Food and Wine

Bread Alone
Warming Pleasures
From a Country-Style Bakery

By Candy Schulman

Baker Daniel Leader, who
does indeed live off Bread Alone.
On a quiet country road in the Catskill Mountains, about 100 miles northwest of New York City, Daniel Leader loads baguettes into the 50-ton fieldstone oven that he built from some 6,000 bricks, 700 cinder blocks and various stones collected from nearby Bushkill Creek. This one-of-a- kind oven turns out loaves of crusty bread, re-creating hearth baking, which has long been a European tradition.

A thin man with a dark, bushy beard, Leader was formerly a chef at New York’s La Grenouille. He had trained at the Culinary Institute of America and then lived in France. “Every morning there we got up and went to a bakery for bread. We lived on bread, cheese, fruit and vegetables.”

Inspired to open a European-style boulangerie in the United States, Leader visited neighborhood bakeries from France to Vermont before establishing Bread Alone on Route 28 in Boiceville, New York. In bakeries, the ovens were generally built in basements so that they would heat the floors above, but Leader’s is in full view – a magnificent centerpiece in his one-room shop, where photographs of wheat fields and old Gallic bakeries decorate the walls. “We’re trying to be a commercial bakery but still maintain the sense of smallness that exists in France,” says Leader.

Leader’s oven can hold up to 300 pounds of bread at once, and he produces 9,000 to 10,000 pounds a week. Because the loaves are baked directly on the oven’s brick hearth and not in pans, they bake more quickly – producing crusts that are crackling and crisp. And the loaves owe their hearty texture to the special flours Leader gets from an organic farm in North Dakota.

“Part of achieving my goal involves knowing where the wheat was grown and how,” says Leader. The flour he uses most frequently contains 100 percent of the wheat germ; 20 percent of the bran is removed, resulting in a wheat flour that yields smooth, light breads. “We use only flour, water, salt and yeast. No oil, fat or preservatives.”

Leader’s breads vary from coarse textured to smooth. Unbleached wheat, tinged by a wood-smoked flavor, gives his Swiss peasant bread its regal taste; whole and cracked wheat and rye are mixed for a Norwegian farm bread; sourdough cultures produce the Finnish sour rye and the sour wheat, and a Russian recipe that includes blackstrap molasses, cocoa powder and coffee is used for a bittersweet raisin pumpernickel.

First the flours are mixed, then Leader lets the dough proof (rise) in buckets for two to four hours. Small loaves proof once, others twice. “The longer and slower you let breads proof, the better they are,” says Leader. “The hardest part is when seasons change and breads start rising at different speeds. In spring and fall, we go through real delicate periods.”

From Monday to Saturday, visitors to Bread Alone are assured of fresh, hot loaves. Some days the oven bakes from 4 A.M. until midnight, but on Saturday the last loaves come out by 11A.M. When we visited one weekday afternoon, skiers, tourists and locals had all congregated for bread, conversation and a view of Leader’s center-stage theater. “We have to take bread to Pennsylvania,” one customer remarked. “Otherwise my daughter will get withdrawal symptoms.” Another customer asked for one of the baguettes that was cooling on a metal baker’s rack, then quickly changed her mind and bought two. “Most people eat one in the car on the way home,” says Leader.

Is there any greater pleasure than enjoying bread still warm from the oven? I suggest you take a couple of Leader’s loaves, pick up some additional lunch goodies (Bread Alone is expanding and will soon be carrying cheeses and other gourmet products) and drive around the area. You can then choose one of a number of beautiful picnic areas, including Hunter Mountain, Wilson State Park in Wittenberg, Shokan Reservoir and the nearby town of Woodstock. Leader will gladly direct you to scenic spots and shops, and there is also a tourist information center located in an old caboose on Route 28.

If you’re not planning a trip to the area, but do want to sample some of Leader’s bread, you can mail order it. The bread is shipped the day it is baked and will generally arrive the following afternoon. Leader suggests storing his breads in a cool place in an open plastic bag or in the freezer. Properly kept, loaves may last up to 10 days.

How much bread does Leader eat a day? “A lot,” he says with a smile, breaking off the end of a steaming baguette. But how does he stay so thin? “It’s not fattening,” he promises, popping it into his mouth.

(Bread Alone, Route 28, Boiceville, NY 12412; 914-657-3328. Leader will ship 1 1/2-pound loaves or larger. Prices are $1.85 a loaf – except for raisin pumpernickel and walnut breads, which are $2.25 – plus packaging, shipping and handling.)

Candy Schulman is a freelance writer who lives in New York City.

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