It is time for a newsletter as this year’s courses are drawing to a close, and all next year’s dates are now set, and flying on the website.

There are few changes, if any, to the courses offered and their programmes. Composite courses are the new thing and they were thoroughly described in my last Newsletter.  It means that for Basic and British courses, a One-day format will be followed immediately by a second day which is actually turning that one-day course into the Two-day version.  Students who want to book for the two-day course will stay on, and they may be joined by new people who have previously done the one-day course, but now want to complete the second day of it.  The format was tried out satisfactorily in October’s Basic course, so I have gone ahead to create six of these composite courses next year.

I had a stimulating trip to Sweden in the summer.  While it was a holiday with no specific plan to visit bakeries or meet bakers, my chefing friend Peter Wright did whisk me off to visit bakeries. Although crispbreads are not a mainstream part of British baking, I found the range very interesting, with wheat, rye, and combinations of wheat/rye/barley.  I have been practising since with a view to having a section on them in my book.  In the shorter term, students attending any 3-day (request programmes) course could ask for Scandinavian crispbreads as part of their hoped-for personal programme.

Talking of the book, it is now pounding along at a vigorous pace (for a two-fingered typist).  I need an illustrator.  Please get in touch if you can connect me with a person capable of drawing hands manipulating dough.  An area in which I have always felt that my book could excel is that difficult topic of showing and teaching how to shape dough, and generally capturing hand skills where they concern various bakerly tasks.  I already have a great photographer, Nick Atkins, but I want to combine him with an illustrator.

Course fees.  Ever since the recession embedded itself in 2008 my only fee to have risen slightly is my consultancy fee.  Your course fees have actually been reduced.  However, with all costs gradually rising, I now feel it is appropriate for me to creep up the course fees.  At the turn of the new year there will be the following changes: one-day course fee to rise from £160 to £175; two-day course fee to rise from £310 to £330.  Staying unchanged are 3-day course fee (£480) and “apprentice” day Thursdays (£125).

The fees will not rise until January 1st.  All bookings taken until December 31st shall be at the old 2012 rates.

Equipment for sale.  On the baker’s equipment front there is one new item – the small pastrycook’s plastic scraper tool that is favoured by bakers too. Further good news is that at last I have obtained again a steady supply of masonry tiles suitable for placing into domestic ovens to act as a “bake stone”. They are unglazed terracottas, hand made in Mexico, and they are crying out for a plump cob, bloomer, or sourdough loaf to be slid onto their hot surface. Dimensions are 30cm x 30cm x 14 mm thick.

People ask – why have a baking tile or stone?  Because you will get a real boost from the conducted heat punching the bottom of your loaf. The weakest feature of a domestic oven, and many fan-assisted chef”s ovens for that matter, is that the baking is primarily done merely by the circulation of hot air in convection currents.  These ovens lack the masonry floor of bakers’ ovens where the bread is always placed on a very hot surface.  With a hot tile in your oven you can at least emulate a baker’s oven.  Imagine the “oven spring” you will get in your bread.  Imagine the crisp bottom to your pizzas and pastries – no more “soggy bottom”  on your apple pie.

People also ask about oven spring – what is it? and why is it important?  It is important because it is the final signal that the fermentation of the bread has been properly managed.  When the bread meets the extreme heat of the oven, there should be life left in it to cause a surge of yeast activity, plus the natural expansion of the gas within it which will respond to such heat.  These factors combine to create oven spring – the rapid upward expansion of the loaf in the early stage of baking – usually displayed by some attractive tearing of the crust, and the pretty opening-out of the knife slashes given to the surface. When you are not getting oven spring it usually means there has been over-proving.

With best wishes for good baking,    Paul

This Newsletter deals with:

• website improvements
• Gift Vouchers available online
• PANARY’s business Facebook page
• new booking system for Basic and British

During the last year I have continued to put much effort into PANARY’s website.  The photos are generally improved, and all course descriptions now feature the daily programme (hour by hour) for that particular course. Prospective students can now see for themselves more clearly what to expect from the PANARY experience.

Vouchers online.  The most recent addition is the facility for buying a Gift Voucher directly from the website without having to order it by email from me.  PANARY is taking money via the website for the first time, and the vehicle I have chosen for that role is PayPal.  All the same categories and questions used in my previous voucher creation system are still features of the new system.  For example, you can designate an entire course for the voucher, or a declared sum of money; you can tick a box to say it must be maintained in secret.

