Illustration by Francisco Caceres
|
Flour Power
By Arnold Mann, March-April 2004
Car repair? Guzzling beer? Please. Real men bake bread
|
The air is thick with anticipation—and testosterone—at a bread
baking class in Virginia as loaf master Michael Jubinsky peels plastic wrap off
a bowl of freshly risen dough. "Should you put oil on the wrap to keep it
from sticking?" asks a man in the audience.
"Dusting the wrap with flour does the same thing," says
Jubinsky.
Welcome to guy talk, bakery-style. A third of the 150 attendees filling the
Comfort Inn conference room are men, mostly 50 and up. "Ten years ago, we
would have had two or three men—obvious designated drivers," says
Jubinsky, 60, a semi-retired Navy contractor who has taught bread baking for 22
years. Now guys are muscling into classes to learn the secrets of salt (bake
with kosher salt—your bread will taste better) and the perfect crust
(preheat an iron skillet in the oven and fill it with one cup of boiling water
after the bread goes in—the steam makes it crisp).
It's a rising trend. County fairs are offering "Men's
Baking" contests. The Stone-Buhr Flour Co. in San Francisco reports that
half its calls are from men who are "passionate about bread." Thirty
percent of Vermont-based King Arthur Flour's mail order business is from
kneady men—guys like Hartford, Vermont, police chief Joseph Estey, 52,
who's been baking for eight years. [Try Estey’s recipe for soft pretzels.] Or Jim
Koon, 60, a retired Navy chief-turned-independent trucker who began baking
bread because he wanted to make Christmas Hoska (a sweet bread with raisins and
nuts) and got hooked on the process.
Blame this societal shift on bread machines. Guys love
'em—they're the power tool of the kitchen—but a new breed
of bakers is moving way beyond appliances. These extreme yeast beasts even have
a name: fire freaks. "It's a hot subculture," says Peter
Reinhart, author of The Bread Baker's Apprentice: Mastering the Art of
Extraordinary Bread. It started, he says, when men took their bread
passions outdoors, building backyard brick ovens at $800 to $2,000 for
materials alone. That's led to $200 clay ovens for guys who want to bake
bread but not burn dough.
But purists say the thrill comes from the yeast. "I still get a kick
out of watching the stuff rise," says Fred Thompson, a retired corporate
lawyer who's been baking bread for 35 years. [Try Thompson’s recipe for everyday white bread.] "It's a miracle." And it tastes good, too.
|
