Bread - Filling a knead to bake

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Bread – Filling a knead to bake

ANN ARBOR, Mich. — Cries of “Behind! Behind” and “Knife! Knife!” emanate as a dozen or so people hunch over tables in an Ann Arbor classroom. They’re not med school students struggling with the latest surgical techniques; they’re average folks who have come to conquer a very different skill: baking. And specifically, the age-old struggle with strudel.

Creating the wafer-thin layers of pastry may, at first, seem as delicate and daunting a procedure as those performed by surgeons. It’s not, of course. All it takes is the tutelage of experienced bakers and a bit of hands-on practice.

For the intimidated masses, a stop at the popular Zingerman’s deli in downtown Ann Arbor sates the need for a luscious loaf of bread or a palate-pleasing pie. But about four miles to the south, at Zingerman’s so-called Bakehouse, the experts are more than happy to share their secrets. Each summer people from around the country travel to southeast Michigan to spend their time off on a “Bake-cation.”

“I had always been a very good basic food cook, but I was not a good baker,” said student Mary Mitchell, of Battle Creek, Mich. “Things never turned out the way they were supposed to.”

For four years, Mitchell has been building confidence in the kitchen by making the 11/2-hour drive from her home to attend classes at Zingerman’s, located in an industrial park just a scone’s throw from Interstate Highway 94. The wife of a surgeon, she has learned lots about precision and technique, having mastered nearly all of the bakery’s bread-making classes, which form the foundation for one of the two, four-day Bake-cations. Now she’s turning her attention to the other: pastries.

“My background is German, Norwegian, (and) Danish, so some of these flakier desserts are a part of my cultural background,” she said. “I just didn’t know how to do strudel, taking a dough and stretching it across an entire, big, long table and then rolling it all up with a fruit or savory filling on the inside.”

Step by step, Mitchell and her classmates learned the intricacies of the process under the watchful eyes of Alejandro Roman and Nikki Lohmann. Roman, the senior instructor, has been baking professionally for nearly 25 years.

“Baking is a science,” he told his students, warning them that even slight deviations can lead to failure. “As bakers, we always weigh ingredients for precision.

“We’re not making a cake. We’re going to need to do some kneading,” Roman noted as he launched into a demonstration of strudel-making before letting loose pairs of students to create their own, using both a sweet filling of apples and raisins and a savory one of cabbage and goose fat.

Loud thumping noises permeate the room as Roman demonstrates the “beaver slap,” a technique that strengthens the gluten in the dough to keep it from tearing. “We throw it palm up,” the instructor said, encouraging his students to imagine they’re tossing yo-yos. When the dough strikes the table, it sounds like a beaver slapping its tail in a pond.

Down the hall, in another classroom, Shelby Kibler instructed two men and six women in the craft of making various Italian breads.

“This bread, we want to bake it to a moderately reddish-brown,” he said as he put a loaf of ciabatta into an oven. Then he removed a loaf of focaccia and sprinkled it with olive oil, coarsely-ground sea salt and rosemary. The oil, he observed, infuses the rosemary into the bread.

“Warm bread is great, but if you’re looking to taste a bread, it really should be at room temperature,” he advised.

Back in the pastry class, the students practiced the fine art of spreading the dough across an entire table.

“So thin you can read the newspaper through it — that’s what we’re going for,” Roman said of the process, which — despite its delicacy — is quickly grasped by the class.

As the work continued, Roman said that the fillings — apples and cabbage — were inexpensive and readily available to the peasants of Eastern Europe, where the treat was invented. History lessons are part of the experience.

“Bread baking especially had eluded me for many, many years,” Mitchell said during a break in the strudel class. “By taking these classes, I learned the importance of measuring all your ingredients and following a very detailed recipe so that things come out as expected every single time.

“The quality of classes I receive here is above and beyond anything I’ve ever encountered anywhere else.”

One of the best features may be that students don’t have to clean up their messes. That task is left to the staff. That fact by itself might justify the cost of tuition.

Zingerman’s Bakehouse

Four-day “Bake-cations” are offered in June, July and August and cost $1,000; weekend and evening classes are held year-round and cost $500.

3723 Plaza Drive, Ann Arbor; 734-761-7255; bakewithzing.com

[email protected]

Bread Making with Bill & Sheila

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