After publishing five volumes of Modernist Bread, Nathan Myhrvold Publishes One for Home Baking

 

      As if billionaire scientist, technologist and inventor Nathan Myhrvold didn’t have enough on his plate, even after publishing five volumes about Modernist bread making, he decided one more volume was needed for those who want to make perfect breads at home.
         Myhrvold, 64, with a doctorate in theoretical and mathematical physics and a master’s degree in mathematical economics from Princeton,  co-founded the software company Dynamical Systems Research, and worked in the Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics at Cambridge University with Stephen Hawking, then led the advanced technology and business development at Microsoft for fourteen years, managing an R&D budget of $2 billion, and serving as strategist and chief technology officer.
      In 2000, he retired from Microsoft to create Intellectual Ventures, with more than 900 U.S. patents, and founded Global Good to invent technologies for global health and development, and the Institute for Disease Modeling.
      Even as a child Myhrvold developed a passion for food and cooking, and while at Microsoft worked nights at a Seattle restaurant and obtained a culinary degree at Ecole De La Varenne in Burgundy. In 2007, he founded The Cooking Lab, a culinary research laboratory, photo studio and publishing company, that in 2011 produced the 2,500-page Modernist Cuisine: The Art and Science of Cooking, followed in 2013 by  Food & Drink: Modernist Cuisine Photography, then in  2021 three volumes on Modernist pizza, and this spring, Modernist Bread at Home.
         If this seems obsessive as well as time-consuming, for Myhrvold it’s all in a day’s work, a day that’s grown into years. I interview him about how and why he has clearly gone where no one else has gone before on these subjects.

 

 

When did you develop such a fervid interest in the principles of Modernist food? 

My culinary path began nearly 50 years ago with youthful inquisitiveness, including a foray into competitive barbecue, a long stint as a stagiaire at Thierry Rover’s restaurant in Seattle and a diploma from a culinary school in France. Besides cooking, the students would go to a lot of great restaurants for dinner. At one dinner I was told of a chef working in Spain near the border with France in a restaurant called el Bulli, but it was too far away at the time. It would have been fascinating to visit, because the year was 1995, and I would have seen the Modernist revolution at an even earlier stage than I did.

That would come soon after, however. Learning about cooking requires a lot of eating, and I have been an enthusiastic eater on my travels around the world. That exposed me to the Modernist cooking happening at the world’s best restaurants, including el Bulli, which eventually I was fortunate to visit many times.

      In 1999, I retired from Microsoft and founded my own company focused on invention. By the 2000s, I had become immersed in Modernist cooking, a field that lacked any central texts. There was very little information about the technique in English at that time. Based on the discussions I was having on the eGullet forum, I knew there was a need for a comprehensive book on sous vide in English, so I decided to write it, but I quickly realized I needed to expand the scope to all of Modernist cooking, so I decided to assemble a team to create that missing piece as a way of making these new Modernist techniques more widely available.

Modernist Cuisine was a watershed moment for me and for the cooking world. My team and I went on to publish six more books, Modernist Cuisine at Home, Modernist Bread, Modernist Pizza, Food & Drink: The Photography of Modernist Cuisine, and now Modernist Bread at Home.

 

Modernist Bread was five volumes. What more could be found and why this new book Modernist Bread at Home?

My team and I studied bread intensively and spent several years going through the bread world with a fine-tooth comb. We always realized home baking was important, which is why we made Modernist Bread at Home accessible to anyone who is passionate about bread.

For this book, we’ve distilled the most important lessons we learned from that research into a single volume book. We put a lot of thought into how we can push bread in new directions, but also help make bread less intimidating and more convenient for home bakers. Readers will discover innovative ways to simplify the bread-making process and save time, new technical skills to master, and beautiful loaves that have a depth of flavor beyond what you’ll find in the store.   

       While the full edition is found in many homes, you might not have room for 50 pounds of books and instead might want to store 50 pounds of flour. We’ve still included references to Modernist Bread in case you want to graduate on to it as you become a more confident bread maker, and we’ve retained some of our most interesting findings in the new book.

 

What are some of the myths you found about breadmaking? 