I suppose the popularity of gift vouchers is a real sign of the times.  There are “leisure industries” serving people who are willing to spend freely on their hobbies and interests, as well as people with much time on their hands gained by an early retirement.  For many it is exciting to return to different forms of learning and education of all sorts, or to take up a new craft, and gift vouchers for courses are a popular way to spur this process along.  Finally, I daresay there is that weary category of gift entitled – what do you give somebody who already has everything?  A gift token can fill the bill and even surprise them too.

Facebook.  

Continuing with IT, and modernity, some of you who know me well are going to be surprised by this next one: PANARY has joined Facebook.  It is a business Facebook page, prepared for me by my friend Erika Bocangel who would be happy to hear from anyone who may want a Business page prepared (ebocangel@hotmail.com).

I invite you to visit and check it out - https://www.facebook.com/panary1

If you have a Facebook account just log in and “like” PANARY.  If you do not have a Facebook account, you can sign up to see what we are doing.  The purpose of PANARY’s Facebook page is to keep you updated on the “what’s on”, and for you to be able to interact with former or future students and people interested in baking.

Composite one & two-day booking for Basic & British.  

I shall finish this Newsletter by mentioning a new booking scheme that is afoot. For Basic and British courses (both themes where the two-day courses have been struggling for numbers ever since the recession began) I want to instigate a scheme where they are mainly one-day courses but a few times each year they have occasions when two days are set down together whereby the one-day version of each course melds into a two-dayer, making it actually a composite thing.  Hence the participants can start to book for the event at whatever level they want: either as a one-day course or as a two-day experience.  The first six students are taken on knowing they only want a one-day course, but a few can make it clear they want the 2-day. Fees will remain the same (one day is £160 at the moment, two days are £310).  The system also gives more flexibility, allowing students who have done the one-day version in the past to join straight to the second day of that theme when they want to at a later date.

This new scheme will be given its first trial on October 12-13, when the Basic course of Friday 12th will be extended to Two-day Basic on the 13th.  I shall be keen to see whether it gains interest.  Soon the necessary changes to the Calendar/booking area for October will be made by my website builder (pcaWeb) to accommodate this trial.

Good baking!  With best wishes,      Paul

This brief newsletter is to inform you about additional courses being added to the annual programme in order to repeat those popular courses that have sold out.

Booking began for 2012 in November and by new year the February courses had all filled. Hence there have been new courses laid on in March and April for one-day British and one-day Sourdough. Twice it has happened for the popular one-day Basic, for which there now needs to be a course every month.

Remember – do consider upgrading yourself to the deeper learning offered by a two-day course, the price of which has been lowered this year to £310.

On the home front at Cann Mills the small PANARY bakery is sparkling, having been painted from top to toe. Painting a bakery is a big job, needing a very thorough sugar soaping before painting can begin. The updraught from the ovens deposits a surprising amount of tar stains on ceiling and walls.

For those who are interested in Continental, I have recently obtained three different french flours from Matthews Mills, the most impressive being a creamy T65 used often by artisan bakers in the French provinces. These flours can be selected by students as they chase the perfect baguette or pain au levain.

Good baking, and best wishes,
Paul

Life is easy with a wood-fired masonry oven when your routine involves much baking and daily firing of the oven. The masonry and the whole structure stays permanently warm and hence the daily firing is a topping up affair, with less time taken, less fuel used.

This article concerns the other extreme, when your baking in the wood-fired oven is sporadic, and it is allowed to get completely cold.  Maybe you are an amateur baker that only gets to it at weekends, or perhaps you are a semi-pro who only fires and bakes on the days when you prepare bread for your local market.  At PANARY when I am in the phases of the year when there are no courses being held, I fire and bake in it only once a week when I have my commercial baking day to sell the bread in local shops.  If it is only fired once a week, while it will not have become damp, it has definitely gone back to stone cold by the next time you fire.

For these cold starts I recommend a long firing with larger fuel – more like logs than split skinnies.  Before setting the fire I begin by placing, or fanning, logs around each side perimeter, none at the rear.  In my little Panyol 120 (that means diameter of the oven is 120 cm) I would place about four logs around the perimeter, two on each side, each log as thick as your leg (or arm if you are a huge person).  Leave the blank at the rear because it is into that space that you will later gradually push your fire when it is really blazing well.

