The Making of a Chef (28 page)
Read The Making of a Chef Online
Authors: Michael Ruhlman
When I talked to Chef Coppedge about bread, hoping to get a sense of the spirit of his work, the spirit of baking, and what distinguished it, he spoke of “putting the microflora to work ⦔ but trailed off there, reverentially. Sourdough was, he said, “the pinnacle”âI assumed of bread making, but he trailed off again. Whenever I asked him to locate the source of his passion, he could scarcely finish a sentence, so ineffable was the notion of leavened bread. Chef Coppedge stopped naming his sourdough starters after friends' dogs, he said, but his oldest starter dated to February 8, 1985. There was a bit of a scare last block when one of his students used the
entire starter by mistake in one of the doughs. Coppedge called his wife. They rent a house on twenty-eight acres in neighboring Staatsburg and he'd put a spare sample of that starter in the barn a while back. He hadn't touched it in years. His wife retrieved the sample, drove it down to the Culinary, and met her husband in front of the school. Liquid had risen to the top, but Coppedge poured that off and the starter was still good; the yeast was dormant, still alive. We would continue to build it daily with equal parts rye and wheat flour.
entire starter by mistake in one of the doughs. Coppedge called his wife. They rent a house on twenty-eight acres in neighboring Staatsburg and he'd put a spare sample of that starter in the barn a while back. He hadn't touched it in years. His wife retrieved the sample, drove it down to the Culinary, and met her husband in front of the school. Liquid had risen to the top, but Coppedge poured that off and the starter was still good; the yeast was dormant, still alive. We would continue to build it daily with equal parts rye and wheat flour.
Losing the starter would not be the same as losing a great old cabernet vineâCoppedge said the main thing was to have starter available when you needed itâbut he did believe that the acids in the starter became more refined over time, as with wines and cheeses, and he was glad his eleven-year-old starter would continue to live on.
“If I could make bread every day like that, I would,” he told the class. “I wouldn't use any baker's yeast whatsoever, but for the time we have, the number of days, it's very difficult to work in. In fact, this is the way most artisan bakers are going. Most people agree that the bread has a different flavor. So what are we doing? We're going back to the way breads were made before yeast was fabricated. We're going full circle, toward less refined foods, whole foods.”
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nce the dough was mixed, it was fermented, usually in white plastic tubs or as a giant expanding blob covered with plastic wrap on one of the benches. We would then fold the dough over to release gas and redistribute the yeast to fresh food supplies, and scale the dough, dividing it into the weight Chef Coppedge wanted. It would then rest before we shaped it.
nce the dough was mixed, it was fermented, usually in white plastic tubs or as a giant expanding blob covered with plastic wrap on one of the benches. We would then fold the dough over to release gas and redistribute the yeast to fresh food supplies, and scale the dough, dividing it into the weight Chef Coppedge wanted. It would then rest before we shaped it.
Shaping, whether we were making baguettes for the Escoffier Room or hoagies for the Walk-In, an on-campus deli, was a skill that took practice. The main idea was to fold the dough over on itself and seal it with the heel of your hand, folding again, banging with the heel of your palm to pinch the fold shut, until you had a long thin tube. This shaping created the internal structure of the loaf. Chef Coppedge would demo various shapes. On Day One he demoed ciabatta, Italian for slipper. One simply pulled on a pound of dough till it was a long flat oval. When it had proofed one last time, it would be stippled with one's fingers, brushed with olive oil, and sprinkled with kosher salt, then shot into the oven.
This bakeshop had a machine that rolled baguettes, but we usually rolled the baguettes by hand. Chef Coppedge rolled beautiful baguettes. Once he had constructed the tube of dough and had a perfectly straight seam along the bottom, he rolled it out to lengthen it and tighten its internal structure. He rolled it gracefully back and forth, spreading his lanky hands farther apart as he rolled. His touch appeared to be strong and delicate at the same time. He demoed three for us the first time we made them, and all three were virtually identical. When you tried to do it yourself, you understood how remarkable this was. I asked Coppedge if he liked rolling baguettes. He stared at me, his eyes enlarged behind round spectacles, then nodded gravely. “I am always trying to perfect them,” he said.
