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Written by Theresa Myers, for NEXTnc
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Thursday, 02 November 2006 |
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 It’s not chocolate or rich desserts or even fat-laden entrees that keep me from having a shape like Kate Moss.
It’s bread. Baguettes, boules, French, Italian, whole wheat, fruit and nut, quick breads, yeast breads, toasted or cold, served as a sandwich or with a bowl of soup, I love it all.
I even fancied myself a bit of a bread baker, having several tried- and-true recipes I love to make.
But now, now that I’ve met Brad Hall, I’ll never be satisfied with store-bought, or even my homemade versions, again.
Hall is a true bread baker. An amateur who utilizes professional methods, Hall has a real bakery in his central Greeley home, complete with restaurant-supply-store equipment, a commercial-grade mixer and a masonry woodburning oven, which he constructed himself in his backyard.
“It’s a hobby that’s gotten out of hand,” Hall said, jokingly.
Hall’s hobby, which is probably more of a vocation, began when he and his wife, Deb, lived in San Francisco while she was attending medical school.
“In San Francisco, you’d have your choice of six or eight bakeries that made the best bread,” he said.
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Bret Hartman | for NEXTnc
Brad Hall removes a batard of homemade French bread from his masonry woodburning oven in his backyard. Hall is a stay-at-home father and fired up his oven, which he built himself, to bake a batch of bread for his family.
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After Brad and Deb moved to rural northern New Mexico, after he became a stay-at-home dad for now 8-year-old Madeline, after he couldn’t find a decent bakery near his isolated home, Hall started baking. And, because he’d never done it before, he simply followed recipes.
Through trial and error, by investing in some detailed cookbooks and by studying the methods of great bakers, Hall started turning out some incredible loaves.
There were a few mistakes along the way, he admits.
“I’ve had entire batches where I forgot to put the yeast in,” he said. “I’m sitting there looking at it thinking, ‘Why isn’t this rising?’ ”
When the Halls moved to Greeley about five years ago, Hall took his hobby one step further. After purchasing plans, he constructed a wood burning oven in his backyard.
The oven is as big as a storage shed and constructed of red brick. Deb Hall, now a family physician at North Colorado Medical Center, took a welding class and constructed a shelter for the oven, plus the all-important counter-weight door, which allows Hall to slide the bread in on the long-handled peel, a bakers tool that looks like a long metal or wooden paddle.
Several days before he intends to use it, Hall starts heating the oven slowly. Several probes in the oven help him regulate the temperature. Before baking, the wood and coals are scraped out and the surface of the oven is carefully mopped. The masonry, which has absorbed the heat from the fire, is what bakes the bread.
Hall graciously spent nearly an entire day teaching me how he makes bread. The night before, he made what is called a pre-ferment, a starter that contains part of the flour, water and a small amount of yeast. The French call it a Poolish, the Italians call it a biga.
I will never have a wood-burning oven in my backyard. I will never have a commercial-grade mixer, or all the tools Hall uses. I will probably never attend the San Francisco Baking Institute to study with some of the country’s best bakers, as Hall did. But Hall assured me that shouldn’t stop me from turning out a decent loaf.
Hall also taught me many other things, such as how to properly shape a loaf and the importance of scoring or making slices in the top of the unbaked loaves. He taught me how to tell when the dough has been mixed enough and tricks for sliding it into the oven.
For home bakers, he recommends starting with a good book, such as “Bread: A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes,” by master baker Jeffrey Hamelman.
What came out of Hall’s oven was as good or better than any artisan bread I’ve tasted. I tasted it at Hall’s house, I ate it for dinner and I toasted it for breakfast.
Kate Moss I’ll never be.
But with bread like that, who cares.
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RECIPE
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