Then, in the normal way, build the fire inside the doorway, between the doorway and the centre.  As it catches properly load the kindling starter fire with several medium sized pieces that will consolidate your blaze.   When you have a healthy blaze that will not be set back by moving it, gradually push the fire to the rear of the oven.  Two large flanking sticks on left and right are a good way to do this – see the picture of the French baker firing his Panyol 180 on the Gallery section of the Ovens part of my website.  Keep the medium sized – perhaps split – pieces up to the fire so that the blaze becomes intense enough to light the perimeter logs from the rear and start fanning around the sides.

Remember that a well managed fire is achieved by the maxim “load a little, often”.  A sure sign that you have become carried away is to see naked flame gushing out the doorway and going uselessly up the chimney. If the hottest point of a flame is its tip, that is a lot of wasted heat going up the chimney.

For the next two or three hours I settle into the steady rhythm of loading a log whenever one has burned away at the rear or down the sides.  If a piece comes along that is fairly large, therefore you get the feeling that the fire will be dampened for a while until it catches, I then accompany the too big piece with a split skinny to put a quick blaze right beside it and allow it to catch fairly quickly.

Because so much heat will be lost to warming the cold structure of the oven’s surrounding masonry, you must go on firing for a very long time.  Long ago the inside crown will have burned itself clean, but ignore that signal on an occasion like this.  While it is a well known indicator that you have bread baking temperature when the crown clears its soot away (to appear whitish), it really only stands as a good indicator when the oven is fired regularly and has  warmth retained in its structure. In many instances, if you proceeded to bake immediately after the soot has cleared, the heat will be so shallow you would only get one round of baking at proper bread temperatures.

Now you are soaking the oven in this high level of heat, singly replacing the logs that burn away, making sure the heat is sustained rather than reducing.  Perhaps two hours would do it for this stage.  By now the heat will have ceased disappearing into the structure, and can be doing its proper job of heating the refractory masonry in the oven chamber.

When you estimate that there is about two more hours in the bread proving time, that would be the marker to allow the fire to die away.  No more logs are loaded, and all around the perimeter the dancing flames can be allowed to gradually reduce to red coals.  Throttle the draught by part-closing the doorway opening so that the rush of incoming air is not blowing much of the heat away and up the chimney.  Every twenty minutes or so, stir the coals with the poker to keep introducing oxygen to them.  Allow a trickle of draught so that coals continue to reduce but massive heat is retained.

After about an hour, rake the coals into the doorway opening where they are mounded in a great heap.   Close the door(s) so that only the merest trickle of oxygen can feed this mound, enabling them to glow a little.  Now the coals can soak the masonry of the doorway with a forceful heat.  Previously the doorway will have been a coolish zone because the cool air feeding the fire will have been steadily rushing through the doorway for hours.  It is important to heat the doorway like this because it means the oven will bake evenly when all the bread is set and the door(s) closed.  Every so often I stir the mound of coals here.

At this point you have to concentrate on the bread proof, to ascertain that it is not actually faster or slower than you had first estimated.  If it is showing faster, you now have to hurry to rake out the coals, clean the floor, and fully open the doorway to blow some excess heat away so that the oven is not too hot for the bread.  If proof is slow, you can retain as much heat as possible by entirely shutting the door(s).

If things seem to be going as you had planned, choose a lull in your work to take the time to rake out the coals and sweep the ash off the floor.  I finish this task by swinging in a rotating action a damp cloth on the end of a chain around and around, across the floor of the oven.  It was called “the scuffle”, and hessian is a good material for it.

Now you proceed to give the oven its final “settling” period, when it can further even itself out, and heat that would be too fierce can fade away.  A typical settling time with closed doorway may be thirty or forty minutes.  You are now ready to bake two rounds of bread, and such a long and careful firing should have given you the sustained heat to be able to do two rounds – two full oven loads.

The basic oven that is fired on its floor is the ancient and classic design that we have had for millennia.  The domed chamber is built with only one opening – a doorway that is used for loading the fuel and subsequently releasing all exhaust from the firing phase; and later, it is used as the aperture through which the food to be cooked is pushed in and pulled out.  This simplicity requires that the chimney base has to be placed directly outside the doorway.