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felt no urgency here. Coppedge more or less loped through the bakeshop from one dough to the next, or to the oven to check its temperature. Often he would simply sitâlike dough, resting. But dough, as we learned, was deceptiveâwithin that placid pale ball of flour and water was a hive of activity. Also deceptive was bread-baking classâwhile much of the time one simply scraped down one's bench or engaged in idle conversation while the dough proofed, this kitchen was, as Coppedge said, producing bread for nearly the entire school, between two hundred and three hundred loaves a day. Every day, waiters from the four public restaurants appeared for the restaurants' bread. Students in green aprons arrived from the Escoffier Room for baguettes. Students working in the Walk-In deli would arrive for hoagie rolls. Students from Pantry would take whatever was available that day.
felt no urgency here. Coppedge more or less loped through the bakeshop from one dough to the next, or to the oven to check its temperature. Often he would simply sitâlike dough, resting. But dough, as we learned, was deceptiveâwithin that placid pale ball of flour and water was a hive of activity. Also deceptive was bread-baking classâwhile much of the time one simply scraped down one's bench or engaged in idle conversation while the dough proofed, this kitchen was, as Coppedge said, producing bread for nearly the entire school, between two hundred and three hundred loaves a day. Every day, waiters from the four public restaurants appeared for the restaurants' bread. Students in green aprons arrived from the Escoffier Room for baguettes. Students working in the Walk-In deli would arrive for hoagie rolls. Students from Pantry would take whatever was available that day.
And because yeast doughs acted independently of you, the urgency took a different form. Urgency was determined largely by yeast. You felt the urgency underground and spread out. In a kitchen you could avoid weeds by efficiency of movement and thought. In a bakeshop, efficiency didn't matter; you could be as efficient as you wanted but you still had to wait for the yeast and watch it, do what it told you to do. In a production kitchen one normally found oneself in the weeds just before service or during service. In the bakeshop, weeds could happen at any moment.
On Day Three Dante and I had been assigned the hoagie dough. We used a basic hard-roll dough, which was seasoned with salt and sugar and softened with egg whites and vegetable oil. Focaccia and Italian bread could also be madeâdepending on how you shaped the dough.
Somehow, we'd scaled the flour wrong. Dante and I dumbly stared into
the eighty-quart mixing bowl. From across the room, Coppedge told us we needed more water. We argued that we had measured everything correctly, then slowly began to add water. The dough mixed and mixed and mixed and by the time Coppedge came over to ask us where we screwed up, we had added an extra four pounds of water. We mixed till it was well developed, and hefted the dough to the bench to bulk ferment. The air was warm and humid. After fifteen minutes, Coppedge strolled by and, noting our dough's size, put his hand on the dough.
the eighty-quart mixing bowl. From across the room, Coppedge told us we needed more water. We argued that we had measured everything correctly, then slowly began to add water. The dough mixed and mixed and mixed and by the time Coppedge came over to ask us where we screwed up, we had added an extra four pounds of water. We mixed till it was well developed, and hefted the dough to the bench to bulk ferment. The air was warm and humid. After fifteen minutes, Coppedge strolled by and, noting our dough's size, put his hand on the dough.
“This is running,” he said. “It's about eighty-seven degrees. This is running really fast.” He inserted a large digital thermometer into the dough. It read 86 degrees. “And that's not even at its core.” He called it “a fever” and said it had gotten hot from overmixing. We'd have to reevaluate the times of all the fermenting, scaling, and what time the dough would eventually go into the ovenâthere was a lot of bread to bake and finite oven space.
If somebody screwed up their dough, Coppedge would have to tell a waiter from American Bounty or St. Andrew's Cafe that the bread wasn't ready yet. Sometimes a restaurant would begin seating customers before a panting waiter came jogging in with a large plastic crate filled with bread still hot.
Dante had pulled a small chunk of our feverish dough and was kneading it in both hands. The chef regarded him skeptically. “I'm just overworking it to see what it feels like,” Dante said. “And I'm fidgeting.”
“Bakers don't fidget,” Coppedge said. “Cooks fidget.”
