THE BIRTH OF OUR BREAD

Many of you have tried Cake Flour Bakery’s house-made Hearty Bread, whether in a fresh-baked loaf or as part of one of our delicious signature sandwiches, but do you know the story behind it? How does our bread, with its walnuts, oats, and flax, come to be? It’s actually a pretty involved process. “I had a traumatic experience with bread,” says Claudia DeLaTorre, pastry chef and owner of Cake Flour Bakery, “Yeast is alive, you can’t control it, and that freaks me out!” After couple of shaky first tries, she feels much more confident and intrigued. “I’m in a place now where I really want to get to know it.” And it shows! From beginnings to bread the whole process takes a whopping four hours. We begin by mixing together all our ingredients into our Hearty Bread dough. This is followed by the first “proofing,” a chance to let the yeast do its work of making the dough rise. It’s called leavening the bread and is a kind of fermentation. This means that when this first round of proofing is done the dough is warm to the touch, aside from filling the room with that delicious, yeasty bread smell! The big, fluffy mound of dough then gets punched down and kneaded, removing air bubbles and providing some stress relief for the baker as well! Then the dough is portioned out into individual bread pans for a second proofing. Lastly, these dough beauties head into the oven to get a tan and become the delicious loaves you know and love! They are best while still fresh, but can be sliced and frozen to enjoy toasted for weeks!