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Sunday, February 16, 2014

Meet the Baker: Dave Miller

It was still dark out when we arrived at Miller's Bake House in Yankee Hill near Chico, California. Behind a fence a startled lama and a family of curious goats stared, eyes gleaming in the glare of the headlights. As soon as the engine was off, a moon crescent appeared, thin and sharp between two pine trees. Beyond, the hills were that pale shade of black that says the sun is about to rise. It was 7. The house looked asleep but towards the end of the long porch, a light shone, bright and warm.
We walked towards it and knocked on the door. Dave was expecting us. He was shaping as we walked in, just as he had said he would be. On Fridays, he gets up at 3 AM, gets the fire going in his wood-fired oven, starts dividing the doughs he has mixed the day before, then shapes the four hundred loaves he will take with him the next day to the Chico's Farmers Market. Four hundred loaves, eleven or twelve different breads, seven doughs. "Too much," he says, "I am never looking to add variety but rather to improve what I am doing. I'd only add a bread when one of the farmers starts growing an interesting variety of wheat but then I take something away. Baking can always get better. I am never a hundred percent satisfied with the way the bread turns out."
I perch on a high wooden stool by the door, pen poised, ready to take notes but Dave's hands are doing a dance on the bench and I stare, fascinated: he seizes a chunk of dough from the dozens that await on wooden boards, spreads it on the table, taps it gently with flat-out fingers, then rolls it fast and pats it down some more. By now, the dough is a fat cylinder which he pulls, pushes, pulls again, pushes anew and finally seals, before dipping it in a bowl of flour and dropping it into a basket. We stop talking as he slows down to demo the moves for the video. The clip is short, barely over a minute, and my favorite part is towards the end when perfect boules waltz out from under his fingers...

When all the waiting baskets are all full, he carries the tray to the back of the bakery and tackles the next batch of fermented dough.
Working at his normal pace again, Dave tells me how he came to baking as a college kid on a semester abroad, how he apprenticed himself to a whole grain baker after graduation, how he traveled through Europe for a year, learning from the masters, how he came home and got married, opened his own bakery in Southern California and later moved to Chico. Hands folding, patting, rolling, he explains how he ended up making so much bread he once emperilled his health before understanding that for him, bread couldn’t be about production and that being a good baker mattered more than being a good manager.
Every so often, he leaves the bench, opens a small cast iron door on the side on the oven and pushes in a log. Sparks leap up, his face and hands glow. Behind him, the moon is gone. A young sun washes down the hills, reaches inside the bakery and gently palpates the dough.
Dave didn't start out as a baker. He was majoring in business and economics at Macalester College in St Paul, Minnesota, when he went on that life-changing semester in Scotland. Amazing how little things sometimes derail the best laid plans and then we realize those plans weren't the best after all... In Edinburgh, his dorm was a twenty-minutes walk from his classrooms and every day as he walked through town, he passed a cute little bakery whose owner gave him free treats to try. The atmosphere of that bakery made an impression on him at a time when all he knew about his future was that he didn't want to spend it behind a desk or, one day, have a midlife crisis.
Back at school in St-Paul, he decided to give baking a shot. Through a friend who worked at the registrar's office, he got the birth dates of out-of-state students and took to writing to their parents two weeks before their birthdays, offering to bake, inscribe and deliver a fresh cake to their child on his or her actual birthday. Those were the days before the internet and online shopping. Delighted parents jumped at the opportunity. Orders poured in and Dave's birthday cake delivery service was born. He bought yellow, white and chocolate mixes at the supermarket and started making cakes in his dorm kitchen. The baking went fine but the frosting turned out to be unexpectedly challenging. He switched to ordering the cakes from across the street (basically outsourcing production long before the word and practice became mainstream). Business flourished.