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oagies and hard rolls were the chore breads. The best breads were the flavored doughs, and here Coppedge was not unlike a painter choosing from a palette flavors that would transform his lean dough canvas into something brilliant. Sometimes it would simply be a matter of adding roasted garlic to the lean dough, brushing it with olive oil, and sprinkling it with coarse salt. Sometimes he liked to add calamata olives and walnuts, resulting in a purple dough that was salty and nutty and moist.
oagies and hard rolls were the chore breads. The best breads were the flavored doughs, and here Coppedge was not unlike a painter choosing from a palette flavors that would transform his lean dough canvas into something brilliant. Sometimes it would simply be a matter of adding roasted garlic to the lean dough, brushing it with olive oil, and sprinkling it with coarse salt. Sometimes he liked to add calamata olives and walnuts, resulting in a purple dough that was salty and nutty and moist.
After lunch and final kitchen cleaning, we met in a classroom down the hall, where Chef Coppedge would call out bread assignments. Team Three, for example, would do his frito diablo to the lean dough number two. “We're gonna add pine nuts,” he said, “raisins, and crushed red pepper. It's gonna be kind of crusty, kind of hot, kind of chewy, kind of sweet. I think you'll like it.” The sourdough would be the coveted chocolate cherry sourdough,
big round loaves of golden bread riddled with sun-dried cherries and pockets of melted chocolate. “If anyone lets the word out that we're doing chocolate cherry bread,” Coppedge warned, “you don't get one.”
big round loaves of golden bread riddled with sun-dried cherries and pockets of melted chocolate. “If anyone lets the word out that we're doing chocolate cherry bread,” Coppedge warned, “you don't get one.”
This was a decided perk of Baking Skill Development. The bread was good. Really good. Best-bread-I've-ever-tasted good. And you could take a loaf home. When we made a new bread, we'd stand around chewing away, nodding, and someone, stunned by surprised, would always say, “
Damn
good bread.” Good bread like this, when you knew how complicated it was, seemed out of our reach, and yet we had made this bread.
Damn
good bread.” Good bread like this, when you knew how complicated it was, seemed out of our reach, and yet we had made this bread.
We made rye bread, which we proofed in a canvas-lined basket called a banneton because rye flour lacked the supportive protein of wheat flour and needed the structure, as well as pumpernickle with cracked rye and pumpernickle flours, soaked overnight; the sharp grains would shred the gluten network if they were not soaked. According to Chef Coppedge, the net of gluten was like an intricate web of muscle tendons.
We made a wheat bread that was about seven parts flour and one part cooked potatoes, flecked inside with fresh chopped dill. The superb sunflower-seed bread was flavored with milk powder, sugar, sunflower oil, honey, and whole eggs, with sunflower seeds baked into the hard golden crust. We would also make classical doughs: soft rolls, brioche, and puff pastry. And we would mix, roll, proof, then boil bagels in malt-seasoned water, and then bake them to chewy perfection.
We mixed a sourdough multigrain, a San Franciscoâstyle sourdough that used a starter of water, flour, and buttermilk, a standard wheat sourdough that was amenable to the chef's artistic whimsâ“Team four, you're gonna be making an apple sourdough; we're gonna take the sourdough and we're gonna substitute in the final dough some apple cider and we're gonna incorporate some apple, and we're not going to add any yeast, any commercial yeast.”
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t's getting humid,” the chef said as class rolled into gear. “And we're gonna have to deal with that. When it gets humid, the dough is going to kick our behinds.” The chef was always saying something along lines that I didn't fully understand. He could explain it to meâthe effects of heat and moisture on the dough, and how this would make the dough race, but somehow an explanation was never enough.
t's getting humid,” the chef said as class rolled into gear. “And we're gonna have to deal with that. When it gets humid, the dough is going to kick our behinds.” The chef was always saying something along lines that I didn't fully understand. He could explain it to meâthe effects of heat and moisture on the dough, and how this would make the dough race, but somehow an explanation was never enough.
