…and you can too
Celeste Uzee grew up watching her grandmother make bread every week. Never glancing at a recipe or picking up a measuring spoon, her grandmother would seamlessly pour ingredients in and a beautiful, perfect loaf would come out.
But until three years ago, Uzee had never tried baking bread herself. Now, the Luling resident has made over 50 types of bread successfully and shares her newfound love for baking with others through classes and a blog.
“It wasn’t that it was a tradition for my grandmother, it was a necessity – it was part of rural life,” Uzee said. “(Bread baking) was a process that, in many cases, our grandparents did without even thinking.”
She said that baking bread is in everyone’s family history at one point or another.
Uzee bakes about once a week and said that it was surprisingly easy to begin.
“I experienced early success – if I hadn’t I probably would have given up,” Uzee said, laughing.
But she hasn’t been without her share of trials. For instance, she “failed miserably” when trying to make sourdough bread, but later realized it was because the air in Louisiana is not conducive to making that type of bread. Once she switched to a different recipe, the bread finally came out right.
Bread has a lot to do with the quality of air that the dough ferments in – so, if the air is dirty or very humid it can affect the way the bread turns out, she said.
Uzee teaches a class called “Food and Culture in Louisiana” once a year at Tulane University in New Orleans and this fall she is teaching a class on bread making with St. Charles Community Education.
“People have forgotten how to cook…they don’t prepare things from scratch to feed their families,” Uzee said. She said that many would-be bakers are intimidated by the complicated recipes in many famous cookbooks. “It’s my personal mission in life to remind people that you can make real, good home-cooked food without having to have 12 garnishes.
“Bread is not complicated…it has been around for 6,000 years.”
She said that many people are also scared of baking bread because they believe it takes too long.
“We spend an awful lot of time worrying about not having enough time,” she said.
In fact, Uzee said that bread is the opposite of time consuming. After spending far less than an hour making the dough, it has to sit out for a few hours to ferment. Then, the baker just kneads the dough every few hours before finally baking it.
“You can do what you need to do – clean, run errands – as long as you’re kind of around it,” Uzee said.
For those who want to try their hand at baking bread, Uzee suggests that you never give up and keep trying to improve.
“Even bad bread is usually pretty good,” she said. “It’s a craft…to be really good at it requires a little practice.”
She also said that getting a basic cookbook is a good idea. She suggests “The Bread Baker’s Apprentice” by Peter Reinhart.
Keep up with Uzee’s bread-baking adventures on her blog, www.bouillie.us.
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