some bakeries they use just rice flour. Some bakeries will use... It's what you have on hand. Some are more particular about what flour gets used on the bread on the surface.
Jessie Sheehan:
Why wouldn't you just use rice? Why do you add rye?
Melissa Weller:
I like the texture of the rye. Most rice flour that you buy here it's not ground up so fine, so it's pretty coarse. So I think I like that it was a little bit more of a natural element to add rye or I think maybe Chad uses wheat. Does that really matter, wheat versus rye? Probably not. I think it just is a nicer textural element. I think it's more natural.
Jessie Sheehan:
So then we'll set that aside and we're going to be dusting the couche with it. I thought this was a great tip for a home baker. We're going to flip over our baking sheet. This is what we're going to put our couche on.
Melissa Weller:
Oh, yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
We're going to flip over a baking sheet. Is it one that has sides?
Melissa Weller:
I usually use baking sheets that have sides. It's a standard half-size sheet tray, which is what, 13 by 18 inches with sides.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we'll flip a baking sheet over so it's upside down. We'll place our rolled linen couche on top of the baking sheet. Then we'll unroll the edge of the couch by about 12 inches, dust it with some rye-rice flour. Then we're going to dust our work surface with more flour and we're going to use a bench knife, again our bench scraper to scoop up one of our pre-shaped baguettes, place it with the long side facing us. We're going to dust our hands lightly with flour and gently press on the baguette with the palm of our hand to flatten this football shape into a small oval. Then we're going to pick up the long edge of one of the longer sides of the oval on the long edge that's away from us with both of our hands and bring our hands to the center of the dough pushing down slightly. And then repeat that once more, folding now that top edge down to the center until the top meets the bottom of the edge. So it's basically two folds.
Melissa Weller:
It is, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's so interesting. Just because I never knew how one made baguettes. Then we'll dust our hands with more flour and place some on top of the dough and then apply good pressure, rocking the dough back and forth to elongate it as you move your hands apart to taper the dough into these pointed ends. We'll continue to do that until the baguette reaches about 12 inches after it's sprung back. Does that mean we do it, let it spring back, do it, let it spring back?
Melissa Weller:
Yes.
Jessie Sheehan:
Until when we let it spring back it just stays?
Melissa Weller:
Exactly.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then we'll place that baguette seam side down on our floured couche. You'll unwind a little bit more of a couche to make a little room for your next one. And you're cradling each one. Dust the unrolled linen with more of the rice-rye flour mix and repeat the shaping in the same way. Finally, after we've done all four, we'll unwind the remaining couche, fold it over all of the shaped baguettes to cover them. And I assume we dust that.
Melissa Weller:
Oh, the one that goes on top.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, do you not need to because-
Melissa Weller:
No, I don't need to.
Jessie Sheehan:
The baguettes itself are already dusted?
Melissa Weller:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
We fold that over the shaped baguettes to cover them and then we'll proof the baguettes for about an hour. Do you do this in the refrigerator or on the counter?
Melissa Weller:
On the counter.
Jessie Sheehan:
Perfect.
Melissa Weller:
On the counter.
Jessie Sheehan:
Perfect.
Melissa Weller:
And I've gotten my couche on Amazon.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, great.
Melissa Weller:
I think in the past I've used all sorts of things at home. Sometimes I've just used a linen towel, whatever I have available. But for the book, I ended up buying the couche on Amazon because I wanted to try it out and I was like, "Oh, this is pretty good. I like it a lot."
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, good to know. Oh, that's great. So now we're going to bake the baguettes. So about 30 minutes before the baguettes are done proofing, we're going to arrange an oven rack in the center position with no oven racks above it. Why? Since they don't really rise that much.
Melissa Weller:
I think it's how you're going to get into the oven-
Jessie Sheehan:
Of course, with all the tools that you need.
Melissa Weller:
With the tools and things that it's-
Jessie Sheehan:
Of course.
Melissa Weller:
Going to be out of the way.
Jessie Sheehan:
That makes perfect sense. Now we're going to place a baking stone. And is there a brand or an alternative if we don't have one?
Melissa Weller:
I think a rectangular baking stone is preferable, but I think any baking stone would work.
Jessie Sheehan:
Perfect. And just tell us what a baking stone is in case not everyone knows.
Melissa Weller:
It's a stone that can go into your oven. It retains heat. So I think the important part is that it's retaining heat in a way that mimics a bread baking oven, different from baking something on a metal sheet tray that's going to transfer the heat in a little different way, faster. This is a slower heat transfer.
Jessie Sheehan:
Something you'd use to make pizza?
Melissa Weller:
Yeah, a pizza stone.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to place a baking stone on the center rack and then place a rectangular roaster lid on the stone. Tell us why you love them, these roaster lids. And also, listeners, don't worry if you do not have a roaster lid, you can use a spray bottle later on in the process to do what this roaster lid does. But tell us about the-
Melissa Weller:
The roaster lid is, if you've made bread before, most recipes have you make it in a Dutch oven because there's a lid on the Dutch oven. And so when the bread bakes in the oven, it releases its steam and it gets trapped inside the Dutch oven, and so it steams the outside of the bread loaf perfectly. So you don't need a bread oven for that. So this does the same thing with the longer baguettes. They're a little bit too long to bake them in a Dutch oven, but the roaster lid acts as a mechanism to trap in the steam.
Jessie Sheehan:
So now we're going to preheat the oven to 500 degrees and we're going to place an oven peel on a flat work surface and lightly dust it with flour. Tell us what a peel is and tell us if there's anything we can use as an alternative.