At least for me it wasn't enough. The differences between cooking and baking were so deep, so acuteâand I was so unprepared for themâthat the
work of this kitchen confounded me. I didn't get it,
couldn't
get it. It was not in my nature. This was a fact I could do nothing about, a fact embodied by my physical state: I began bread baking with abounding eagerness, and with each day I grew more weary, teary, and decrepit. It was as though I were coming down with a powerful illness. Each day, my brain grew cloudy, my shoulders sagged, I moved more slowly, I struggled through a growing fog to ask questions I thought needed answers. On Day Four, Chef Coppedge looked at me. I was sneezing, my eyes were oceans, and I believe I shook my head to see him clearly. He said blandly, “You're allergic to flour.”
work of this kitchen confounded me. I didn't get it,
couldn't
get it. It was not in my nature. This was a fact I could do nothing about, a fact embodied by my physical state: I began bread baking with abounding eagerness, and with each day I grew more weary, teary, and decrepit. It was as though I were coming down with a powerful illness. Each day, my brain grew cloudy, my shoulders sagged, I moved more slowly, I struggled through a growing fog to ask questions I thought needed answers. On Day Four, Chef Coppedge looked at me. I was sneezing, my eyes were oceans, and I believe I shook my head to see him clearly. He said blandly, “You're allergic to flour.”
“Allergic to
flour
?” I asked.
flour
?” I asked.
“I see it every now and then,” he said.
Sure enough, an allergy to flour hit me like winter had hit the Hudson Valley that year. And I'm not talking about flour for a pound of pasta dough or a pie crust. I would heft a fifty-pound sack of flour to the oblique mixer and dump it in. My head and shoulders would all but vanish in a white cloud.
I'd be sneezing my head off, even when Coppedge wasn't shaking a big plastic container of dried red pepper flakes into the lean dough number one mixing in the Hobart oblique. I would go to the nurse's office for antihistamines. “I'm from Chef Coppedge's bakeshop,” I'd say.
“Chef
Coppedge
,” they would swoon.
Coppedge
,” they would swoon.
They actually
swooned
. Such was the power of bread. I knew then, with sadness, such power over women was beyond my reach because I was not a baker.
swooned
. Such was the power of bread. I knew then, with sadness, such power over women was beyond my reach because I was not a baker.
As in all matters of food, there was an intellectual and spiritual correlative. I'd already discovered that I was cook. I could know what cooking was, fully, in my bones. Cooks, I had learned, came to cooking not to fulfill a desire, but rather, by chance, to fulfill something already in their nature. The same, I believe, was true of bakers. They were different. I have no doubt that there are people in this world, toiling away, in offices and backhoes alike, who are fundamentally unhappy because they never tried working in kitchens. And many are likewise unhappy because they are, by nature, bakers.
Because I was a cook or, rather, had “the cook” in my nature (I did not presume to call myself a cook), I could not fully comprehend baking. Baking was a sphere of knowledge and experienceâas cooking was such a sphereâthat I could not enter, could only observe from without, even though I was, like everyone, baking the bread, stretching the dough in my
hands to gauge if it had been mixed enough, had developed the necessary gluten network; I had scraped down my bench, had put boiling hot water into the giant Hobart oblique mixer, and covered it with plastic wrap to steam off the dough, and then cleaned it; I'd pounded the baguettes into tight rolls with the heel of my hand, and lengthened them with strong, gentle palms in hopeful imitation of Chef Coppedge. I'd scored and stippled the loaves with knives and my fingers and brushed them with oil and sprinkled them with salt and shot the loaves into the oven and watched the loaves
puff
, suddenlyâan effect called oven spring, the yeast becoming hyperactive from the heat just before death; and I'd cooled the loaves and eaten the bread and swept the hearthstone with a long mop heavy with vinegar and water. But I was not a baker and I would not then, not ever, understand the true nature of bread or the nature of bakers.
hands to gauge if it had been mixed enough, had developed the necessary gluten network; I had scraped down my bench, had put boiling hot water into the giant Hobart oblique mixer, and covered it with plastic wrap to steam off the dough, and then cleaned it; I'd pounded the baguettes into tight rolls with the heel of my hand, and lengthened them with strong, gentle palms in hopeful imitation of Chef Coppedge. I'd scored and stippled the loaves with knives and my fingers and brushed them with oil and sprinkled them with salt and shot the loaves into the oven and watched the loaves
puff
, suddenlyâan effect called oven spring, the yeast becoming hyperactive from the heat just before death; and I'd cooled the loaves and eaten the bread and swept the hearthstone with a long mop heavy with vinegar and water. But I was not a baker and I would not then, not ever, understand the true nature of bread or the nature of bakers.
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