Isn’t it great how we can visit just about any city or region of the United States these days and find at least one and often several bakeries turning out great baked goods. Again and again, I walk into one of these ‘gems’ and have felt the vibe that comes from people engaged in a craft that requires much of them.

Baking has been a part of the American (I’m speaking of the United States, here.) culture for the last 200+ years with the traditional styles being contributed by immigrants (bringing with them the traditions of their countries) and through necessity (think of the gold miners in California who kept their sour cultures brewing while they panned for gold). The real excitement here in the US, though, began in the 1970’s when people started to look anew at the old traditions (traditions that were certainly current in other countries) and out of this a real sense of craft began to develop. A respect for the craft and a desire for a well made product.

So here I was on my way to Washington DC to write an article about a bakery and I stopped by a Cosi food counter at the airport. While waiting for my sandwich I turned and saw a woman was scaling out dough that, presumably, was going to be shaped into sandwich rolls or bagels. It was the first time I’d ever seen food in such an elemental form in an airport, but it was a realization that we are connecting more with how our breads (and food in general) are made and that actually seeing our food produced is becoming more important.

Once I got to DC I spent the rest of that night with my friend Dahmane Benarbane at his bakery, Baguette Republic, in Falls Church, VA. Dahmane arrived in the US from Algiers in 1990. Within a couple of years he was working for Uptown Bakers in Washington, DC, where, when he started, he had no experience as a baker. Not long after that he started working for Marvelous Market running their bakery and stayed for 14 years. Today, in partnership with Marjana Varga he has his own bakery and they are turning out a wide array of beautiful breads and pastries. Baguette Republic has several large wholesale customers which forces them to split up their production between two locations: one for bread and one for pastry with Dahmane constantly running back and forth between the two locations making sure the quality he expects is maintained.

While at the bakery I followed Dahmane around as he oversaw the production of the danish to be delivered the next morning. The dough had been made earlier in the day and Delcia, an employee, was doing the final assembly and baking. Dahmane told me that showing someone how to do something is easy as most people can follow directions, and if shown once or twice they can usually reproduce your procedure. But one of the most difficult things, he feels, is teaching someone to know or understand why they are doing something. It’s not uncommon for Dahmane to walk up to one of his bakers and ask why they are doing something a certain way. He is interested to know if they have a connection with what they are doing. A connection brought about through understanding is the first step in making something correctly, he believes. Understanding a process takes time, and at Baguette Republic there are extra challenges: where Dahmane’s languages are French, Arabic and English, most of his employees only speak Spanish.

Walking around the bakery with Dahmane he would stop to show me someone making a filling for the danish, or at another point he took me into the cooler and showed me the tubs of muffin batter that had been made earlier. Dahmane turned to me and explained that at the bakery it is all about the product and making it well. To make products well you have to have a focus on quality ingredients and care must be given to how you combine those ingredients. Take the cream-cheese filling for his danish as an example. He certainly could purchase the filling already made, but, for Dahmane, it is important that they make the ingredient themselves furthering their connection to the process, and ensuring that in the end they are responsible for the ultimate quality of the finished product. I think he also feels that it makes the danish uniquely his.

Later on that night, I watched as Dahmane gave instructions regarding the final preparation of the danish: tuck under the corner so it doesn’t open up in the oven, place the fruit like this, etc. A little while later as the danish were coming out the oven Dahmane said, “Look at how beautiful those are. She is taking them out at just the right moment.” The pride was visible. He then spoke about how success in a finished product is achieved at the intersection of the visual look of the product and its taste. It’s really a series of steps that leads to beautiful, well made breads or pastries: you start with good ingredients, you develop a staff who not only understand what they are doing, but care, and you finish it off with experience that only comes from doing something repeatedly over time. As Dahmane will say, you don’t take something out of the oven when the timers goes off, but when it is done.

Dahmane told me that in French there is a word ‘deontologie.‘ I looked it up, and translated into English a workable definition might be: ‘the science of what should be’ as opposed to what you have been taught. Dahmane translates it as meaning a ‘respect for the craft or profession’. I think this is the overarching theme that gets at what it takes to be a baker of high quality: you must have respect for what you are producing. This is why he asks his bakers why they are doing things the way they are. He wants to know that they are making decisions not solely because they were told: ‘it is this way’, but rather because they have an understanding of the process and a respect for what they are producing.

Baguette Republic can be found in Falls Church, VA (USA)