An internal chimney would require a mechanism called a damper, being the method of closing the base of the chimney so that all the heat built up in the internal masonry of the oven does not escape freely up the chimney during the long cooking cycle.  Dampers are usually simple metal plates which are connected to a pull-push rod; when pushed shut the plate closes the base of the chimney; when pulled open the plate is withdrawn to allow free upward escape of all heat.

It is worth pointing out that an internal chimney in a small oven is not recommended, because as all heat rises to travel across the oven dome, a considerable amount of heat will simply rush up the chimney in a wasteful manner.

In large ovens, however, internal chimney openings are more common, and are essential if the oven is to be fired from a separate furnace.  Compared with firing on the floor, firing through the separate furnace box is relatively passive, but does bring the contingent benefit of having no mess of ash and coals strewn across the oven floor.  Time and effort do not have to be expended cleaning this mess off the floor before the bread is set in the oven.  At the bottom of the furnace box is the grate (fire bars) and underneath the bars is the ash box.  While firing, the flames roar out into the oven chamber leaving ash and coals falling neatly into the ash receptacle below.  My oven in Australia was a “side-firing Scotch” type, with the furnace placed on one side of the facade wall, and the amount of inside cleaning was simple: to  rake back gently into the furnace a small amount of ash that had spewed forward carried by the velocity of the draught feeding the flames.  This is a far cry from the labour involved in raking back through the doorway all the coals and ash left from a hearth firing.

With the furnace to one side, the doorway in the middle, the other side of the facade wall features the damper mechanism at the base of its chimney.  All these facade wall features will entail expensive cast iron.  Handsome to look at, the cast iron is essential because it will endure great temperatures without rusting or warping.

Should the oven purchaser decide that he will prefer the clean floor, and fit a furnace in the wall or underneath the doorway, he must brace himself for two major expenses – the first expense is the cost of purchasing and fitting into the building project all that complex and costly cast iron; the second is a much bigger on-going fuel bill.  I estimate that a furnace style masonry oven uses about 30% more wood than one fired on its floor. This is because the energy required to hurl the flames out of the furnace box and deep into the oven chamber is already using up some of the fuel, and further loss of fuel occurs when you consider that much heat from red coals is being lost as it falls downwards through the fire bars.

To the prospective purchaser I present it as a simple and challenging question: is the convenience of a clean floor after firing worth the huge expense that it entails?

In France I have been surprised to see how many professional bakers with large masonry ovens are content to clean routinely the ash and coals from the floor after each firing, content to eschew the cast iron fittings that make life easier but more expensive.  In many cases there is no cast iron at all on the oven, with the doorway being stopped up at baking time with a simple prop door of steel that is pushed firmly into the opening creating a tight enough seal.

Paul Merry

Often I am asked – what is it that is so special about masonry ovens?

When my interest in baking grew to an itching urge to find out all I could within a few years so that I could set up my own bakery, these ovens were always called “brick ovens” by the old bakers.  They were often made with simple house bricks, perhaps with firebrick placed around the furnace area and where the flame path gushed out into the chamber across the front of the crown.  The big bakers’ ovens had a twentieth century improvement – a remote furnace, placed in a front wall, and when I began baking they were more likely fired with oil or gas.  At that time, the 1970’s, those I came across were already survivors, some would have called them relics of the past.  But quite a few bakers still used them, more in the country towns than the cities, particularly if they were still in good condition.

But what intrigued me most when I was a newcomer to real baking was that the old bakers whose knowledge I was tapping about the craft, would be likely to say something like this to me: “well, young ‘un, now that you are finding out as much as you can about fermentation and the craft, I suppose you will also have to learn how to build a brick oven”.  When I had heard this several times I became aware that the old craftsmen would categorically pronounce the brick oven as the best of all types.  Then, of course, I did set out to learn how to build one, and my first was built in Victoria, Australia, and it was fired with wood.

Nowadays it is valid to call them “masonry” ovens because in a modern oven there is a likelihood that the firebrick type of refractory masonry will not come in the form of a brick, but in many differently molded shapes that all lock together to form an oven.