Conventional wisdom holds that over-proofed doughs are irretrievably damaged and should be thrown away. Our experiments found just the opposite: we were able to resuscitate the same batch of dough up to 10 times before it suffered any serious loss in quality. This discovery led to one of our favorite techniques for rescuing over-proofed bread, which we call Dough CPR.

Additionally, many bread books emphasize the importance of kneading, either by hand, by a mixer fitted with a dough hook, or by some other mechanical means. They argue that this action of working the dough is what develops gluten, providing structure and texture to the loaf. Contrary to this commonly held belief, mixing is not what develops the gluten. We’d love to take credit for this revelation, but the truth is that there have been recipes for “no-knead bread” for decades. It really became a sensation in 2006, when The New York Times published a recipe for baker Jim Lahey’s version. The dough is mixed together just until it forms a shaggy mass (pretty much the least amount you can mix the dough and have it come together), then left at room temperature for 12–18 hours, over which period the flour hydrates and the gluten network forms. No-knead bread relies on time to hydrate the glutenin and gliadin proteins in the flour, rather than the force of mixing applied by hand or dough hook.      

All this isn’t to say that mixing is a waste of effort in every instance. It speeds things up and allows you to create breads that would be very impractical to make any other way, such as enriched doughs with a lot of butter or very high-hydration doughs.

 

You are very exacting about proofing the yeast. How should it be done?

Final proofing replaces gas depleted through the dividing and shaping process with new carbon dioxide, continuing the fermentation process that began when the dough was first mixed. This new gas expands the dough’s existing bubbles and creates an open crumb structure that, when baked, is soft and pleasant to eat. The baker’s role in this process is to provide an appropriate environment for the dough, to protect it as it develops, then judge when final proofing is complete. That final assessment takes experience and patience to perfect, but it is crucial; the success or failure of a bread’s volume and flavor is partly determined by how accurately it is proofed.

 The type of yeast (commercial yeast versus a starter) and its percentage in the dough will make a difference. Generally, the higher the temperature (up to a certain point), the faster the fermentation. The longer the overall fermentation time before the final proofing stage, the more the carbon dioxide production. The lower the hydration, the slower the speed of fermentation.

There’s an art, though, to determining when final proofing is complete. The most common method is the fingertip test, which involves gently pressing your finger into the dough and seeing how quickly it springs back. The drawback to the fingertip test is that it relies heavily on experience and practice, so it’s a skill that can take time to develop.

Proofing dough at room temperature is the simplest method and requires the least equipment—all you need is a proofing container and something to cover the dough so that it doesn’t form a skin. This method depends on the temperature of the environment, which can vary by location and by day, as well as your expertise in calling proof.

 

You say that it was a mystery why German rye loaves taste better than American. What did you find out?

In our pursuit of good rye bread around the world, we kept coming back to one question: Why are bakers in rye bread–loving Germany, Austria, and the Nordic countries able to produce light, fluffy rye breads using 100% rye flour, when baking the same loaf in the United States results in a dense, brick-like bread? Our research on this led to one of our most important findings: that Austrian and German rye flour and American rye flour differ in ways that significantly impact the breads baked with them.

We consulted baking experts, cereal chemists, and millers, but no one could explain the difference between rye flours. Finally, we found the answer in a paper written by German cereal scientists, which helped us understand two things: first, rye grown for the Austrian market is different from that grown in the United States; second, particle size matters.

In Austria and other countries where rye is a staple of the diet, considerable research goes into improving the rye grain to make better rye bread. In the United States, most rye is grown as a cover crop, so varieties are chosen with that in mind, not the grain’s baking characteristics. When it’s time for harvest, more rye is used for animal feed than for human food.

The other key difference between Austrian and U.S. rye flour is the way it’s milled. Austrian flour is often milled finely, down to a very small particle size, with almost all the bran and germ sifted out. It’s much finer than American bread flour. American rye flour, by contrast, isn’t ground so finely. It’s often marketed as a coarsely ground “meal.” In addition, most U.S. rye flour also contains bran and germ, making it analogous to whole wheat flour.

