Rustic Bread

The hearth bread (also known as rustic bread, artisan bread, sometimes "French bread") is a "freestanding" (made without a bread pan) loaf baked at high temperature (up to 500 °F, frequently using steam) that is both crusty and chewy. The higher baking temperatures are possible due to the use of lean doughs. If the dough contains significant amounts of natural sugar (produced during the longer fermentation) or sugars or oil are added to the dough, lower temperatures are used.

Hearth breads are frequently made in a traditional way: a piece of fermented dough is baked on the heated floor of a hearth oven. This type of bread is produced in a wide variety of local shapes and styles and is popular at small bakeries. The well-known shapes include baguette, batard (a shorter version of baguette with three slashes instead of seven), ficelle, Parisian (a large loaf), boule, Vienna bread, and a crusty hard roll.

The typical traits of the hearth breads include crisp crust with cracks and nut-like flavor, and creamy crumb. They can be produced by straight dough, sourdough, and sponge-dough processes. The hearth breads can be also made from rye flour (actually, a mix of rye and wheat flour). These breads are popular in Northern and Eastern Europe.

French

The "French" label points to the European (French and Italian) origin of the best known hearth breads, but the current production is spread worldwide (from Japan, Korea, Hong Kong, and Thailand to Ireland, Israel, and Argentina), and the term covers a wider variety of breads than what is popular in France. For example, the bakeries in France use lean dough, so their products go stale very quickly (hours), North American producers add shortening and sweeteners to adapt the bread taste to the American palate and improve the shelf life (these richening ingredients are disallowed in this type of bread in France).

North America

The uniquely American San Francisco sourdough bread dates back to the California gold rush of the late 1840s-early 1850s.

The renaissance of small- and medium-size bakeries in the United States and Canada in the late 20th century is directly related to the popularity of hearth breads. The demand for hearth bread in the U.S. began with the natural foods movement in the 1960s and gained popularity across the country through the 1970s and 1980s. By the late 1980s, hearth bread was experiencing a major resurgence in bakeries throughout California, Washington, New England, and New York.

American bakers of artisan breads prefer to use unbleached refined flour with the range of protein content from 11.5 to 14%, ash 0.48 to 0.80% (on the 14% moisture basis, falling number of 250-290 seconds, farinograph absorption of 60±2% and stability of 10±2 minutes. Multiple specialized flours are produced for these bakeries.

Process

When viewed from the baking process perspective, the artisan bread attributes are:
# using lean dough (flour water, salt, leavening based on commercial yeast or ''Lactobacillus''). The only additional ingredients for the regular breads are malt flour and ascorbic acid. Typically the high hydration doughs are used.
# baking on the hearth, mostly avoiding the use of the bread pan;
# gentle mixing to preserve the color of carotinoid pigments of the endosperm. Minimal mixing might favor use of weaker doughs, as strong (high-gluten) doughs might not be able to fully develop and thus will reduce the final volume of the loaf;
# flavor development through long fermentation and use of high-ash flour;
# gentle shaping by hand or minimal machine shaping;
# avoiding the use of dough conditioners, with flour variations addressed through process changes;
# using flavor, aroma, creamy open crumb textures, crispiness of the crust as the quality goals.

References

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