The following semester Dave interned at at bakery in Minneapolis, doing market research and new product development. After graduation, the boss hired him as a baker. The bakery was a big production place. He learned to be very efficient with his movements and his time. After eighteen months, he decided it was time to go learn something new, preferably in the Northeast.
The day before he was to leave, he saw in a bookstore a sign advertising the opening of a new sourdough bakery in St-Paul. He went and checked it out. The bakery looked a bit rough. There were dark dense loaves on a small rack. He bought one - only so that the person at the counter wouldn’t feel bad, took it home, cut a slice, bit into it and had a whole body reaction, an experience unlike any he had ever had before: the only way he can describe it is that while his mouth was tasting flavor, his body was recognizing nutrition. He knew right away that such a loaf was "the ultimate bread, one which gives you  the wonderful, satisfied, nourished feeling that what you are eating is right." He returned to the bakery immediately to talk to the baker. The man asked Dave if he was familiar with organic, sourdough, macrobiotics, etc. (he wasn't), told him he milled his own flour and talked at length about his teacher, Richard Bourdon of Berkshire Mountain Bakery in Housatonic, Massachusetts. Dave asked for Richard's phone number but when he called to ask if he could come and talk to him, Richard wasn't exactly enthusiastic. Dave let three months go by before trying again and this time went there in person. By an extraordinary strike of good luck, Richard was then looking for an apprentice. He was hired on the spot.
Richard used fresh flour which he milled himself, made a lot of fifty percent whole grain/fifty percent white flour breads and kept a sourdough culture. His bread was incredible. To this day, he remains a major influence in Dave's baking. He apprenticed with him for eight months, then moved on to learn from other bakers, notably Chuck Conway of O Bread in Shelburne, Vermont, all the while studying French in preparation for an extended stay in Europe. The year was 1987.
In France, Dave worked for Patrick Le Port at La Boulangerie savoyarde where he recalls making lots of two-kilo loaves of traditional country bread with high-extraction flour and a 95% hydration rate. Again the experience was an eye-opener: whereas, back in Massachusetts, Richard had used as little levain as possible in his dough (his starter was quite stiff and highly acidic), Patrick kept a very mild starter and used a very high percentage of it. Both made excellent bread. More food for thought...
When he headed back home a year later after a stint in Luxembourg and in Belgium (he worked for a while in a biodynamic bakery in Antwerp but what he mostly remembers about the months there was riding his bike everywhere and tasting great beer), he was hired to manage the bakery at a biodynamic farm in Wisconsin : the idea was to grow wheat and rye and sell it as bread instead of grain, making more money in the process. He did that for two years, then felt it was time to be his own boss. The farm's owners had sent some of his loaves to the Natural Products Expo in Anaheim, California. The bread had gotten rave reviews, which got Dave thinking that Southern California might be ready for his kind of baking. Just then a fully equipped bakery came up for rent in Escondido, near San Diego. It was a perfect opportunity to go and set up shop. Dave moved to Escondido in 1992.

Three years later, a bakery was put up for sale in downtown Chico. The owner had been a pioneer in wholegrain sourdoughs. When Dave found out about him, he had already passed away but all the equipment was there and there was an established clientèle. He bought the business and ran it for three years. The first year was a year of incredible growth in sales volume because he continued to sell bread in Southern California through distributors. But it became less and less fun. It got to the point where a decision had to be made: become a good manager or remain a good baker. Dave had never pictured his ideal bakery as a big one. Selling the business in Chico, he moved his baking to Yankee Hill and concentrated on local accounts which he gradually whittled down to only the farmers' market.
One piece of equipment he took with him to Yankee Hill was his Autoflex mixer. Made in Switzerland more than sixty years ago, it is still going strong. "It only has the one slow speed and I love it." I didn't see it working since all the doughs had been mixed before I arrived. But Dave explained that he usually mixes for fifteen to twenty minutes.
He  puts ninety percent of the total formula water in the autolyse and has rigged up a contraption which dribbles the rest of the water during the mixing to prevent the dough from sticking to the sides. The hydration varies a bit according to the weather but stays pretty much the same with each batch of grain. He autolyses all his doughs for twenty minutes, except for the first one he mixes on Thursday mornings upon arriving at the bakery - the fifty-percent white flour Sacramento River Sourdough - which he keeps autolyse-ing (if there is such a word) for ninety minutes. Once mixed, every dough but the rye gets retarded for 15 to 20 hours at 47° F. He uses 12% starter in all whole-wheat breads, 15% in the kamut ones, 20% in the Sac River sourdough and 35% in the rye bread. The last build for the kamut dough is a kamut levain but he starts with wheat.
When he's done shaping all the doughs but the rye, Dave takes me to the milling room he built at the back of the bakery.
Except for his white flour (which he uses as bench flour and as an ingredient in his Sacramento River Sourdough, the only one of his breads which isn't a hundred percent wholegrain), Dave mills all his flours himself on Thursdays just before mixing time: from the way he describes it, I gather he pretty much spends the whole day milling and mixing, starting with the kamut he uses to make the wholegrain pasta he also sells at the farmers' market. He doesn’t add any water to the grain prior to milling and never sifts out anything. He doesn’t age his flour either.
Strong flours need a lot of water and Dave's doughs are typically very wet. The wettest one - 
the wheat-rye dough he uses for the California Sun and the Foothill Round -  is at 110% hydration (around 108% when you take the stiff starter into account). High-hydration doughs are easier to handle if they have been retarded (retarding seems to make the gluten more elastic instead of extensible). Dave was once told that it wasn’t possible to retard whole grain dough because there would be too much activity. But he found out it wasn’t true. And bulk retarding is actually what enables him to bake that amount of bread by himself. It has little effect on flavor, makes the dough easier to work with and doesn’t add acidity. Dave uses no flour or water when pre-shaping. Just a quick rounding with scraper and hand. All pre-shaping having been done prior to my arrival, I didn't get to watch him do it.

