It was a misty morning, and Dale Dugan, baker for the four restaurants and one wine shop in Baltimore's Charleston group, said his bread was giving him a weather report.
On days like this one, he said, when there is a lot of moisture in the air, the dough likes to spend a short time in the proofer. Moreover, the bread's "oven spring" its first rise in the oven, will be more ample. Additionally on humid days, you have to watch the crust.
"If there is too much water in the air, you can get a hyper-exaggerated crust," he said. Finally the chances of a "blow-out," the dough pushing through the crust, are much higher on humid days.
"From April on, Baltimore humidity becomes an ingredient in our bread," he said. "Our bread is basically a body of water, and anything that affects water affects us," he said
But, Dugan added, humidity is not necessary a baker's enemy. "You have to moisten the bread anyway," he said, but the trick is to keep the moisture under control.
Dugan, 48, is by his own description an old-school bread baker. He and his assistant, Carrie Goltra, bake between 200 and 600 loaves a day at Pazo restaurant on Aliceanna Street. The loaves are then distributed to the other Charleston group sites. He bakes in an oven fueled both by gas and chunks of wood that he splits with an ax.
"I spend a lot of time with my head and arms in the oven," he said. He forms the loaves by hand.
"I don't knock the guys that use machines to shape their breads, but I don't think that is really artisanal. When the Sistine Chapel was painted, he [Michelangelo] wasn't using a blow gun."
By his count, Dugan has baked bread in 32 different ovens in his 26-year career. Among them are ovens in the region's better-known bakeries - Atwater's, Stone Mill, Big Sky, Linwood's and Clyde's. He also worked at the now-defunct Cover to Cover Bookstore Cafe in Columbia. There he met his wife, Alison, then a pastry chef, now the mother of their 14-year-old son, Jacob.
If you spend a day watching Dugan work, as I did recently, you come away with a fistful of his observations on both bread-baking technique and philosophy. He baked Pugliese, Fougasse, Pan de Pages breads for Pazo, Semolina golden raisin bread and french rolls for Charleston, baguettes a l'Anciennes for Petit Louis and the wine shop Bin 604, and Pane di Como for Cinghiale.
Among Dugan's favorite flours are King Arthur's Sir Galahad, a white flour, and Caputo Tipo an Italian flour that is ground as fine as talcum powder. He also roasts barley malt and adds it to some bread doughs.
For yeasts, he uses Saf Red Label and a starter or biga that is now almost 20 years old and was given to him by a man who smuggled it in from Italy. He replenishes the biga regularly, feeding it flour, water and yeasts but never letting it sit more than three days without being renewed. After three days, its sour notes are too strong, Dugan said, and it also begins to "eat" the plastic bucket that holds it.
Dugan spoke speaks highly of Baltimore water and its native airborne yeasts. "I think if you put our yeast in a bucket with San Francisco sourdough, ours would take San Francisco's lunch money," he said.
When mixing his dough, Dugan uses ice water, putting it in the bottom of the vessel. Next comes the biga, then the flour, then the yeast. The ice water slows down the action of yeast, producing more flavor in the dough, he said.
The bread gets two spins called Speed One and Speed Two, in the machine that mixes the dough. He adds salt after Speed One, and uses only kosher salt, because it is a "softer salt" that does not break the gluten, the protein that forms the structure of the bread and holds the carbon dioxide produced by yeast.
Dugan knows his dough is properly mixed when he "panes" the dough, taking a small portion in his hands and stretching until it form a translucent layer, like a window pane, that he can see through.
He scores his loaves, making shallow cuts in surface of the bread, with either with a razor blade or a fillet knife. He started using a fillet knife to score the Pugliese (bread from the Puglia region), after he saw a photograph of an old Italian baker holding such a sharp knife.
He bakes in a hot, 450-550 F degree, oven, first spraying the loaves with water, rotating their positions in the oven and turning them by hand to ensure even browning. He wears $6 leather gloves when he handles the hot loaves, and goes through about 30 pairs a year.
Dugan grew up in Turtle Creek Pa., outside Pittsburgh. His grandmother, Molly Dugan, a Mennonite, got him interested in baking. After high school, he joined the Army, became a Ranger and parachuted out of airplanes After the Army, he made his way to Baltimore, where he began his professional baking career.
Dugan spoke readily about the appeal of baking, mentioning everything from being able to see the city at dawn - he rises at 4 o'clock and drives in from Howard County - to the "spiritual rhythm" of the work.