When working with breads that have a high percentage of rye flour— particularly our 100% High-Ryes bread—you’ll find the dough consistency to be quite different compared with wheat-based doughs. Very little gluten will form, so the mixture will have a texture more like paste or clay. Fortunately, the loaf will become lighter in texture through proofing and baking, though rye breads do have an inherently denser crumb than wheat breads do.

 

What is the key to a crisp crust?

If you simply bake a loaf of bread in your oven, as water evaporates from the surface of the dough, it will begin to dry out and thicken. Even if all the water in the dough evaporates, it won’t result in the shatteringly crisp crust. To create that, you need steam. When steam is injected into the cooking environment while bread is baking, it condenses on the dough, which instantaneously and significantly raises the dough’s surface temperature. When this happens, the starch on the surface gelatinizes into a thin skin called a pellicle. It is this thin skin that will dry into a super crisp crust.

Professional bakers use steam-injection ovens, which can fill the baking compartment with steam at the press of a button, to ensure certain breads have a crisp crust. This is not an option for home bakers, who, over the years, have come up with a multitude of hacks to try to fill their ovens with steam. We tried these ad hoc solutions (like putting a heated brick or stone into a pan of water in the bottom of the oven) and many more and found that none of them work particularly well. The method that does work is much simpler: baking the dough in an enclosed container. Doing this not only allows you to create and trap steam but also improves heat retention, a problem with most home ovens.

The combination cooker consists of a skillet and a deep pot that lock when they’re snapped together. A combination cooker is affordable (you can find them for around $45). It is our favorite pot by far.

 

Why do you say that adding ascorbic acid makes a better bread?

Ascorbic acid (vitamin C) is an antioxidant found naturally in many fruits, but in widely varying concentrations, and it can interact with the flour proteins to either strengthen or relax the dough, depending on the conditions. In fact, you’ll find it in a number of flour brands, including those for home bakers and professionals. We add a small amount to some of our recipes, especially those made with low-gluten flours, because it makes dough stronger and improves its structure. It’s also an important ingredient in our Your Daily Bread recipe, which yields enough dough that you can harvest a piece and bake a loaf every day for two weeks. In this case the ascorbic acid dramatically reduces oxidation, which can be an issue for dough held this long.

Bakers can buy purified ascorbic acid commercially, but crushed vitamin C tablets work equally well. Or, for those who prefer unpurified ingredients, you can use fresh rose hips (the fruit of roses), which are rich in ascorbic acid.

 

The recipes are, for good reason, very precise but painstaking. Did you simplify for the home kitchen?

For Modernist Bread at Home our goal is to break down recipes in such a way that nonprofessional bakers can better understand not just the what (ingredients) and the how (methods) but also the why. To accomplish this, we put a lot of thought into designing the format of our recipes.

We provide recipes with centralized instructions and minimal cross-referencing so that you have the information that you need on hand.  Graphic-friendly “dashboards” provide an at-a-glance summary of the required time, difficulty level, and yield of each recipe, as well as how long the bread will keep.

 

How important is the oven to home baking? 

It’s incredibly important, which is why our biggest goal with this book was to ensure all our recipes can be executed well using a home oven. Home ovens are ideal for many enriched and pan breads, but are more challenging for successfully making crusty lean breads (luckily, we developed a technique using cast iron that will make a great loaf).

There are two types of home ovens: convection and nonconvection (or still or static). A convection oven uses a fan to circulate the air in the oven; evenly heated air transfers heat more rapidly, so a convection oven will bake whatever is in it faster than a nonconvection oven.

Regardless of the type, home ovens present the bread baker with several challenges: they don’t get as hot as deck ovens; they’re smaller than deck ovens, which means certain shapes or sizes of bread need to be downsized to fit; because of their lower thermal mass, they don’t absorb or radiate heat as efficiently, which can lead to your loaves baking unevenly; and they can’t produce steam, which is the key to a crispy crust.

That being said, you can bake excellent-quality bread in your home oven (pan breads in particular work well in the home oven). There are plenty of work-arounds for the issues outlined above and several different methods for creating steam.