The reason why masonry ovens are so good, the king of ovens, is the masonry itself: fired clay.  As a medium for cooking, clay is far superior to metal.  For us laymen bakers it is hard to understand, because here we are delving into physics, involved with the science and the nature of heat rays as physical emanations.  The heat ray emanated from clay, pottery, brick has a different profile from metal.  Clay absorbs a high storage level of heat and then radiates it for a long time.  To apply this to a large oven, it has absorbed an immense amount of heat during the firing cycle, then it has the capability to radiate this powerful heat from a deep source in a manner different from metal. By comparison metal’s heat is shallow and harsh, more damaging. The heat from the deep walls and thick floor of the masonry oven is indeed powerful, but there is a gentleness about it compared with the brittle heat from metal.  Regarding the actual set up of ovens as baking chambers, the modern metal-cased oven has its temperature repeatedly altered by thermostatic control with surging heat and often uneven heat.  A solid masonry oven simply sits there losing its heat very steadily, entirely even throughout the chamber.  When it is gone, you re-fire.

Another interesting thing occurs inside a brick oven – provided it has a well-fitting door.  The bread bakes under a blanket of its own steam, making a crust that is excellent in texture and of course well caramelized in that heat.  In fact the crust is so well turned out that you may hesitate before you bothered going to the trouble and big job of fitting steam injection.

All brick ovens are fitted with thick floor tiles that are deeply penetrated by the heat.  As soon as the loaves are loaded, the physical expansion and upward spring of the bread is superb.  This phenomenon we call “oven spring” is the final accolade of a well handled fermentation.  The bread lifts upwards as the gases within it expand, gaining lightness for its bulk, and opening up knife slashes or inclusions on its crust in a dramatic or pleasing way.  The quality of the oven spring alone would lead some bakers to want a masonry oven.

It is important to talk about the method of firing.   With the world’s dwindling resources and green-house gases being constantly brought to our attention, we are challenged to think about various issues surrounding our choices concerning fuel.        Wood, being a renewable energy source, is surely a worthy way to fuel your business rather than maligned fossil fuel. Masonry ovens are just as good for baking in when fired by gas or even oil burners, but relying on these fossil fuels is not exactly forward thinking.  Why not go with wood?  The wood decision also means a  further gain, being the benefit that the bottom crust of both pizza and large loaves are enhanced by a subtle flavour trace of the wood ash left on the floor after firing.

There is a final consideration about one’s way of life and the choice to be a real craftsman.   Working with a masonry oven, particularly a wood-fired one, involves a more challenging and exciting day.   You are wrestling with a more organic beast than a conventional steel oven, hence there are more thrills and spills.   The work is simply more thrilling because you have many more judgments to make, things cannot be altered or controlled by a mere turn of a dial or push on a button.

Paul Merry,             Nov 6, 2011

The 2012 programme is now on PANARY’s website for all to see.   I wish to draw to your attention some of its features and changes.
The main news item is the price reduction of all two-day courses.  As an aftermath of the recession, and now during this current and prolonged austerity period, the two-day courses have slumped in popularity while the one-dayers have gained.  As a committed teacher, and a person who has the good fortune of loving his work, the decline in the two-dayers has been a sadness for me.  It is on the two-day course that a student can really get his or her teeth into whatever baking it is that is the theme of the course.  With the price reduction (£60, meaning they now cost £310)) I am hoping to draw people back to them.

Two-day sourdough is now entirely off the programme while more one-day sourdough dates are coming on.  Its steady gain in popularity reflects the emerging interest in sourdough bread that is occurring throughout Britain.  At the turn of the century it seemed that only London was ready for it.  Now, it appears nearly everywhere.  I have devised a good programme that can pack most aspects of sourdough into the one-day format.  Students wishing to go more deeply into it would now be better served by attending a  three day course (where they announce they want to study sourdough in particular).

The so-called “advanced” course  Sponges & Pre-ferments  has been resurrected after a brief showing in 2009.  Don’t be put off by my description “advanced”. Take heart that at every PANARY event there is a group of people of very mixed ability.  I am entirely used to looking after an empty vessel among a group of more experienced, and in the PANARY classroom there is scope for people to adopt different learning speeds.  However, having said that, bakers with a little more experience can get a real boost from this sponges course.