Dave owned an Alan Scott brick oven for twelve years. It was challenging but he made a lot of bread with it. He now has an Italian wood-fired steam deck oven, a Bassanina. "A small firebox underneath the oven heats a meandering, masonry heat chamber which, in turn, heats a series of closed-loop steel tubes that are half full of water. When these tubes are heated, the water turns to steam and the steam carries the heat (inside this network of tubes) throughout the oven, providing a wonderful, even heat for the baking of bread." My pen couldn't write fast enough to keep up with the technical details as Dave explained the functioning of his oven, so the above quotation was copied and pasted from his website (which I strongly encourage you to visit.)
The main reason he switched ovens is that he bakes only one batch a week. "The Alan Scott ovens are more efficiently used when you bake a lot. Otherwise they become quite wasteful. The Bassanina can fire up in six hours or so and offers much better control over the temperature because it can be stoked throughout the bake." Dave can bake ninety-six one-pound-and-a-half loaves together comfortably but the bread bakes better if he puts in eighty or less. "Ovens aren’t typically designed for whole grain breads. They don’t provide enough bottom heat, which means I need to shuffle them around as they bake. I stoke the oven every half-an-hour prior to the first loading, afterwards, on an as-needed basis."
Two blue jays break into a loud chatter on a limb by the porch. Dave gazes at them but he seems to be looking far beyond:  "I knew Alan Scott. He was from Australia. He came to the farm in Wisconsin and built two ovens for us. He was not only an oven-builder but also a baker, never became a citizen in this country, always lived under the radar, taking care of an old Victorian house in Marin County, north of San Francisco. Young people kept flocking to his house wanting to learn and bake. He was inspiring in the way he shaped his life around bread..."  Flashes of blue at the window. The chatter fades away. The birds are taking their conversation to another tree and Dave starts dusting the top of the proofed loaves.
 
 
Today Dave keeps two starters, one rye, one wheat, both wholegrain. I ask if I can see them. But as it turns out, neither is ready for social calls. The rye starter has been shrunk to a two-ounce mother and is recuperating in the fridge. The wheat one (65% hydration) is reduced to crumbs. I must have looked startled because Dave elaborates readily: he always dries it out his wheat starter after his weekly bake to make it go dormant. He says it is the only way he has ever found to make a starter work for him in a consistent manner. Every time he tried to build 'normal' starters with 'normal' enrichment schedules, such as one or two feedings a day, his starters start to degrade. So he learned to live with the one he has and now he loves it; "In many ways it is a very nice starter."
Every week after he is done mixing, Dave takes two hundred grams of ripe starter, doubles its weight in flour and works it until it has the consistency of bread crumbs. Then he lets it sit in the walk-in cooler for six days. The following week when he needs the starter again, he sifts out the flour from the little clumps of sourdough, adds enough water to the chunks of starter to make them mushy (which takes one hour), then adds back the flour he has just sifted. That constitutes the first feed. He then lets the starter ferment overnight for ten to twelve hours at room temperature (which usually means the high 70s), feeds it again and lets it ferment four and a half hours and feeds it again. This time the fermentation is really quick (only three hours). The last build is pretty mild. Dave wants the taste of the grain to shine through, so he shoots for a very mild fermentation flavor. Up to this point, he has had access to excellent farms. He tests the flour before buying the grain. If it is good, he buys a year's worth of it. But buying yearly will soon be a thing of the past. Less and less farmers seem interested in selling to small bakers.
The sun is now high in the sky, Dave has been at work since 3 AM which is when he got the fire going and started dividing. He won't be done before 7 PM and tomorrow, he'll be up again at 4:15 AM to be at the market by 5:45. Time for us to go! Dave slips four loaves in paper bags and gives them to me. I am awed. They are barely out of the oven and their fragrance is heady.

100% Kamut
His own favorite is the one-hundred percent whole-grain kamut above. Since he gave me one to take home, I was lucky enough to actually taste it. It had such a deeply aromatic honey flavor that I thought I had misunderstood and it contained both spelt and kamut. I checked with Dave and he confirmed that the only ingredients were organic whole kamut flour,  water, sourdough culture and sea salt.