 

Are there really many people who still bake their own bread? I assume most Europeans buy their bread at the local bakery.
 

They do! In fact, it’s a really fantastic time to love bread, whether you want to make your own at home or support local artisan bakeries. We saw a lot of folks get into bread when they were at home during Covid, and we’re seeing that interest pick up again. Many people have developed an appreciation for really good bread over the last few years as a result. I really want to encourage people to try making their own bread. Homemade bread is a great joy, which I hope you experience in your own kitchen.

 

How many copies have been printed?

We currently have over 405,000 copies of our books in print in nine different languages.

 

What’s the next project for Modernist Cuisine? 

Our team is hard at work on our next multi-volume book, which will focus on baked good and pastries.

 

 

 

 

         David’s interviews with bartenders turned up some interesting evidence of just how widespread the contempt for the Magdalene Laundries was in Dublin. There was obvious shame on the part of many who knew about the institutions but were either ignorant of or ignored what was festering inside them. The discovery of the unmarked graves horrified even the Church’s staunchest supporters, and the bartenders said there’d been plenty of talk about how no punishment would be too dire for the nuns.

         At Murray’s Bar (left), north of the Liffey, a barman named Jackie said he’d heard little sympathy for the murdered nuns.

         “Mostly it’s ‘Good riddance’ and a lot worse,” he said, pouring a club soda for the investigators. “A few of the boys boasted that they’d gladly do the same thing to those wretched women.”

         “Did any of them say their wife or daughter had ever worked in the Laundries?” asked David.

         “Ah, that they don’t bring up. It’s still a black mark on the family. There is one fellow, name of O’Toole, Benny O’Toole, who had a few one night then told me quietly that his sister had been in the Laundries when she was young. He was too young himself to know anythin’ about it until he was a teenager, when she got out. Then he learned just how bad it was inside and how they treated his sister. Took her years to recover, he said. He was very, very sad, very bitter about it. Cried right here on the bar. ”

         “Did this man O’Toole ever vow to avenge his sister?” asked David.

         “Ah, men say all sorts of things in a bar. I remember that after O’Toole heard about the babies in the graveyard he said he’d like to rip the heads off the nuns that did that. That was just one time.”

         Finger asked if Benny O’Toole was still in Dublin—promising the bar man the police wouldn’t cite him as a source—and the barman said, “If you wait long enough, he’ll be showin’ up here any time. But I don’t want you two interviewin’ him at my bar.”

         “Understood,” said Finger. “If you tell us where he lives, we’ll go over there and just say we’re askin’ around the neighborhood.”

         The barman was called to draw a Guinness for a customer, took his time about it, scraped off the excess foam, topping it off, then came back and said, “Lives on Talbot Street, near the James Joyce statue (right). That’s all I know. Mention me and I’ll be down at the station to raise bloody hell with your superiors.”

         Finger and David nodded and left the pub, then drove up to Talbot Street nearby. A few inquiries on the street provided O’Toole’s address and a moment later they were ringing the bell of an old row house. A minute later, a frail, wide-eyed woman in her thirties answered the door.

         “Pardon the intrusion, mum,” said Finger, showing his badge, “but is Mr. O’Toole in at the moment. Like to ask him a few questions.”

         The woman looked bewildered, trying to figure why the Garda were knocking on her door. She said nothing, left the door ajar and went back inside.

         “I think that’s the sister,” said David.

         “I’m thinkin’ the same thing.”

         Another minute went by and a large, ruddy-faced man in his late twenties opened the door wide.

         “You lookin’ for me?”

         “Well, we’re askin’ people around the neighborhood some questions to see if anyone can help us with the case of the three murdered nuns. Just routine.”

         “All I have to say about that is damn their fockin’ black souls to hell. They had it comin’, fockin’ hags. And don’t go pretendin’ that you’re just strollin’ around the neighborhood. I saw ya two in Murray’s, talkin’ to Jackie Quinn, shootin’ his mouth off. Told you about my sister, didn’t he? Bloody bastard.”

         Finger looked at David but said nothing.

         “We did hear that you had a sister who was in the Laundries,” said David. “Was the woman who answered the door her by any chance?”