The website itself will come in for a little polishing.  There will be a new entry accompanying each course description – the entire hour-by-hour programme of each course.  People who have never been before can now see what happens, they can assess whether they think it looks like good value; meanwhile old hands can study programmes to see what they may wish to tackle next. Further, some work will be done on website photos now that I have been having photo sessions with professional all-rounder Nick Atkins, much of whose work is aimed at my book.   At this point everybody asks for the likely publication date of my bread book, to which I usually declare “next year”.

Moving away from the courses news, and wanting to comment on the wider scene of commercial baking in Britain, it seems that at last the pendulum has swung over the last few years towards more genuine craft baking.  The trend is to be applauded, even though we must keep our feet on the ground when the statistics indicate that the real craft sector might only amount to barely 5% of the whole of British bakery.  This interest in craft, and the number of people out there who are toying with making a commitment to it, is shown by the consistent popularity of my three-day courses, one of which is aptly named “Going Professional”.

In my opinion the swing of the pendulum has been given its main push by the increasing number of Britons who want wholesome and chemical-free foods, while secondary pushes have come from the popularity of farmers’ markets as selling opportunities for a baker aspiring to professionalism , as well as the tireless work of the Real Bread Campaign. Inspired by the success of CAMRA (the Campaign for Real Ale that led to both survival and revival of naturally fermented British ales) the new boy on the block, our Campaign for Real Bread, has gained support from small independent crafters and is now in its turn nurturing  many new small bakeries.  It also uses many of its resources to give a big wake up call to the public to pay attention to the spurious list of ingredients in common factory-made bread.

On the ovens front I have been selling big ones mostly, always exciting to be involved with professionals’ projects.  Two of these big ovens will sit side by side in a new business in Brixton called “Bread Bread”, and the other has been built for River Cottage’s new restaurant venture in Plymouth.
On the equipment and baker’s hardware front I must say I am really pleased to be importing the superb French linen.  Dough barely sticks to it, making it such a marvellous cloth to have around the bakery.  Panarians have been buying it at a pleasing rate and metres of it get sent across to my basket maker who produces beautiful bannetons , also snapped up by Panarians.

I shall finish by reminding you that Gift Vouchers are available at PANARY all year round, but this is of course the time of year when they can be most welcome.

With best wishes for all baking pursuits,        Paul

All PANARY course dates for 2011 are now on the website – www.panary.co.uk – and with this newsletter I can point out a few changes.

Two theme courses have been deleted: Flatbreads and the two-day Sponges & pre-ferments. Students can still encounter a range of flatbreads by attending the Italian and Wood-fired Oven courses.  The Sponges course was less popular than I expected, probably because it was an advanced level course and not thought of as mainstream. However, work with sponges of all types does occur on both the British and continental courses (including French), and a student who really wants to go into sponges deeply could request them on any three-day course programme.

A general shift in the programming that reflects our post-recession times is that I am holding more one-day courses and less of the two-day.  New one-day courses are: French, British, and Sourdough. For years these have been in the two-day format, and it is now an exciting challenge for me to present these themes in the one-day format.  It will take me a while to get used to hearing myself say…”and here is one that I made earlier…”

Get in touch if you have any questions, or simply want to have a bakerly chat.  I shall be away for most of January in Malaysia, where I have an interesting consultancy project helping at the start-up phase of a European-style bakery on the outskirts of Kuala Lumpur.  The proprietor came to two courses in October, one approriately being “Going Professional.”

Hoping to see you during 2011, I shall finish by sending best wishes for all your baking pursuits.

Paul Merry, November 2010

New course this year (2010 programme) is Sponges & Pre-ferments. While this course really should be thought of as an advanced course, it remains open to anybody to attend without any pre-requisites, as is the PANARY way. The pitch of the course is to give such an in-depth view of sponges and ferments of all types that we cross the national boundaries, examining and making from the Continent alongside Britain. This is an all-yeast course, no sourdough in our family of sponges. The first course in May got off to a steady start, and the course programme seemed to suit very well. Next opportunities are July 13-14, and October 23-24.

A minor programming change this year is that all wood-fired oven workshops are now a one-day event. (Apart from those odd occasions when participants on any course actually request the use of the masonry oven). The oven day is an exciting one that involves cooking a range of hearth based foods as well as hearth breads.

