Baking interest rising on Rehoboth farm

TOPPING OFF: Aside from bread  products, Ciril Hitz also bakes artisan pizza in his oven. / COURTESY BREADHITZ
TOPPING OFF: Aside from bread products, Ciril Hitz also bakes artisan pizza in his oven. / COURTESY BREADHITZ

What is it that when we dine out is both eagerly anticipated and taken for granted?
The bread basket, of course.
Over the past decade, restaurateurs, bakers and chefs have discussed at length why people pass on it, the economics of offering it – if you remember about five years ago the idea of charging for bread was being kicked around – and lately, like so many other parts of our dining-out experience, how to refine it with today’s awareness of quality ingredients and food sourcing.
Ciril Hitz is a master baker who, when he is not teaching full time at Johnson & Wales University’s International Baking and Pastry Institute in Providence, conducts artisan-bread workshops at his own bakery located on his farm in Rehoboth. Among his students are professional chefs and restaurateurs who are, as he put it, “interested in putting food on their table that they created themselves.”
His countryside classroom is an outgrowth of a consulting business he started, with his international reputation built over the last two decades as a premiere baker, author and educator.
“We fell into it,” he recalled. “It was never my goal to start my own school. We had this facility and I was spending a lot of time and air miles visiting chefs who wanted help with their baking. This seemed like a much better way to spend my time.”
Artisan bread is the result when the baker uses top-quality flours from identifiable sources. The source, such as a specific flour mill, grinds sustainable wheat or other grain such as rye. The ingredient list is very short for bread – flour, water, salt and yeast. Hitz takes the simple ingredients and from his wood-fired oven turns out flavorful, handmade breads baked directly on the hearth. He offers both bread expertise and a philosophy.
“People are interested in home-prepared comfort food both at home and when dining out,” he said. “It is easier and much more productive to bring [students] here into my comfort zone.” Baguettes, whole wheat boules, and sourdough miches – large loaves – are among the most popular and well-known artisan breads, but pizza and breakfast pastries and breads such as buttery brioche and flaky croissants are handcrafted in Hitz’s oven as well.
Baking is an art, as well as a science, and Hitz’s challenge is bringing the two together to create full-flavored breads. What do the professionals, as well as the home bakers who sign up for his classes, want to learn? A little history, a little sustainability and to solve the mystery of bringing the simple ingredients together. Unlike most other types of cooking where if a recipe is followed, success can be achieved on some level, with baking there is an alchemy, an intangible that can make the difference between beautiful bread and a baking disaster. Hitz teaches the timing of baking. He tells his students that there are two key points in the baking process. There is a point before the baking at which the four ingredients come together. This is the rising of the dough, the “proofing.”
Understanding of the fermentative properties of bread is somewhat of a Holy Grail of baking. Then comes the application of heat from the stone hearth, which happens when the oven releases its energy built up from the fuel, in this case the wood fire. Hitz shares his knowledge. “Once you understand both [fermentation and heat], you’re in the majors. Baking becomes a beautiful choreography.”
Recently a dairy farmer from New Hampshire took time away from her herd of 150 cows to study with Hitz about how to bake and utilize dairy in her baking. And at a recent Providence cooking demonstration, Hitz and a leading local chef/restaurateur discussed collaborating this summer. The teacher would learn about baking in a tandoor, the Mediterranean clay oven, fired with charcoal, where the breads are baked on the sides of the oven instead of on the hearth.
Hitz has been at the highest levels of his art. He competed at the 2004 National Bread and Pastry Team Championship winning first place overall and capturing three individual bread awards. In 2002 he won the silver medal for Team USA as a member of the Bread Bakers Guild Team at the Coupe du Monde de la Boulangerie in Paris, considered the Olympics for bakers. A native of Switzerland, his students come from all over the country and there have been a few international students as well.
What is the most difficult loaf to bake? The baguette, that perfect, long, slender loaf most often seen in movie scenes involving grocery shopping. It is Hitz’s favorite – “I could eat one every day!” he enthused. •


Bruce Newbury’s “Dining Out” food and wine talk radio show is heard Saturdays and Sundays on WPRV-AM 790 and on line and mobile app on iHeartRadio. He can be reached by email at bruce@brucenewbury.com.

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