Bread

As with everything we develop and envision for L.2O, the bread will be our own expression.  Our guests will enjoy bread that has been baked in an oven only twenty feet away from their table, not twenty miles. We will bake once before the dinner service and again in the middle. Like this the bread has just enough time to cool down and be served at room temperature, never reheated. Hot bread is bad for the digestion.

Flour, water, and salt.  These are the only ingredients needed for great bread.  Yeast? You ask…well the yeast occurs naturally on the wheat and thus in the flour.  It is just a matter of cultivating the wild yeast in the form of a mother (or starter), and by feeding it a steady diet of stone ground flour and spring water.  The mother is then added to the dough as the leavening agent in place of yeast. This type of bread without any commercial yeast is called “levain naturale”.   The bacteria created in this process are what give the bread its “terroir”.  The starter takes in the bacteria native to its environment.  After time our bakeshop will develop its own culture profile making our bread unique to the space.

Using levain gives us a tremendous range of possibilities using the same three ingredients:  flour, water, and salt.  By varying the percentages of flour, water, and levain, along with manipulation of the time and temperature at which the dough ferments, we can control the resulting flavor and texture. We will make country bread, baguettes, and ciabatta using the same basic ingredients. Longer fermentation gives us tangy sweetness and a shorter fermentation results in a lighter flavor that is buttery.