Bread Production

On a recent visit to Sunnyvale, I enjoyed a breakfast of pastries and hot chocolate at Le Boulanger. Customers at the bakery can watch the mechanized process of mixing the dough, forming the loaves and buns and conveying them to the ovens. Workers in hairnets and white uniforms move briskly about, stabbing and cutting dough, tossing it into giant mixers and punching it down. They weigh pieces of dough and send them into the loaf-forming machine, grabbing out the odd ones to start over again. It's hard and fast work and riveting to watch. I recalled scenes in the movie "Mon Oncle" where Jacques Tati creates havoc in an industrial plastics factory by flipping an odd switch and lending an unwitting hand here and there, oblivious to the consequences of his actions. I couldn't help wondering what Uncle Hulot might have done if he were to wander through the bakery factory.

The hot chocolate was thick and rich with a dollop of heavy cream on top and my cinnamon pastries were yummy. I purchased a loaf of the LB's award-winning sour dough to take home with me. As I watched the production of the bakery products, I couldn't help imagining the thousands of stores and restaurants that would be the recipients of these items, and the myriads of people who would buy them, take them home and enjoy them. Each loaf exactly the same in taste and texture, every bun perfectly formed and baked to perfection. I thought of all the jobs the bakery supports: people who design, manufacture and service the equipment, creaters of recipes, bakers, sales and delivery personnel and administrative staff. It's a giant step from great grandma's two small loaves rising gently on a breadboard in the kitchen.

When I was young, one of the best treats -- better even than ice cream -- was a slice of fresh baked bread dripping with butter. There was, of course, the anticipation during each stage of production. I watched my great grandmother measure the ingredients to form the dough, waited for the yeast to grow and form a sponge and saw her punch down the sponge. She then added flour, kneaded the dough, placed it in a warm corner of the kitchen and let it rise. Several hours later, she kneaded the dough again, shaped it into two loaves and let the dough rest under a dampened muslin cloth. I would check in regularly, barely able to wait for the loaves to rise high enough to go into the oven. The aroma of yeast bread baking would bring me in from wherever I was to peek through the glass of the oven door and watch the bread brown.

My own bread making experiences were not as satisfactory. The idea and process of making the bread were always so much greater than the final result. Often the yeast was not really fresh enough to give good results.  I was always uncertain about how long to knead the dough so the texture would be light rather than brick solid. My kitchen never seemed to have the right cozy spot to keep the dough warm enough to rise properly. I would anxiously watch my two loaves baking in the oven, begging them to rise up over the edge of the pans and form the rounded top I so much wanted to see. In the end, buying bread from a bakery turned out to be my best option. Bakery bread has everything going for it. Everything, that is, except the exquisite taste that my great grandmother's loving hands imparted to the loaves she made.


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Donna Hamer
Ventura, California
My Blog: gardenofdeedee@blogspot.com