Nov. 1, 2011 (ShapeShiftas) -- I was missing good bread, bakery bread, chewy "artisan" bread, baguettes in particular. Like the kind you can pick up in the city for dinner and carry fetchingly under your arm on your way home from work. Our last apartment in New York was over a French restaurant, and our landlords would get sacks of baguettes delivered early in the morning to our building's little vestibule. (I swear, Marcel, we never took even one!)
I had yet to discover Red Hen Bakery's almost perfect artisan breads, baked in Vermont and carried in upscale food co-ops and farmers' markets (or, "Farmers' Markets," which are to Vermont as Dean & Deluca's is to New York). I had patriotically bought Norwich, Vermont's own King Arthur Flour cookbook, second in size only to Larousse's Gastronomique on my shelf, intending to learn how to bake. I even pretty much mastered pizza dough after two years of trying, thanks to Eric's tutelage & Earl's recipe.
So, since I am striving to be the self-sufficient, homestead-hippie-chic (that's sheek) baking super-mom that my Vermont country life seems to demand, I declared, "Baguettes are flour, water, yeast, and salt. People have been making bread since Ancient Times at least. I'm an Artisan, too! How Hard Could It Be?"
Oh, dear. This innocent question has gotten me in trouble before, this query and its evil twin, How Expensive Could It Be? I should have learned by now. After living in New York and having two girls, the answer to both questions is -- additional zeros. How hard? Add a zero or so to the time you think it will take. How expensive? Keep adding zeros. 1-10-100-1000-10,000-, hours or dollars, ad infinitum.
Well, so I tried, and I try, to bake a simple baguette. Each time, it is missing that certain je ne sais quoi. I follow the pages of Baguette Theory and Construction in the KAF baking book soooooo carefully, I swear. I make the poolish and am so happy to learn what that word means. I think about wild yeast and weighing vs. measuring (weighing is supposed to be better). I steam my oven and spray my loaves. The next thing will be to try out the wood-fired oven above the fireplace that looked so cool (+$$$) when we were moving here but we have yet to use.
Now, I am not trying to offer up another cooking blog here, although I do love to cook and consider it a creative and giving act. I'm more struck by how this simple, basic, perfect baguette is so hard to achieve. Just like a bias-cut dress, or a porcelain bowl, my bread seems basic, easy. But its seemingly simple list of ingredients only adds up to "Baguette" if everything is worked just so. You only get the Perfection if you master the Simplicity.
Quakers, Friends, say that Simplicity is one of the six virtues by which we should live our lives. There is a handy acronym to remember all six -- SPICES -- Simplicity, Peace, Integrity, Community, Empathy, and (s**t, what IS that last one??? Oh, I remember!) Service. I aspire to them all, but Simplicity, I struggle with. We moved to Vermont for a simpler life, but have ended up with hours and hours spent driving to get to things that were just out the door in New York. I think about simplification when I design, because I want my dresses or my pillows to be easily produced, but then I like to trim things up so they "pop". (I guess I'm more Versace than Armani, in my designs at least.)
Simplicity is hard to achieve, in cooking, in drawing, in life. I find it hard to resist piling on, adding all the bells-and whistles. While a tricky design may be hiding bad execution, mistakes can't be hidden in a simple one. You can make bruschetta or croutons from your failed baguettes, just like you can slap a bunch of beads or an asymmetrical hemline onto an off-kilter dress. But the perfection of Simple, so much harder than it could be, is worth striving for, even if does take adding a few more zeros.
peace, Deborah
PS: Here is the King Arthur Flour's blog post about baguettes.