         O’Toole stared at the men for a long pause, then said, “Yes, my sister Mary, but you’re not gettin’ anywhere near her. She’s nothin’ to say. She wouldn’t even talk to me about it fer years. Now I take care of her and no one’ll ever harm her again.”

         A cold, sharp wind blew down the street and Finger asked, “Is it possible we can come in for just a minute, Mr. O’Toole? It’s freezin’ out here.”

         Another long pause, then, “Five minutes. I’ll give ya five bloody minutes, then I’ll kick your asses across the Liffey.”

         The two inspectors entered the house, with a central long hallway and small rooms to each side. O’Toole brought them into the first one, a ramshackle room with a television set, two battered armchairs and a sofa from which the insides were spilling outside.

         “Sit down, if ya like,” said O’Toole, glancing at his watch. “Five minutes.”

         “Well, can you tell us if your sister Mary might have known any of the nuns who were murdered? Ever knew them at the Laundries?”

         “I asked her that when the news came out. Said she knew all three and that they’d been at the Laundries all the time she was there. Said they were fockin’ sadists.”

         “When was she able to get out?” asked David.

         “Eighty-nine, maybe ninety. She was there fer five or six years. And every bloody moment of it was hell fer her. Those nuns enjoyed beatin’ those girls, makin’ them all feel like worthless pieces of shit who deserved what they got.”

         “How did she get to leave?”

         “She became very sick one year, both here and here,” said O’Toole, pointing to both his heart and head. “They couldn’t take care of her, so they  shipped her out to a Church-run hospital here in Dublin. She got better—but she’s never been completely well, still weak—and when they released her they put her under my care. We’ve been livin’ here ever since. Used to be my parents’ house.”

         “Did your parents send her to the Laundries?” asked Finger.

         “Apparently they did. I was very young when she left here, she was in her late teens, and I was always kept in the dark about why Mary went away. Never did know if she’d ever come back.”

         “Your parents are still alive?”

         “No, both died about ten years ago. Lung cancer, both o’ them.”

         Finger put his hands together as if praying. “Now, Mr. O’Toole, I ask ya to forgive my next question, but, is there any way, is it even remotely possible, your sister could have been involved in one or more of these murders?”

         O’Toole jumped to his feet and exploded.

         “Ya fockin’ fiends! You met Mary. Does she look like anyone capable o’ murderin’ those fockin’ nuns? Does she look strong enough to murder a fockin’ cat? The dear girl can hardly walk by herself to Mass on Sunday much less climb in and out o’ windows and break into convents.”

         Finger apologized but got no further with his inquiry.

         “And now yer five minutes is up. I’m openin’ the door and I want you through it before I can slam it shut on yer bloody asses.”

         David and Finger got up and walked quickly to the door. Finger offered a card to O’Toole—“in case you think of somethin’”—who threw it across the room.

         “I can guarantee, ya won’t be hearin’ from me, ever. And don’t try to see my sister either.  I’ll crucify ya, if you do.”

         The two inspectors walked a block to where their car was parked.

         David said, “I’m not sure I can blame him for any of that.”

         “No,” said Finger, “it seemed like a perfectly legitimate response to his sister’s ordeal. Still, he sounds vengeful. I wouldn’t discount him as a suspect.”

         “He mentioned that he knew about the killer climbing through a window. Was that in the papers?”

         “Yeah, they had photos of the back of the house, with police tape across it.”

         “I’d like to get into his house, though, look around. I don’t know about laws in Dublin, Max, but in New York we’d need a warrant for that.”

         “Same here, and we’d have nothin’ to show why we wanted to get inside. Frankly, David, I wouldn’t expect to find anything. But I would like to speak to Mary.”

         “Doesn’t sound like that’s likely to happen,” said David, then, “but it makes me think that maybe Katie could get to see her. Not to mention she knows us, but tell her about how she wanted to expose the horrors of the Laundries and so on. Worth a try.”

         “If Katie’s as good as she’s pretty, David, ‘tis very much worth a try. And by the way, none of my business, but you mind me askin’ if you two are more than professional friends? ”

         “I wish, Max. I only wish.”