Melissa Weller:
A peel, it's usually made of wood or metal and you put your dough on the peel, your shaped loaf of bread on the peel or your pizza on the peel, and then you use the peel to transfer the bread or the pizza straight onto the hearth in the oven.
Jessie Sheehan:
Does the peel have a handle?
Melissa Weller:
The ones for home should have a short handle.
Jessie Sheehan:
And if we don't have a peel, it's hard to transfer the bread without.
Melissa Weller:
I've used a piece of cardboard before. It works.
Jessie Sheehan:
You don't have to whisper. I love it. You can use cardboard peels.
Melissa Weller:
I'm like, "Use cardboard, use whatever you have." Sometimes, when I really can't find anything, I'll pull the... Very carefully because it's hot... Pull the oven rack with the stone out and I'll just quickly plop down. Actually, even plop it down without anything, but I know that professionally speaking, you can use parchment paper too. So you could probably put it on a piece of parchment paper and put the parchment paper down on the oven stone.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, that's a good one. That's a good alternative. We've dusted our peel with flour. We're going to uncover the baguettes that have been rising. We're going to hold a flipping board. Can you describe it? And then you also have a great way to make one. So tell us what it is.
Melissa Weller:
A flipping board is, it's a professional board. I have one at home. It is shorter than a meter. It's about three to five inches wide. It's flat and long and you hold it in your one hand and you hold the linen couche in your other hand and you just easily take the couche, the fabric and you flip the bread onto this wooden board.
Jessie Sheehan:
And describe the shape of the wooden board.
Melissa Weller:
It's rectangular. It's about the same as a baguette only just wider.
Jessie Sheehan:
And you said you can make that with cardboard, correct?
Melissa Weller:
You can make that with cardboard.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to hold our flipping board in our right hand and with our left hand, we're going to unfold the couche supporting that first baguette and then pick up the couche and flip the baguette onto the flipping board seam side up. Then we'll flip the baguette onto the peel, so now it's seam side down and repeat, flipping the second baguette onto the peel. Then we're going to recover the remaining two baguettes and set them aside. Or do we want to refrigerate these or they can-
Melissa Weller:
I do refrigerate mine. I just quickly shove them back into the refrigerator.
Jessie Sheehan:
Then with, I think you like a double-edged razor blade-
Melissa Weller:
I do.
Jessie Sheehan:
Held by a lame at a 45 degree angle or you can use a sharp serrated knife?
Melissa Weller:
You can, yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
And serrated is better to get through the bread than a paring knife?
Melissa Weller:
Exactly. Yeah. A lot of times paring knives aren't quite sharp enough and so it drags the bread instead of actually cutting into it.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we're going to score the baguettes down the center, making three cuts about four inches long and about a half inch deep. And they're on an angle?
Melissa Weller:
Yeah, but they're not at a crazy angle. The angle almost looks straight. It almost looks straight. I think that that's sort of like a, I don't know what the word is, trompe l'oeil is the word that comes to mind for what most people think of when they score baguettes is they make it at a 45 degree angle and then it's more narrow than that. It's more straight. Am I making any sense?
Jessie Sheehan:
Yes, 100%. I know exactly what you mean. We're actually almost going perpendicular to the baguette it said, it's just a very slight angle.
Melissa Weller:
Yes, a very slight angle. This might all sound complicated. This is totally the traditional way that a bread baker would make or transfer baguettes onto a peel when they're baking bread.
Jessie Sheehan:
So we've scored our baguettes. We're going to open the oven, remove the roasting pan lid, place the edge of the peel towards the back of the stone, and with a series of quick jerks, we're going to shake those baguettes off the peel and onto the stone. And then with oven mitts, we'll replace that roasting pan lid over the dough. So the roasting pan lid, we should picture something that must be over 12... Or baguettes are about 12 inches, right?
Melissa Weller:
Yeah.
Jessie Sheehan:
So it's obviously larger than that. We'll cover those baguettes. At this point, if you do not have the roasting lid, with a spray bottle filled with water, you heavily spritz the baguettes-
Melissa Weller:
Yes, I do.
Jessie Sheehan:
Because you want that kind of water so that the steam-
Melissa Weller:
That steam.
Jessie Sheehan:
We'll close the oven doors, we'll bake them for about 15 minutes, remove the roasting pan lid from the oven and bake them for about five minutes more until the crust is light to amber brown. Then we'll cool our baguettes. We'll slide the oven peel under the baguettes and remove them to the cooling rack to cool. And then repeat with our remaining baguettes.
Melissa Weller:
That's it.
Jessie Sheehan:
Oh, my gosh. And now I am lucky enough, listeners, to go eat one of Melissa's baguettes with her because she brought me one. Thank you so much for chatting with me today, Melissa.
Melissa Weller:
Thank you, Jessie.
Jessie Sheehan:
And I just want to say that you are my cherry pie.
Melissa Weller:
Oh, my goodness. Thank you. I think you are a cherry pie too.
Jessie Sheehan:
That's it for today's show. Thank you to Ghirardelli Professional Products for supporting this episode. Don't forget to follow She's My Cherry Pie on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you listen, and tell your pals about us. You can find today's recipe at cherrybombe.com. She's My Cherry Pie is a production of The Cherry Bombe Podcast Network. Thank you to Good Studio in Brooklyn. Our producers are Kerry Diamond, Catherine Baker, and Jenna Sadhu. Thank you so much for listening to She's My Cherry Pie and happy baking.