Alexander, William: 52 Loaves: A Half-Baked Adventure

When he returned from a European vacation, William Alexander came home to New England with a mission.  At a Paris restaurant, he had eaten the “perfect loaf” of peasant bread and he vowed to re-create it. So, each Sunday morning for a year he made a round loaf of peasant bread in an attempt to get it right.

52 Loaves is the story of his quest for this perfect loaf.  The book is divided into 52 chapters, one for each week of the year.  Each chapter addresses a particular issue.  Alexander has a reputation as an essayist and humorist, and this book is a fun read.  Several chapters explore the adventure he undertakes in growing, harvesting and grinding his own wheat.  Another time he goes to Maine to a conference and learns about making an outdoor wood fired oven.  Later, he actually builds his own oven in his large back yard.  He finds a nearby bakery that uses a huge wood fired oven and transports one of his loaves to them to bake. 
    

Many chapters in 52 Loaves take on an educational tone.  When Mr. Alexander decides to undertake the making of his own levian (sourdough starter) the nature of yeast is explored and explained.  His levian goes with him everywhere, on vacation to Maine, and to France. The scene at the airport when he tries to explain why he is boarding with this mass of what looks like plastic explosives is hysterical. The historical changes in flour, the milling processes and the differences between our flour and the flour he finds in France are explained. He also researches the early 20th century disease pellagra and its relationship to the changes in diet in the south.

Researching his peasant loaf had lead Alexander to study baking in ancient monasteries.  He eventually found a still active monastery with a wood fired oven.  The oven had not been used in decades and the monks reluctantly allowed him to bring their oven back to life if he would teach them to bake their own bread again. A week-long baking course at the Ritz in Paris is followed by a brief side trip to Morocco where he frantically looks for a village oven. He returned to Paris on the eve of a nationwide rail strike and barely made his connections to pick up his levian and clothes on his way to the monastery in Normandy. After some repairs to their old oven and cleaning up the kitchen, he continues his research with the monastery oven. The Monks are very appreciative of his efforts and put their old oven into daily use and even exchange e-mails with him.

Alexander’s physician wife and teenage children enter into the dialog in the book, sometimes in a humorous way, other times grudgingly.   His wife makes comments about their white bread diet and the kids routinely ask for croissants.  This wonderful memoir is fun to read and makes me want to go out and find William Alexander’s other book, The $64 Tomato.       


by Margie Gilbert