On the oven sales front there have been recently some exciting sales of large ovens. A large Panyol oven has been built on Tresco, Scilly Isles, to be used in the Island Hotel there. A Model 120 went to a dashing Restaurant/Bar called Lunya in Liverpool’s L1 district. Another unusual sale has occurred to a film company called Wall to Wall Films, and this one really is a “watch this space” situation. The big 220 model oven will be used by the film as it features a family of bakers as they take their craft on an experimental living journey through Victorian times, Edwardian baking, and again, baking between the wars. Watch out for it later in the year with its title of High Street Dreams.

On a scientific note, I have been co-opted onto a committee of scientists who are from the Elm Farm Organic Research Station near Newbury. In its ninth year now is their project for genetic diversity, whereby a fascinating cross population of wheat is being bred as stock for agriculture, aiming for the new populations to be much more resilient in the face of adversity. Two typical examples of future adversity are climate change and the expected reduction of chemicals used by farmers. My role on the committee is mainly about being one of the testing bakers. Lately PANARY has been swamped by mysterious brown flour bags with minimum writing on them, as the blind testing goes on from four different farm sites.

Best wishes for all your various baking pursuits. Perhaps I shall hear from you by means of the comments box on the new website. No graffiti please….

Paul Merry,
July 2010

Master artisan baker and Slow Food member Paul Merry met with Catherine and Henry on their trip to visit the Dorset convivium. Paul has been involved with craft baking and masonry ovens for over thirty years, and has been teaching courses for fifteen years. He kindly took the SFUK team on a tour around the watermill, Cann Mills near Shaftesbury in Dorset, where a range of flours are made using its traditional stones and sieves. Next door, Paul holds a wide range of bread making courses. Here, Paul took some time away from his classes to answer a few questions…

Paul’s views on “craft”, as they appeared recently in two published articles

So Paul, how did your interest in bread making begin?

Primarily I had a deep interest in crafts and their survival in our modern, industrialised world.  As a young traveller, once when I had a job on a coastal boat in Queensland, the skipper ordered me to make the bread on one of the voyages.  Years later, when I chose bread as the craft that I wanted to pursue, I am sure that the fascination with it was soundly boosted by those occasions when I made bread on the boat and cooked it on the beach in a “dutch oven”  – a lidded cast-iron pot.

What’s your earliest food memory?

Being excited by the bakery delivery man who jumped off his cart with the huge basket of fresh loaves in the crook of his arm, yelling “baker!” as he strode purposely to our back door.

What does Slow Food mean to you?

The charm of the name attracted me immediately, seeing as I was a person who had already formed a disdain for fast food.  Beyond the charm of the name, as I started to find out more about the ethos of Slow Food I realised that my main empathy for it is in the area of its promotion and support for the smaller, distinct, regional producer who does not compromise quality for the all the other competing pressures of modern life and profitability.

What do you hope people take away from one of your bread making classes?

Knowledge that clearly helps them to make better bread, plus a respect for the ancient craft.

Do you have any upcoming projects?

I shall be guest teaching some courses away from Panary, and I have some interesting consultancy projects about to start where I nurture bakers who are just starting out.

What would your food wish be?

That Slow Food UK grows quickly and pushes forward to promote healthy and honest food in Britain’s sadly inadequate food culture.

Here is Paul’s letter to the Editor of British Baker Magazine (fortnightly trade magazine) from which an edited version appeared in the edition of Feb 26, 2010.

Wednesday, 10 February 2010

Dear Editor,
Inspired by Peter Cook’s letter in your last edition, I wish to carry on a vigorous discussion about craftsmanship, hoping bakers will think more about what exactly they are doing.

In both the advertising world and industrial baking the need for catch phrases is a powerful force for debasing language and broadening the appeal of certain phrases to a point where they tip over into meaninglessness.

One of the first casualties I noticed was “home made”.  Seen on the side of lorries delivering industrially made foodstuffs, heard endlessly on television advertisements, soon any comparison between factory food and what could be made at home seemed merely humorous. Did the owners of those factories believe members of the buying public would consider the baked goods were as good as “home made”?

Another contentious word was “fresh”.  But there is not sufficient time here to go into that story!

With commercial bread, two similar casualties have been “craft”, and lately, “artisan”.

For the corporate world the term “craft” had an image that was ready to be borrowed, bastardised, debased.  The term was used in advertising and bandied about to such a degree by huge firms that it really had no connection to the craft of baking, and soon became meaningless.

