There’s something about enjoying a nice slice of bread or a roll with a meal. The sweetness of a well made baguette eaten with a salad of greens dressed with a slightly acidic dressing is one of life’s great pleasures. More often now, one finds a very nice bread basket offered at the start of the meal in restaurants of all types. And while the number of high quality wholesale bakeries is increasing, giving restaurant chef’s an ever widening array of choices, the real excitement is in the growing number of restaurant’s that are choosing to make their own breads. Readers of this site will know that we have written about a restaurant’s bakery in the past: Ali Pandi and the BR Guest Commissary Bakery. In this article we’ll look at another restaurant bakery, also in New York City: Bouchon Bakery.

The Bouchon Bakery is located in, and bakes for, Per Se, a landmark restaurant located in the Time Warner Building overlooking Columbus Circle. The dining room is a beautiful setting where a meal can last upwards of 4 hours. An innovative menu and service are the focal points for Per Se, part of Thomas Keller’s restaurant group which includes The French Laundry in Yountville, California, USA and Bouchon in Napa, California and Las Vegas, Nevada.

As was written in the article on BR Guest, a restaurant bakery is under a very different set of constraints than the stand alone wholesale/retail bakery. Firstly, the restaurant bakery must ensure that the bread compliments what is being served from the kitchen. The breads and rolls must satisfy and perhaps, calm a diner’s hungry cravings when they first sit down, yet not diminish their overall desire to eat well. A small, well made roll and a drink can be very comfortable way to approach a dining experience.

The Bouchon Bakery at PerSe is overseen by Peter Endriss, a baker, originally from Long Island, NY, who began as a pastry chef. Before coming to Bouchon Peter worked at Amy’s Bread, also in New York. Amy’s Bread is a wholesale bakery with 3 retail locations throughout Manhattan. They produce a wide variety of breads and pastries, and while they are relatively small in terms of wholesale production their quantities dwarf what is required at Bouchon. An acquaintance of Peter’s and a former co-worker at Amy’s bread said: ‘Oh, Peter has a difficult job. Everything has to be perfect.’

At the Bouchon Bakery, as you might suspect, there is an overall emphasis on the ‘visual’ with the added constraint that the bread simply cannot/must not conflict with the tastes of the items on Pe r Se’s menu. This means no olives, no herbs, no spices. A little more room for contrasting flavors is allowed in the breads served with the cheese course which may include dried fruits or nuts.

Given that the menu at Per Se can run to 10 courses, conflicting with none of them sounds a tall order. Yet, well fermented dough made from good quality flours and grains is a lovely foil for the most diverse of tastes.

The kitchens at PerSe are divided thus: bread, pastry, commis (prep, stocks, etc), and the main kitchen. The whole of the ‘bakery’ at PerSe is maybe 200 square feet (say 10 feet wide by 20 feet long). In a word: small. Also, the deck oven is shared by the pastry chefs so all of the baking is a highly orchestrated affair. If the bread crew runs over their alloted time slot, it has ripple effects throughout the rest of the kitchen.

Obviously PerSe (and all the Thomas Keller restaurants) take their breads seriously. The Bouchon Bakery bakes its bread throughout PerSe’s service so even if you sit down at your table at 10:30pm your bread will be just as freshly baked as those who sat down at 5:30. Each night the bakery is responsible for 4-5 different types of bread. There is always a baguette along with ciabatta rolls. In addition, there may be 2-3 other styles which can include whole wheat, rye, a sour dough style bread, or potato. Within the constraints of visually appealing and complimenting flavors anything is fair game. But, if it doesn’t look good, it will not be served.

At the Bouchon Bakery there is a tangible sense of focus. The workspace is quiet. In many production bakeries there is a tug-of-war between the volume of bread that must be produced and the range of acceptable quality. How those variables are managed ultimately determines the overall quality of the finished product. At Bouchon, given that the volume is relatively low (basically bread for that night’s service), their focus is on achieving the highest visual and taste qualities, and that takes focus. On the day I was there, as one of the bakers unloaded the oven she called Peter over, and, very quietly, they decided to leave these baguettes in the oven for just a bit longer. Finally as, all the baguettes were coming out of the oven, it was amazing to behold the uniformity of the look across all the loaves. They were almost all, visually, perfect.

If you are interested Ciril Hitz, an instructor in the Baking Program and Johnson and Wales University in Providence, Rhode Island, USA has released a bread baking DVD series aimed directly at chefs who want to make top quality breads within the constraints of a restaurant kitchen. Certainly worth checking out.