Interview with Artisan Bread in Five authors + Giveaway!

I am extremely pleased to have the dynamic duo behind best selling cookbooks: artisan bread in five minutes a day, healthy bread in five minutes a day and artisan pizza & flatbread in five minutes a day.  Clearly this bread-genius duo has it down pat when it comes to artisan breads.  Artisan breads made lighting fast I might add.

Praise for artisan bread in 5:

“Soon the bread will be making itself…..the crust, full-flavored loaf that results may be the worlds easiest yeast bread.” – New York Times

“I love it when someone challenges conventional wisdom…and wins!  Zoe and Jeff will have you baking bread in less time than it takes to make toast…” – Stephen Durfee, CIA & James Beard Award winner.

No more working all day with yeasty breads, five minutes a day is all you need to have the same exact high-quality artisan bread you see in bakeries, bread shops, high-end grocery…this can finally all be done at home—even for all those home cooks who are, shall we say, yeast-challenged?

Bio on Jeff Hertzberg, M.D. -  has been a physician, university professor, information technology consultant, and ardent amateur baker.  He developed a love of great bread while growing up in NYC in the 60’s & 70’s.  He refined his love of baking with travels through France, Italy, Germany, Spain, Britain and Morocco.  He lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with his wife and two daughters.

Bio on Zoe Francois – she is a pastry chef and baker. Trained at the Culinary Institute of America.  In addition to teaching baking and pastry in the Twin Cities and consulting to restaurants, Zoe creates artful desserts and custom wedding cakes.  She also has the famous baking blog: zoebakes.com.  She lives in Minneapolis, Minnesota with her husband and two sons. 

Zoe and Jeff have a bread blog too!  http://www.artisanbreadinfive.com/ 

Given both your backgrounds, how did you two meet? 

Jeff:  Yes, our backgrounds are different, but we both spent some time at home with kids when they were little—we met because our toddlers were in a music class together.

Zoe:  Kids are the best for bringing people together, we have them to thank for this endeavor.

How did you come up with the whole “bread in 5” concept?

Jeff:  Necessity was the mother of invention.  I was a busy medical resident who loved bread, and my wife taught me the traditional method so I could make my beloved rye bread in my spare time.  Since I had zero spare time, I had to economize on lengthy steps, and ultimately, what really saved time was making a large batch of dough and using it over a week or more.  Otherwise there’s too much prep, mixing, and cleaning bowls.  It takes wet dough to do that (but not too wet), and getting it just right was the hard work of these books.    

I love that part of Zoe’s background involves creating ice cream cakes at Ben & Jerry’s.  Is this where you found your love of baking?

Zoe:  When I was going to college in Burlington, Vermont I wanted to work at Ben & Jerry’s, because they gave their employees free pints of ice cream after every shift. I also discovered cake decorating at that job.

Jeff, did you set out to be an MD?  Were all your travels in and around Europe what made you really what to delve deeper into baking?  Or did you have your eyes set on bread making?

Jeff:  Sure did, I went straight from college to med school, and I expected to practice adult medicine and do research, maybe in a part-time academic practice.  But after a few years in practice, I got interested in computers in health care, trained in a research fellowship, and started a consulting practice in health care computing.  That freed up my time for family, hobbies, and delving into other interests.  Like bread-baking. 

Photo by Mark Luinenburg

sticky pecan rolls, pg. 187

Have you two thought about opening a bread shop? I’m certain it would do very well.

Jeff:  Well, it might, but the concern is that we might throw the baking pans at each other!  Seriously, I’m not sure I was destined to work that hard.  Providing great food to customers is hard, hard work with long hours, and I have so much respect for people who do it.  I’m just not sure it’s right for me. 

Zoe:  I’m not graceful enough early in the morning to open a bakery, and what Jeff said about the flying pans is probably true!  ;)

Jeff- when creating recipes, did your medical training ever come in handy?

Jeff:  It turns out that recipe-testing is a lot like the scientific method.  You have a best guess about what will work, you do some experiments, and if they don’t produce what you expected, you refine your guess—and change the ingredients list! 

When shopping around for agents for your first book--A part of me wants to say it must have been easy with such a great “bread in 5 minutes” concept, but then I think it could have also have been hard selling such a concept to an agent?  Which one was it?

Jeff:  Our agent, Jane Dystel, was sold on the concept immediately, along with our editor at Thomas Dunne Books, the late Ruth Cavin.  Without Jane and Ruth—no book series for us.  They were sure that if the method actually worked, people would flock to it.  And for some reason, they believed us, without ever having made the bread themselves.  The proof came from our readers, who propelled the book by word of mouth (we have about 500,000 copies in print for all three titles). 

Zoe: Lynne Rosetto Kasper (NPR’s The Splendid Table) generously introduced us to her agent, Jane Dystel. It is difficult to get a book idea in front of an agent these days, so we feel incredibly lucky.

Was there “bread making” research involved?  Where does one go or look for that?