Foothill Round
The second one  was the Foothill Round. Made of organic whole wheat flour, organic whole rye flour, sourdough culture, and sea salt, it is a bread for connoisseurs, rich and wheaty but still light. 

Valley Wheat
The Valley Wheat is made of one hundred percent Sonora wheat, sourdough culture, water and sea salt. Milder in taste than the Foodhill Round, it is probably an excellent choice for those of Dave's customers who are transitioning to a hundred percent whole-wheat. Of the four we took home however, my personal favorite, besides the kamut, was this one:

Mission Loaf
Made with one hundred percent whole Sonora wheat with figs, fennel and walnuts, the flavor of the Mission Loaf reminded me of the scent of the breeze in the California hills. It was like eating sunshine spiced with wild fennel. Pure Golden State magic!

Hills near the bakery
But then I suspect I would savor all and any of Dave's breads. I don't know about you but I first eat with my eyes and his bread is gorgeous. Then when you bite into it, images of the Earth and the Sun and of fields of grains undulating in the wind spring to mouth and mind and you are hooked.
The hills weren't always gold and green around Dave's house though. In fact when he and his wife moved in, they were entirely black as a result of a huge wildfire. He spent a large chunk of his time clearing out the charcoaled trees (which he used to bake bread) and to this day, he does his best to keep the underbrush under control, hence the lamas and the goats who feast on what he cuts down and brings to them. Today he buys his firewood (native almond wood is his favorite) instead of going out with a chainsaw before each bake. But between the hills, the house and the bakery, the millstones to dress and the never-ending quest for local grain, especially in a severe drought, I suspect Dave's days are seldom idle. Such is the life he chose, his life in bread, and as he says, "there is something rich in doing a craft for a long time. You don’t have to retire as you grow older, just to slow down." 

27 comments:

  1. So cool, MC. Dave Miller is one of those guys I admire and would love to meet someday. Some day...

    Thanks for this.

    Jim
    Seven Stars Bakery
    Providence, RI

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    1. Thanks, Jim! I am the lucky person who has met you both!

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  2. Another peek into the life of a baker and I can't help but wonder where and how you find these people!
    What a delightful story. I too was amazed by his boule shaping technique - once again reminding me there is no one way to shape a loaf. I was also intrigued by the way he maintains his starter which showed me that we all find ways to live with our starters when we pay attention to them rather than trying to impose our ways onto them. Each and every one unique which is one of the things that I simply love about baking.
    Thank you for sharing MC. You dedication to bringing these bakers into my living room is greatly appreciated. Traveling without leaving home :)
    Take Care,
    JanetH

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    1. Hi Janet H! So happy to take you with me on my visit to bakers... And yes, re: starter, it is amazing to see that these yeasty beasties have a mind of their own but they do. I once killed a starter by switching it to a two-feeding a day regimen when it was used to be fed only once...

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  3. MC, this is an absolutely beautiful piece about Dave Miller and so interesting. You did a wonderful job. His method of drying sourdough -- perhaps that's a solution for home bakers who don't bake that often. I would be curious though to find out what percentage of sourdough he's using in his breads. And I love his shaping method -- no two bakers shape alike.

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    1. Thank you, Sam! Yes, you are right, and as soon as my baby starter is up and running, I may give his drying method a try but I have used dried starter in the past and always found it rather tiring and iffy when I had to revive it. From what Dave said, it is actually very hard to switch to a new method. He has never truly succeeded and he thinks the reason is that after a while, the yeasties in the air around you become one of a kind and better adapted to your ways than to others...

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    2. Hi again, Sam! I checked with Dave and here is what he does re: percentage of sourdough: he uses 12% starter in all whole-wheat breads, 15% in the kamut ones, 20% in the Sac River sourdough and 35% in the rye bread. The last build for the kamut dough is a kamut levain but he starts with wheat. I added the info to the post. Thanks for reminding me to ask him.

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  4. Beautiful breads! Fantastic job! I'd love to meet you!

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    1. Thank you, Ricardo! Believe me, you are on my list for Brazil f I make it down there one day, which I would love.

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  5. Thank you for this post. Miller taught a workshop for our LA Bread Bakers group. It was amazing and he's a really nice guy.

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    1. I wish I could have attended the workshop in LA... And yes, I found Dave Miller to be both a very nice person and an amazing baker. And he was so generous in sharing his story. I am very grateful to him.

