[Congressional Record Volume 144, Number 51 (Thursday, April 30, 1998)]
[Senate]
[Page S3949]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                         JULES AND HELEN RABIN

 Mr. LEAHY. Mr. President, I rise today to say a few words 
about Jules and Helen Rabin who are long-time, respected Vermonters. 
Marcelle and I are proud to call them our friends. The Rabins exhibit 
what so many Vermonters have: a sense of what is valuable and important 
in life. With hard work, dedication, and a great deal of patience, 
Jules and Helen have built up a successful family bakery, serving the 
needs of their community. Over the last 20 years they have become 
masters of their craft. Recently, one of our local newspapers wrote an 
excellent article about the Rabins and their bakery. I ask that the 
article be printed in the Record so that all Senators may read about 
this fine family.
  The article follows.

   [From the Rutland Herald and the Sunday Times Argus, Mar. 8, 1998]

In Search of Sourdough--A Vermont Baker Sets Out to Find--and Make--the 
                              Perfect Loaf

                          (By Kathleen Hentcy)

       When you bite into sourdough bread, your teeth meet with a 
     worthy substance: Crackling hard crust, the bread inside 
     chewy almost to the point of toughness, a sour tang. And once 
     you've chewed and swallowed a few times, a satisfaction that 
     few other breads deliver.
       Real bread, for my money or effort, must meet this test. 
     And it must proudly withstand toasting and slathering with 
     sweet butter, not in the least smashed, or lessened in its 
     big-holed texture. It should produce a clean crunch when 
     bitten, and when chewed, remain substantial food, not melting 
     into a gooey mash.
       Overall, bread must take effort to cut, and time to chew 
     and digest. It must, truly, be the ``staff of life.''
       But buying good sourdough bread can eat up the grocery 
     budget; the loaves typically cost more than $3 each. Besides, 
     I find baking bread to be an almost spiritual experience. And 
     eating fine bread that you made yourself, listening to 
     friends' compliments, is gratifying.
       I've baked bread since my teen years. Some of what I make 
     is outstanding. Some loaves I give to the sheep.
       Lately, I've returned to baking sourdough. Sourdough, made 
     with only the wild yeasts that choose to set up home in a 
     culture of water and flour you provide, is wild, unruly 
     bread, its flavor distinctive to the region where it is made. 
     You don't know how the bread dough will behave from baking to 
     baking, since the leavening agent--the sourdough--is very 
     sensitive to atmospheric conditions and room temperature. 
     From my experience, I'd say the baker's temperament is 
     included under ``atmospheric conditions'' and can greatly 
     influence the outcome.
       I've made attempts at sourdough breads before, keeping a 
     liquid starter in the refrigerator for months. I'd use it for 
     a while, then forget about it and later find a dried-up mass 
     that I'd have to throw out, jar and all. But the loaves I 
     made from those starters never compared to the bread I 
     found at the local food coop.


                        the search gets serious

       Last fall, I was bitten by a new ambition: To bake the 
     ultimate ``peasant bread.'' Sourdough French country bread. 
     Pain de Campagne. Those lordly loaves with chestnut-brown 
     crusts that crackle, the trademark large-textured chewy 
     centers, and the sour tang.
       This bread, and all French sourdough, is made using a 
     doughy sourdough starter rather than a liquid. Once the 
     starter is prepared and a batch of dough is made up, the 
     baker takes off about a cup of dough--called levain, from the 
     old French word for rise, or leaven--to store in the 
     refrigerator. That piece, allowed to warm to room temperature 
     and refreshed with flour and water, provides the basis for 
     the next batch of bread, and so on as long as the baker 
     doesn't forget to take the levain from subsequent batches.
       Can making that bread be difficult enough to warrant a 
     price of $3 a loaf? If peasants baked these glorious loaves 
     in wood-fired ovens with no refrigeration for the starter, 
     surely I ought to be able to figure this out. Look at the 
     ingredients: flour, salt, water. Some note ``sourdough,'' 
     which, technically, is only more of the first and last 
     ingredients, flour and water. Adding commercial yeast to 
     sourdough is sacrilege.
       So I got out my bread books, and read about sourdough. I 
     read magazine stories about sourdough. I bought many loaves 
     of sourdough made by several different Vermont bakeries. I 
     made sourdough starter and baked loaves of bread on a baking 
     stone. I didn't feed it to the sheep, but I didn't give it to 
     friends, either.
       I went back to the books, and finally, to two bakers nearby 
     who make five wonderful kinds of sourdough. I'll tell you 
     what I learned up front: good sourdough bread is definitely 
     worth $3 a loaf. But baking it is worth more.


