Heike Meyer Teaches the Language of Bread

Working with homemade bread dough takes practice. So why not do so with one of the most well-trained bread professionals in the world? I chatted with Heike Meyer, the owner of Brot Bakehouse School and Kitchen, about her upcoming classes, Field to Crumb: A Local Grain Sourdough Baking Workshop in Vermont and Intensive: Advanced Sourdough Theory & Practice with Heike Meyer (spots still available at the time of writing).

Heike is an experienced bread baker and teacher who holds the uncommon distinction of being a certified bread sommelier. She was nice enough to chat about some of the key topics she covers in her classes, like sourdough theory, working with different grains, caring for a starter and interpreting the language of bread.

What does it mean to be a bread sommelier?

For me, it's really about finding a common language for bread tasting. I feel like we are lacking that, or at least we used to. Now more and more people are aware of how to describe what they’re tasting.

That probably started with wine and with wine sommeliers, but I think there was no common language for bread, except for, “it's good,” or “it's not so good.” If you went to a restaurant with a bunch of friends, and they gave you a bread basket, you would just dig in. You never really picked it up and smelled it or said, “Oh, that has a distinct aroma of nuts.” Or, “I really get some herbaceous notes in this.” We just pick it up, take a bite and say, “it's good,” or “that's a bit dry.” Maybe go so far as to say it tastes like cardboard or something, right?

So, I think it’s really nice to actually find a common language for [bread tasting]. And this is something I bring over to my classes here when I'm teaching about bread baking, and will be a big part of the Milk Street Classes.

The class also talks a bit about pairings—how to identify what you are tasting, and decide, like, this would probably be better with this food rather than this food. We will really go into pairing and explore where you either complement the taste of the bread or you enhance it with contrast. It's going to be fun. I really look forward to it.

What drew you to the art of baking and making bread?

I always loved bread growing up without knowing it. It's not hard. If you grow up in Germany, you always eat bread. There’s a very strong bread culture. It's kind of like in France—in any French city, there's a bakery on every corner. Germany is a little bit different because it’s in Central Europe and they draw their bread culture from all over. You’ll find more Italian-style or French-style breads in the South, and more Nordic-style or Eastern European-style in the North. In the East, you definitely see more Eastern-style rye breads. [Germany] has the most registered bread varieties of any country in the world, so it's super centered in this culture.

That's kind of how I grew up—with breads. I grew up in the North, so it was more influenced by the Nordic style breads, like rye and whole-grain breads—really rustic breads. It’s kind of funny. I always tell my students that I think the first white bread I ever saw in my life was probably once I went to school. I grew up on rustic, whole-grain rye, and sourdough loaves and lots of really heavily seeded loaves. But I didn't really think much about it. I always baked. [My family] were just kind of doing it out of necessity, not really because they loved it, but it was just always around.

When I had to choose what I wanted to do in life, I never thought about being a baker. I studied tourism and languages and I travel the world a lot. But when I traveled through my profession, and earlier in school and university, bread baking was always a great skill to have because I could work in bakeries all around the world. It's always been easy for me to travel and support myself, because I could bake. I made scones in England, and hot dog buns in the U.S. and whatnot. They're all different places, all different breads. And it really shaped my sense of the world.

The workshop is called Field to Crumb. What can students expect?

We are starting really from scratch. We are going to have local grains here, introduce the farms a little bit, and then we are going to mill the grains in our mill. We are going to talk about how different grains impact our breads’ flavor, structure and the way we have to work with it. Working with local grains will always be different than working with bread flour that we buy in the store. With local grains, what you get in the field, you get on your plate. Whereas, if you buy commercial flour, the mill will carefully blend it with up to, I don't know, 20 or so different grains to achieve a certain profile because the customer expects that, right?

If we buy our grains from a local farm, as bakers, we will have to know how to work with that accordingly. There’s a learning curve. And that's not super easy, but it's really fun.

How do you get the best flavor in a sourdough loaf?

We had a class yesterday, and today I baked off some dough that was leftover from it. It was so sour that I was thinking, this is kind of pushing my taste buds. It's really all about fermenting. This dough fermented for such a long time that it basically over-fermented. The longer you ferment your grains, the more intense the flavor will be. There are caveats to that. You're losing other things, like texture, in that process.

The whole thing is a fascinating interplay of bacteria and microorganisms. The longer you ferment, the more acidic it will be. So, that's something I tell people that like to have their loaf a bit more on the tangy side. And also cooling helps. When you ferment it cool, the cool temperatures usually bump up our perception of acids in the dough.

It's a play between fermentation time, temperature and cooler, longer fermentation which will always give you a more pronounced flavor. People think that if their starter is really sour, they get sour bread. But it's really the final fermentation that does the trick. This is something we are working on in the intensive classes so people know how to work with their sourdough and tweak the flavors as they like it.

What’s the most approachable bread for less experienced bread bakers?

I would begin with yeasted breads [instead of sourdough] and I would just play around with something that is super simple. It might be a pan loaf bread. It's very forgiving if you bake in a pan because you’re already controlling one aspect—the shaping—which is one of the hardest things to do in bread baking. Baking a sandwich bread, like a Pullman loaf with white flour—which is arguably the easiest flour to work with—you get the satisfaction of making your own bread without all the complications of sourdough and the levain.

Another one that people love to do is pizza dough. You can just stretch it out, put it on a sheet pan even. And if you don't want to make the dough into a pizza, make it a focaccia. You just put the dough in [the pan], add some olive oil and some rosemary and you have the most delicious bread out of the oven.

What’s the trick to adding seeds, nuts or other inclusions to bread without deflating it?

It's not really the problem of the inclusions. It's typically the problem of the dough not being developed enough to have enough strength to hold them. But there is a limit with hearth breads. Hearth breads are freely shaped loaves. They have a limit on inclusions before they are weighed down and then they just can't rise up anymore. I would go with [baking in] a pan loaf again. I would do a Nordic style bread—rye bread, for example, that’s a whole-grain. Rye is really hardy. You can put in so many inclusions and the structure of the Pullman pan really holds it.

There is a mini loaf we are definitely going to make in the workshop. It doesn't rise that much, but it has a ton of inclusions in it. It has dried fruits, nuts, seeds and buckwheat. It's super nutritious and very easy to make. And you can make it in these small loaf pans. They are always a crowd pleaser, and really beautiful when they are cut open. It’s one of my favorite breads to eat, and I'm sure people will love it in the class.

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Allie Chanthorn Reinmann

Allie Chantorn Reinmann is a Digital Staff Writer for Christopher Kimball’s Milk Street. She’s a Thai-American chef who earned her diploma for Pastry and Baking Arts at The Institute of Culinary Education and worked professionally for over a decade honing her craft in New York City at places like Balthazar, Bien Cuit, The Chocolate Room, Billy’s Bakery and Whole Foods. Allie took her know-how from the kitchen to the internet, writing about food full-time at Lifehacker for three years and starting her own YouTube channel, ThaiNYbites. You can find her whipping up baked goods for cafés around Brooklyn, building wedding cakes and trying her hand (feet?) at marathon running. She’s working on her debut cookbook and lives in Brooklyn, NY.