Bread – who doesn’t “loaf” it? For Zoe Francois, baking a crusty loaf of bread is akin to meditation. The American pastry chef, food blogger, and successful cookbook author is best-known for thinking up recipes geared towards people who may not have hours to spend baking bread.
Following Zoe’s easy-to-follow instructions, non-bakers turn bakers and busy millennials can start baking wholesome, delicious bread at home. She talks to bazaar about her journey from working in kitchens to becoming a cookbook author and tells us how to overcome the fear of failure in the kitchen.
Zoe Francois, the queen of bread baking, studied pastry at the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) in New York. She has worked in restaurants and now writes cookbooks. The co-author of the best-selling cookbook series Artisan Bread in Five Minutes a Day shows no sign of slowing down. She speaks to bazaar about her path from becoming a bread baker to cookbook author and much, much more.
Please tell bazaar’s readers a little bit about your journey from pastry chef to cookbook author and bread baker extraordinaire.
After I left professional kitchens to raise my family, I started writing cookbooks. It was a way to stay in the industry but bake and create the book on my own schedule, around the needs of my children. At the time I thought it would just be one book, but 14 years later my co-author and I have written seven books in our Breadin5 series.
What do you enjoy most about baking bread?
Baking, in general, relaxes me. The process of creating a loaf of bread or an ornate pastry is almost meditative. You have to be in the moment and paying attention to what is right in front of you or the project can get away from you. Our bread recipes were developed for people who are busy and may not have hours to spend on a loaf of bread, but even though it is so fast, I still find it relaxing to work with the dough.
What’s your favorite kind of bread to a) eat and b) bake?
Oh, that just depends on my mood. I love everything from a rich loaf of chocolate Babka to a thin crispy pizza. They are both fun to make and eat and both are just as easy with our method.
What three tips would you give someone baking her or his first loaf of bread?
Our method of bread baking was developed for people who had never baked bread, so it is the perfect place to start.
1. The key is to have fun! Baking is such a joy and you can taste that in the finished loaf.
2. Have a little patience for the process. Our recipes make about four small loaves per batch, so you have lots of dough to play with. Your very first loaf may come out perfectly or it may not be quite the shape you wanted, but you can pull out another piece of dough and create another one.
3. Flours don’t all behave the same way, so know what kind of flour your recipe is asking for or the recipe may not come out looking like the photo you are going for.
What would you tell someone who’s left “burnt” after a series of baking fails?
Keep trying and be sure you are following a recipe from a trusted source, it may be the recipe and not the baker. If you are a visual learner, try to find a video, so you can see what the process looks like. This is why I started creating videos on Instagram, so people could see the process and make all kinds of recipes.
Complete the following sentence. “A day without bread is … ”
Joyless!
If you couldn’t bake bread for a day and had to buy a loaf, which would you choose? (i.e. what’s the “healthiest” commercial loaf in your opinion)
It depends on my mood or what I am eating. A crusty, whole grain loaf with lots of seeds is a super healthy bread to serve with soup or for making sandwiches but eating a piece of Brioche can also fit into a healthy lifestyle, as long as it is done in moderation.
Who are your cooking inspirations?
There are so many, but Dorie Greenspan is probably the person who’s career I try to emulate. She is immensely talented, creative and kind.
What is your favorite ingredient to cook or bake with?
I am inspired by walking through the market and seeing beautiful fruit or an unusual ingredient I’ve not worked with before. A bread or pastry recipe will be created with that ingredient. The seasons change and my inspirations change with them, so there isn’t just one favorite.
What is your favorite kitchen tool?
A stand mixer is probably what I rely on most in the kitchen.
What do you always have on hand, either in your fridge or pantry, for a quick snack?
Hummus.
What would be your dream destination regarding food?
I haven’t been to Paris in years, so I would love to go back. I also love Asian food, so a trip to Vietnam is on the short list.
When outside the kitchen, how do you spend your time?
Mostly, I can be found walking my poodles.
If your current self could give your past self one sage baking advice, what would it be?
Practice makes perfect!
Cookbook author and pastry chef Zoe Francois shares a fantastic recipe for Chocolate Bread with readers of bazaar. Enjoy!
Chocolate Bread
- Ingredients:
- 2 1/2 cups lukewarm water
- 3/4 cup vegetable oil
- 1 tablespoon granulated yeast
- 1 tablespoon Kosher salt
- 1 cup granulated sugar
- 5 1/2 cups unbleached all-purpose flour
- 3/4 cup unsweetened cocoa powder – (natural or Dutch processed will work)
- 1 1/2 cups bittersweet or semisweet chocolate chips
- Butter for greasing the pan
- Sugar for greasing the pan and sprinkling on top of the loaf
- To make the dough:
- Dump the water, vegetable oil, yeast, salt, and sugar in the bucket and give a half-hearted stir. Dump in the flour, cocoa powder, and chocolate chips. Mix the dough together until there are no lumps of dry flour. Cover the bucket with a not airtight lid and allow to rest for about 2 hours on the counter.
- You can use the dough immediately after rising and it is quite luxurious, but for this demo I wanted to show you how to deal with the chilled dough. So I stuck the dough in the refrigerator for 12 hours.
- Grease your loaf pan (8 x 4-inch, or a 8 x 4 x 4-inchPullman pan) and then sprinkle it with sugar. This extra step of sugaring is not essential, but it helps the loaf pop out of the pan. I prefer it to flour for chocolate breads because you don’t end up with the chalky look on the outside of your loaf.
- Once the dough is chilled, reach in the bucket to grab the dough. You will be met with a very stiff dough that has no stretch, due to all the chocolate in the dough, not because your dough is too dry. Shape the dough into a round, and let it rest for a few minutes.
- Flatten the dough into a rectangle.
- Place the dough into the prepared pan, cover loosely with plastic wrap and allow to rest for 1 hour and 45 minutes (up to 2 hours and 30 minutes if your kitchen is particularly cool).
- Adjust an oven rack to the middle position and preheat your oven to 350F.
- The dough will rise a bit, but not a tremendous amount (this is true of all our dough). Sprinkle with sugar and bake in the center of the oven for 45-50 minutes, or when the bread registers 190-200F.
- Remove from oven and take the bread out of the pan to cool completely.
- Enjoy with preserves, marmalade or a slice of sharp cheddar!
Source: Artisan Bread in Five
To learn more about Zoe Francois, visit www.breadin5.com or www.zoebakes.com or follow her on Instagram @Zoebakes. Images courtesy of Zoe Francois.
