A baker's dozen of all those breads
Maria Kegel, Contributor, Jakarta
Foccacia. Pannini. Ciabatta. Knowing what bread to serve with your meal can get downright complicated when faced with the baker's dozen, and then some, of varieties on the market.
You can simplify your choice by sticking to the guidelines offered by William Wongso, owner and operator of Vineth bakery and several popular restaurants around town, and Nanang Pratna, the pastry chef and head baker from the Jakarta Hilton.
The type of bread to serve during a meal depends on nationality, William, Jakarta's premier restaurateur, said.
"The French always like having bread, such as pain au levin or a baguette, on the side of a meal, which they use to clean the sauces off their plate with, while Germans eat hard rolls called brotchen in the morning and rye bread throughout the day."
William chose the baguette as the perfect accompaniment for any meal, because, he said, it is more universal and goes with almost everything.
"When you start serving cheese, then you have to change your bread style to complement what kind of cheese you are serving," he noted, quickly adding that a baguette could be served all the way through.
Roquefort cheese is quite strong, pungent and salty and William likes to serve a heavy raisin bread with it to balance out its unique flavor.
Creamier cheeses go well with a walnut bread, and goat cheese is fine with olive bread.
Herb bread is more modern, and when topped with cheese, it works well with pasta, as the bread already has a lot of flavor, he said.
"Pain au levain also goes with everything and it has a certain flavor, which you can't get from normal bread that uses normal yeast, and also because of its long process to make it, the slow- proofing method," he said, adding that this helped the bread last longer, allowing it to taste fresh for several days.
The garlic ficelle bread is a favorite among Indonesian customers because of the taste provided by the garlic, and some restaurants use it for sandwiches, wrapping it in foil and reheating it in the oven; William said he liked his served with French Emmenthal cheese.
German vollkorn bread, which is heavier than the Dutch whole wheat version, can be served with cheeses or at breakfast with a pate or jam.
William said it had a sweet and slightly sour taste, the sweet coming from the molasses, and it is cut thin to about two to two and a half millimeters as it is a solid bread.
"It is baked slowly for eight hours, and then stored for one week, allowing the flavor to distribute evenly throughout the loaf."
In his opinion, the best choice as table bread for your meals, though, is French bread, because of its appropriate size.
"If you choose a brotchen or tiger bread, they are too big and they don't look good on your bread and butter plate. The French bread is nice, and you have a lot of flexibility in the way you cut it."
At Vineth bakery, customers can choose from among the volkorn and tiger bread, which are originally from Holland, onion bread, herb bread, olive bread and focaccia from Italy, and the baguette, garlic ficelle, pain au levin and pain de campagne, which are from France.
The bakery provides bread to all his restaurants: William's Fine Dining in the Mitra Hadiprana building in Kemang; William Kafe Artistik above the bakery's location on Jl. Panglima Polim; and his two sandwich and grill outlets at Kemang Duty Free and Plaza Senayan, which both opened last year.
At one of his four restaurants, it is compulsory to serve olive bread, which has small pieces of olive mixed in with the dough.
"I've found that with every diner, if I give them a soft roll, they'll have two or three bites and they're finished. But if you serve a preheated crusty roll that is crunchy on the outside and soft on the inside, they'll just keep eating and won't be able to stop."
For the two sandwich outlets, William tried to get away from the sandwich's typical stereotype of American toasted bread cut into squares or triangles.
In a deliberate departure from this image, the restaurant serves sandwiches shaped artistically on focaccia, pita bread, or on pata, a layered Indian bread, which is done as a hamburger concept, he said.
"Using focaccia as a base, I can create any shape I want, as a pizza or sandwich. There are many things you can do with sandwiches," he said.
In contrast to "no-time bread", a term given to industrial bread that is made within two or three hours, William said the traditional way of preserving flavor was the best.
"Good bread is based on three main things: time, time and time. Without this element, you are just making normal bread."
However, the familiar complaint about bread in Jakarta from the expatriate's view is that it is too sweet, he said.
So after he opened Vineth bakery in 1977, he went abroad to learn firsthand in Germany, Italy and France the specific products he would use for the market back at home, which caters to the numerous nationalities.
His secret to creating good food, including bread: Love the product first and then learn how to make it.
His passion for bread has paid off and last year he was awarded a medal by the French Ministry of Agriculture for his efforts to promote French cuisine and wine in Jakarta.
"If I know a bit more about continental bread that is because I tasted a lot of different kinds before I learned how to bake them. It wasn't learning and then tasting, and this has made a big difference."
He said he was able to tell the difference between industrial bread and the artisan's bread, and how each country has its own tradition of consuming its type of bread. "This sort of thing I know a bit more about than the average baker, and it helps when dealing with the clientele."
In earlier days at about 7 a.m., William said, customers would come calling to the bakery looking for French bread, with the reasoning that bread in Paris would be ready for the public at 6 a.m.
"The problem is the bakery caters to many nationalities, and their types of bread. Since the baking is done at night, we start at the highest temperature, and the bread that is baked at the highest temperature is German bread, as it is a rye and it is heavier. So (out of practicality) that always comes earlier."
Customers may become confused over the type of sourdough bread available, and William attributes this to the two varieties on the market. Germans are used to their country's sourteig, while North Americans and French would prefer the pain au levin, which has a natural yeast.
Differences also exist between the German vollkorn bread, and the Dutch volkorn, spelled with one "l". The German version is based on rye and comes out as a solid dark bread, while the Dutch is based on wheat.
Over at the Hilton bakery, pastry chef and head baker Nanang Pratna also gave a thumbs up to the French baguette as the best bread served at the table as it was versatile enough to complement any kind of meal.
He also recommended dinner rolls, which come in brown, plain or with sesame seeds or poppy seeds.
At the bakery, customers have the pick of tiger, sovital, country farmer, raisin, whole wheat, twisted, corn and brown breads, as well as pretzels and the raisin flower, which separates into six to eight buns weighing 300 grams each.
Gressini bread sticks, about 20 to 30 centimeters long and one cm wide, are not displayed with the rest of the breads, but are for sale if a customer asks for it.
"You can serve bread sticks for any occasion, because they're made from the same dough as French bread," Nanang said.
Focaccia, an Italian flat bread that comes as a round loaf, is also available on request, and Pratna said the bread was suitable for sandwiches and as a table bread.
A serving suggestion for focaccia is dipping pieces of the bread in equal amounts of olive oil and red balsamic vinegar, poured together, but not mixed, in a small dish.
Pratna recommended the sovital or brown bread for sandwiches, the French, sovital or tiger breads for accompanying soups and the raisin bread for coffee time.
For the different varieties of cheese, Nanang chose white rolls because they do not have a strong taste or aroma and they balance out a cheese's strong, full flavor.
The raisin bread is a bit sweet and works best with jam or honey on it, he said.
The bakery caters to the differing bread tastes of expatriates and locals by offering the 12 European-style varieties as well as eight kinds of single-portion sizes of roti manis (sweet bread), which come in sweet hazelnut, coconut, banana and chocolate, beef and mushroom, chocolate, cheese and custard and banana and cheese.
"Bread is not really the number one consumed item in Indonesia, but since we have lots of customers (expressing a desire for it), we serve a large variety. However foreigners usually don't like the sweet bread."