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  6. Thank you so much MC! You have made my day. As I have very little chance of getting across the pacific in the near future to visit Dave's bakery this is the next best thing. Even at that distance though, he is still a big influence on my daily work. Also, I wonder if you have doubled up the crumb photo of the Valley wheat in the foothill round.

    Phil

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    1. Good catch, Phil! I had... Thank you. I corrected the mistake. If you ever meet Dave, I would love to be invited to watch and listen. It would be both an honor and a thrill!

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  7. I loved this piece MC! I feel so privileged to be able to 'accompany' you on your visits and meet all these wonderful people. You bring your own special qualities of observation and commentary to the experience and I feel enriched by the whole gestalt of your blog. If I haven't said thank you before properly, thank you !

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    1. Oh, Joanna, you are so welcome and it is such a pleasure to meet these passionate bakers, knowing that, thanks to the Internet, I can share the experience with other bread lovers. It truly adds another level to the experience.

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  8. hey MC! nice piece! i spent a very similar day with dave some years ago, when he still had his alan scott oven. he has been such an inspiration and role model for me over the years. i still talk about him to my bakers, a bunch of hooligans i am trying to transform into serious artisans, like dave is. thanks to dave for doing what he does! and thanks to you for taking the time to visit him, take some wonderful pictures, and write up such a great report for us. thanks! i wish you the best! if you ever get out to michigan, you'll have to come see my bakery! field & fire! take care MC! shelby kibler

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    1. Hi Shelby! So good of you to stop by. I didn't know you had made the switch and opened your own bakery. Congratulations! I took a look at the breads on your website and they look gorgeous. I would love to come and visit. How far are you from Chicago?
      I really didn't know much about Dave Miller when I contacted him and asked if he would agree to an interview but I have discovered since that he is truly an icon and now that I know him personally and have eaten his bread, I understand why! He is truly an amazing baker and an inspiration.
      Best of luck with your bakery!
      MC

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  9. I can't wait to have my staff check this out. So cool. Thanks so much. David, Serenity Farm Bread, Leslie, Arkansas.

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    1. Hello David! Thank you for visiting. Isn't Dave Miller an amazing source of inspiration? A life in bread, indeed. I love the array of breads on your website, especially the picture with the pizza in the background. The image is so vivid I can almost breathe in the fragrance through my screen.

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  10. Fillmore Farms is such a fan of Dave Miller and his breads--a prince of a guy, a gentle-spirited man, and an amazing baker. It's been an honor to be his source for organic walnuts for many years.

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    1. Hello Fillmore Farms, I couldn't agree more re: Dave and I did think the walnuts were awesome in the Mission Loaf. We will stop by next time. Walnuts are my favorites!

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  11. Thank you so much for posting this long piece, and the video is mind-boggling.

    The pictures of the crumb of the bread are so good. I am trying to learn how to bake a nice 100% whole wheat sourdough loaf, and there are not many good pictures to compare to. (most people put in white flour and call it WW bread.)

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    1. Hello Ruben, it is a bit of a challenge to get a crumb such as Dave's in a 100% whole grain bread but sure is fun to try! I am glad the pictures help...

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  12. Goodness gracious!! Thank you so much for this MC!! What a joy to take this trip down memory lane. Dave is a hell of a guy, a hell of a baker, and you did such a wonderful job capturing his spirit. Thanks for everything you do.

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    1. Thank you for your kind words, Josey! What a treat to have you as a visitor... I am a huge fan of yours!

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  13. MC please !!!! Could you find the secret of these people who able to bake a 100% whole grain (like kamut or Sonora) that have very weak content of gluten ... I'm baking every week and if I use 100% whole grain (home milled) with high hydratation, long (even very long) fermentation there is no way for me to get that kind of crumb ... Do they use some extra "gluten" by any chance ? I don't get it ...

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    1. No they don't add gluten. Of that I am sure. At least I know for a fact that Dave Miller doesn't. The Sonora wheat I have baked with, I didn't use for bread but for pastry. So gluten was not an issue.
      Here is what Dave recommends to do to strengthen a weak dough:

      -Keep accurate records of dough temperature, room temperature etc..
      -Mixing: changing the number of folds, changing the time of the mix.
      -More folds will help.
      -More levain will help.
      -Another pre-shape.
      -Bulk retard or retarding shaped loaves to give it strength.

      As far as kamut goes, I learned at WheatStalk in Chicago back in June 2012 that it needs to be well hydrated (you can go up to 100% with whole kamut) or the crumb will be tight.
      Is your flour milled fine enough? Is it milled cool? Is your levain fully active?

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