                             in the bakery

       In a small building in the backyard of Helen and Jules 
     Rabin's house, the Rabins continue the tradition of baking 
     the community bread. Helen pulls large hunks of dough off a 
     slouching 75-pound mass on the wooden counter. She places 
     each chunk on a scale and adds enough to make the scale level 
     out at one and three-quarter pounds, then drops the measured 
     blob onto the counter, and starts the process anew. Once she 
     has six or so lumps of dough, she kneads them one by one, 
     shaping them into slender loaves about eight inches long. 
     These are ``French white sourdough,'' or batards, the 
     shorter, fatter version of the popular baguette. In little 
     more than an hour, she will have weighted and shaped 65 
     batards.
       Helen and Jules have done this work nearly every week, two 
     days a week, for 20 years. While she mills the grains, mixes 
     the dough and forms the loaves, he builds the fire that heats 
     the oven and eventually bakes the bread.
       The Rabins began baking bread in 1978, shortly after Jules 
     was laid off from his job teaching anthropology at Goddard 
     College in Plainfield. Five years earlier, after visiting 
     friends who were trying to recreate the lives of 19th-century 
     peasants in the south of France, the Rabins decided to build 
     a massive stone wood-fired oven like those that once dotted 
     the European continent.
       The Rabins' oven is large enough to bake 250 loaves a day. 
     They bake two days a week, producing 500 loaves out of 750 
     pounds of dough. When they started making sourdough bread, 
     they had no competition.
       ``We had an easy ride when we began--people around here had 
     not had such bread,'' Jules says. That meant when they 
     delivered their first loaves, which were dense, unrisen and 
     hard, people still snapped them up. The taste was good, and 
     slowly the texture improved.


                          A few secrets found

       ``It took over five years to develop our loaves,'' Jules 
     told me during an earlier visit. This gave me great hope. 
     These people, who routinely make excellent sourdough bread, 
     had once produced loaves similar to what I started with.
       ``Sourdough is very tricky stuff to work with,'' Jules 
     said, making me feel even better. ``To get even, well-raised 
     loaves is very difficult with sourdough.''
       But did they seek out instruction in books or from other 
     bakers? No. They figured it out themselves.
       ``We set ours elves the challenge to bake without yeast,'' 
     he said.
       The Rabins got their ideal for the kind of bread they 
     wanted from European breads, and Helen once spent a night in 
     a French bakery, watching. But she received no instructions.
       ``We fiddled and mixed to arrive at what we have today,'' 
     Jules said. He credits Helen with all the brain work in the 
     operation, from building the oven to figuring out how long 
     the bread should rise.
       And so, on a mild March day, I stand inside the bakery, 
     careful to stay out of the way, and watch, much as I imagine 
     Helen watched those French bakers many years ago. I'm allowed 
     questions, but I avoid direct queries regarding the secrets 
     of sourdough. Not only are the Rabins offering Upland Bakers 
     for sale, and so have to protect their system, but I want to 
     figure out at least some of this process for myself.
       My time with the Rabins revealed two important lessons. The 
     first is that baking good sourdough requires time. Let the 
     levain warm for a few days after refreshing it, and before 
     mixing the dough. Then, allow the dough to rise for four to 
     six hours, punch it down and form the loaves, and allow those 
     to rise for another four to six hours. The variation in 
     rising times has to do with those atmospheric conditions, and 
     you will know only by trial and error when to bake at four 
     hours and when to wait for six.
       The other important detail I learned is that sourdough does 
     not have to be babied like yeasted bread dough. The risen 
     loaves can be picked up and placed on the baking surface 
     without worrying about flattening them. Go ahead and slash 
     the tops deeply, to allow the loaf to expand as the hard 
     crust develops.
       These may sound like trivial details, but on my counter 
     this morning sit the two best loaves of sourdough I have made 
     to date. I haven't yet developed quite the sour tang I like, 
     but the texture and volume of the loaves is beautiful. Toast 
     and tea this morning was especially pleasing.
       And the Rabins ``refreshed'' this lesson for me: Having the 
     answer as quickly as possible isn't always best. Sometimes 
     it's the process of looking that is the most fun.

                          ____________________