The bread making process is extremely simple, yet made up of very complex elements. The food we buy on a daily basis is often treated with many additives and all we need to make good bread is yeast, water, flour and salt. Quality flour is crucial for making good bread.

In Pelegrini for years now we pay great attention on perfecting the breadmaking process in order to ensure our guests enjoy fresh, crunchy and delicious bread we bake just before serving. Therefore, we wanted to present the whole process of breadmaking to the participants of Chefs’ Stage Congress.

We were delighted that eminent experts held the bread masterclass: Spanish chef Jesús Monedero from the Palio restaurant, who is also the author of bread books and head of numerous workshops, and our young pastry chef Lara Reić, who perfected her breadmaking skills in numerous restaurants and artisan bakery Korica. Jesus is already the fifth generation of bakers in his family and every day he prepares an artisan bread for his restaurant.

At the #chefsstage masterclass held within the St. Michael’s Fortress, next to the bread oven from the 15th century, they used two types of flour – the finest Italian flour Petra grinded in Molino Quaglia mill and Croatian flour Karla Žitoproizvod. The dough made from Petra flour is rich in fiber (6.8% – 8.1%), and the flour can absorb up to ten times its own weight. Wheat is milled with stone blocks and flour types are indicated by numbers (1, 3, 5, 9) that tell us what type is better for making bread or for making pizza dough, for example.

Flour Karla from Karlovac Žitoproizvod was obtained by finely grinding in copany’s own mill. They have a dozen types of flour, wheat flour, and two types of spelt flour – from crushed and whole grain, graham integral flour and grits.

Jesús and Lara did the breadmaking process manually, using traditional methods and their own sourdough, almost 11 years old. The dough fermented over 24 hours, eventually enriching the texture and the taste of bread. The combination of these two types of flour proved to be excellent, the bread in the end being just as we want it – rich with holes, thin crunchy crust and very peculiar taste. During the Masterclass we found out all the details about the influence of certain types of flour on bread, how to make your own starter and how to feed it regularly, differences in making such bread at home and/or in the restaurant, baking temperatures, dough kneading techniques which ultimately all play significant role in the final product – bread.