Flour Power

A kitchen without bread is hard to imagine. Good bread will always command a premium and chefs are beginning to return to the baker's art in search of quality, consistency and products not widely available through commercial channels.

But although speciality breads are trendy and on the increase, the good, old-fashioned loaf has far from disappeared from our shelves.

Fergus Henderson, chef-proprietor of St John restaurant in London's Clerkenwell, has baked bread at the restaurant since it opened in 1995, a trend he brought with him from his previous restaurant, the French House Dining Room in London.

Now the bread section has become a bakery in its own right, serving local residents, other restaurants and even cheese shops. "Bread is fundamental," he says, "like a knife and fork. It starts everything off. Our bakery has taken off for us and we now bake a lot more than we anticipated. It is a wonderful compliment to supply other restaurants."

Henderson's head baker, Manuel Monade, continues: "We have 10 varieties. We do white and brown loaves, sourdough, onion bread, ciabatta, calzone (which is a special ciabatta filled with basil pesto), walnut and raisin bread, olive bread, rye bread and soda bread, which I was taught to make by an Irish chef who worked with us."

The bakery operates while the restaurant is shut, and bread is baked in the morning from 4am to noon. There is no delivery service, as customers come and get what they want.

Monade favours Doves Farm Organic flour, which is a strong bread flour. However, he can tell variations in the flour when batches differ. "There is a link between certain flours and certain breads," he says. "French flour is finely milled and gives a lovely chewy texture and crisp crust. It doesn't always work for other products."

He says all the breads are popular but, interestingly, white bread scores the highest in public rating, with soda bread and walnut and raisin coming strong seconds. This proves that making really good basic bread is as important as having a range of speciality breads.

At London's La Tante Claire, chef-patron Pierre Koffmann has long been the leading exponent of in-house baking. I spent two years in his kitchens learning to make his bread which, in my opinion, is still the best I have come across.

Koffmann is passionate about bread and has 20 varieties on offer. "It is a pleasure to make and is the first impression a customer has [of the restaurant]," he says, adding that he believes there is a communication between the bread-maker and the bread.

"When you roll bread lovingly with the hands, something transmits to the dough that leaves it smooth and perfect," he explains. "Inexperienced hands can send the wrong message. You could give my recipes to 10 different chefs and maybe only one would get it right."

Koffmann started baking bread because suppliers couldn't provide him with bread that was as good as he could make himself. But he points out that had he been running a restaurant in Paris, he would have had more opportunity to buy in the bread - a scenario I wholeheartedly agree with.

The varieties of bread on offer at La Tante Claire have increased over the years and now include tomato (one of Koffmann's trademark breads), sage and onion, green olive, black olive, herb, plain, wholemeal, sesame, poppy and onion flavours.

However, although the range is large, the selection is founded upon very simple doughs. "Understanding flour is the key," he says. "You should match the flour to the bread. I use French flour to make French bread, because the millers think about the bakers when they make it. But I would use Italian flour if I was making Italian bread."

Koffmann favours French T55, a strong, white flour with a high gluten content. Michel Roux, however, favours keeping things simple at his Waterside Inn in Bray, Berkshire.

"Bread should be fresh, simple and have a fantastic crust," he says, "but at the Waterside we serve only a plain white and brown bread, with some walnut reserved for cheese."

Gennaro Contaldo, chef-proprietor of Passione in London's Charlotte Street, serves focaccia as French chefs would serve French bread. He believes in variety and, like all other bakers, in simplicity. "If you have a positive attitude and you feel good, your bread will be good," he says. "But if you feel bad and you've, say, got a hangover, your bread will not be as good."

At Passione, Contaldo serves basic focaccia as well as that with flavouring such as rosemary and garlic, or olive. He, too, puts the key to good bread down to flour. "I use a soft, Italian flour," says Contaldo, "which doesn't have as much gluten as French flour." The flour is OO, the same as is used to make pasta.

Most chefs would agree that baking is a precise art, better suited to the pastry chef, where measurements rather than intuition rule. Any aspiring baker, whether he or she has trained or not, is best advised to start by learning to bake a simple white roll, as there is more to it than meets the eye.