Jeff:  Of course!  We both love travel, and whatever we eat and love when we’re traveling with our families, we try to recreate with our stored dough.  Between us, we’ve spent time in France, Italy, Turkey, Germany, Britain, and Greece—all countries with great traditional bread cultures.  Samples from those places are all over our books.  And of  course, there’s more mundane research, eating all the good bread we can find in our local bakeries, and reading everything on the subject that we can get our hands on.

Zoe:  The “research” is why I’m in this business. It is now officially my job to eat bread everywhere I go.  What a glorious line of work. Developing a recipe to recreate a particular loaf of bread I’ve fallen in love with is where the challenge comes in.

Zoe: your food blog at zoebakes.com, is stunning and creative; where do you find time to create recipes there?  Which ones are your favorite to create?

Zoe: Wow, thank you! Zoebakes.com is my playground for sweets, and where I go to relax. I have an insatiable sweet tooth, so baking desserts just seems to find its way into my daily routine. I like to recreate desserts I might find in a restaurant, but in a way people can easily do at home. Which means lots of step-by-step photos.

Any recipes you had a hard time with?  Which recipes were the easiest to create?  Any recipes that didn’t make the cut?

Zoe: The gluten-free breads in our books were the most challenging to develop. They use a list of ingredients I was not used to and techniques that are quite different from traditional breads.  Not only did the recipes have to taste great, but they had to be fast and easy to use. I am thrilled to say we did just that.

Favorite creation in the books?

Jeff:  Provencal Roasted Red Pepper Fougasse, a folded flatbread that’s visually stunning and unbelievably savory.  Don’t forget the salt!

Zoe: One of my favorite recipes in the book is the “Bostock,” and for some reason I don’t think many people have tried it.  It is almond cream rolled up in brioche and baked with an almond crunch topping. Simply divine.

I love that when I do these interviews with food authors I get to find out that most of their recipes were/are created by simply what they were craving!

Can this be true of you two as well when creating Artisan Pizza in 5 Minutes and Healthy Bread in 5 Minutes?

Jeff:  That is exactly it for me.  I moved to Minneapolis in 1987 and couldn’t find New York deli-style rye bread that I’d grown up with.  So I had to learn to make it myself. 

Zoe: That’s why we continue to create more recipes; the cravings and inspiration just never go away.

Who are/were your taste-testers?

Jeff:  Friends, family, and each other.

Zoe: My mom was my first tester. I knew if she could do it, anyone could. She was not much of a baker until she started making our bread. Now she bakes almost daily.

Photo by Mark Luinenburg

european peasant bread, pg. 46

What other foods do you two enjoy?

Jeff:  I love Vietnamese, French, Italian, and Mexican.  Underneath it all, the blend of influences that has made American food so interesting right now. 

Zoe: I intend to spend my life figuring out this question. I love to eat.

Favorite places to travel just for the food?

Jeff:  France, hands down.

Zoe: Turkey or Italy or France or NYC or San Francisco or Nicollet Ave in Minneapolis.  There is good food to be had in nearly every town.

If you were stranded on a desert island and had the choice of one (or two) comfort foods—what would they be?

Jeff:  Rye bread with sweet butter

Zoe: Ice cream and fresh baguettes (Assuming coffee will already be on the island).

Favorite chefs? And did both of you get to meet any of your favorite chefs while on book tours? 

Jeff:  James Beard, because of Beardon Bread.  Like Julia Child in Mastering the Art…, James was saying that great homemade food doesn’t need to be hard for amateurs to achieve.  He fitted his bread recipes so they’d sit on two facing sheets, which influenced us greatly.  James never experimented with stored dough, but I like to think he’d have been open to it. 

Zoe: Oh, I have been influenced by so many pastry chefs and have had the enormous good fortune to meet several of them: Dorie Greenspan, Abby Dodge, Sherry Yard, Nancy Silverton, Michelle Gayer, Stephen Durfee and many, many more. Their work and generosity has inspired my career.

In your downtime what do you like to do?

Jeff:  Travel, eat, cook, run, and bike.  Bike commuting’s my new thing.

Zoe: Down time??? I don’t understand the question. ;)

Any advice to your fans who wish to someday get published?  

It takes more than hard work and a good idea.  You need a bit of luck.  We had a unique idea, but if we hadn’t had some luck—getting the New York Times, the Today Show, and Associated Press to cover us—the book would never have gotten wide exposure.  But if you have a unique cooking idea, and you’re willing to do the networking to get the idea out there, you have a shot.  And self-publishing may make it easier to break into this business—don’t discount that.

Dare I ask—is there a fourth book in the works?  And will it be bread-related?  There is!  But alas, the publisher will kill us if we talk about it so early in its development…

Thank you both for the interview.

For the giveaway:
one lucky person will win one copy of each of their books (3 books total)
please leave a comment telling us what kind of homemade bread you'd like to make or have made.
one comment per person please. 
no anonymous comments please; have a valid name & email in signature line!
we'll do the drawing on Friday November 2, 2012.