I spoke to Linda Kearney from Queen of Tarts this morning. She had kindly commented on my blog (when I was tearing around town to find malt for my Rustic Sourdough recipe) that I was welcome to stop by her soon-to-be-open bakery to borrow the few grams of malt I needed for my recipe. She laughed, ruefully, when I told her my story of baking my own bread from scratch for the first time (including the starter!) and finding myself puzzled when it didn't turn out exactly as I had hoped.
"Welcome to my world," she said.
Yup, you never quite know what you've done wrong, and there are so many points at which it's possible to make a mistake. Having cut her teeth in the baking business at the farmers' market primarily with sweets, Linda has been experimenting with a variety of artisanal breads for her new bakery, which she hopes will open this month.
"You have no idea how much bread we've thrown out, just trying to get it right," she says.
This gives me a new appreciation for the high cost of artisanal breads one purchases from a good bakery, such as Tree Stone, or Bon Ton. Good bread takes time, and expensive materials, and real expertise.
Meantime, Linda suggests the malt I used (found at Bosch) might not be the right malt. She says Queen of Tarts uses malted barley flour. The recipe given to me by NAIT baking instructor and department head Alan Dumonceaux simply says "malt," so who knew there was more than one kind? I have a call into NAIT to clear this up. One thing I'll say about the artisanal bread making course at NAIT is that while it is inspirational, it also assumes a lot of knowledge, and that the recipes are not explicit enough for my liking.
Linda and I concurred that learning to bake bread had a number of parallels to learning to be a good parent when you have a new baby. One stumbles about, trying to imagine what is wrong when a baby is fussing, or won't sleep."
"It is like having children, but without the feedback," laughs Linda. "No happy gurgles. Nothing."
By the way, if you want to try Linda's bread before her bakery opens, pop by Alberta Avenue market on Thursday nights from 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. when she and husband Paul are selling a variety of breads, just to get a sense of what people like. (These breads are not cast-offs, in case you're worried! I purchased the miche bread there a couple of weeks ago and it was wonderful.)
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