It is indeed a difficult task to pin down a useful definition of both these words. In my office I have the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, two vast tomes, and find that their definitions are vague.

“Artisan”, originally from Latin, but borrowed in English from modern French, is uncomfortably linked to arts and artistry in learning an art form.  It would be an odd baker nowadays who considered himself or herself an artist, although that baker’s contented customers would extol the artistry of the product.  The definition of “craftsman” is easier to accommodate because it mentions skill at handicrafts, and surely it is mention of the hands that is the main pointer to what I think of as craftsmanship.

Look at basketry, pottery, weaving, or any traditional craft, and some people would say that the craftsman is a person who is capable of the successful and efficient repetition of a range of hand skills to produce the crafted object consistently. Certainly it is true that a real craftsman has to be able to churn out the crafted object with both repetition and consistency, and in our trade of baking, a degree of speed is also necessary when you need to earn your living.  But, as well as skill with the hands, one must be careful not to overlook that vast platform of knowledge embodied in a craft that entails knowledge of the materials and how to treat the materials according to certain governing rules, even before the repetitive hand skills are undertaken.

When my interest in commercial baking began in the seventies, it was already difficult to find in Britain a tradesman baker worthy of being called a “craftsman”.  Industrial practice, “instant” dough (meaning chemically assisted dough that is hurried to the oven without being given actual fermentation time in bulk), reliance on machinery – all these changes had undermined the craft to a point that it was an endangered species.  Young men were following the modern way, not interested in what their father or grandfather could show them.

Reacting to the debasement of everything that rightfully belonged to the craft, during the nineties I preferred to use the word “artisan” to refer to the baker or firm that was still actively engaged with the craft of fermentation. Although a tiny sector, the artisanal bakers could recognise each other fairly easily, and still do today.  An initiative, spearheaded by Dan Lepard ( bakery writer and consultant) to create a trade group called the British Association of Artisan Bakers had trouble getting off the ground mainly because hard working artisan bakers who are doing long hours in their demanding small business never seem to have spare time to devote to travelling to meetings.  During the few meetings that were held, it was challenging, and exciting at the same time, to find a suitable definition of the craftsman/artisan in order for the group to be able to identify those worthy to be its members.  The charge of elitism reared its head during lengthy circuitous discussions that were trying to find the code of practice that made a craftsman.  Was the tradesman baker who used chemical “improvers” in his bread to be banned when he still worked dough by hand on a wooden bench with the obvious skills of a craftsman?

During the recent decade I have now given up with the word “artisan”.  To the industry it means a product that is made by a machine to look hand made or crafted by an individual establishment!  I have even seen advertisements for an “artisan” range of nifty chemical additives to make the product look rustic and hand crafted.

Such absurdity and deceit has now driven me back to the words “craft” and “tradesman” baker. But, as Peter Cook has pointed out, our trade has lost its way in the use of these terms when describing what I prefer to call “light industrial” baking, where dough is barely touched by the human hand.

The craft baker can be forgiven for wanting some machines to speed up the process or boost the output capable of being produced by one session of work.  Imagine starting each day in the bakery having to hand knead two hundred kilograms of dough in two or three batches!  But by pursuing that process of reliance on machinery, is the baker still a craftsman if the dough is moving from one machine to another without being touched by bakers’ hands?

Sometimes the dough’s journey from mixer to oven is so steadily mechanised that the bakers can only be described as machine minders.  They cannot be thought of as craftsmen because they make no judgement along the way about whether or not the dough is actually ready or not to go on to the next stage.

Hence, for me, when we are in the grey area and not dealing with a real craftsman in a tiny bakery, the main thing that indicates whether or not the bakery is a “craft” establishment is the inclusion of that process of constantly making judgement about the state of the dough, its readiness to be allowed to go along to the next stage.  Most of these establishments, although heavily mechanised, will also have the bakers shaping by hand those types of loaf which cannot be properly turned out by the moulding machine.  Similarly, there are types of loaves that have a delicacy about them, like sourdough, or a baguette made with softer flour, where it would be considered that the moulding machine would be too rough for their internal structure, hence they are done by hand.

Sincerely,
Paul Merry
PANARY  Breadmaking  School,    Dorset