UPDATE

The Bread Bakers Guild Team USA has picked up the pace during the February practices. The time for experimenting and collecting ideas and inspiration from outside sources has come to an end and the three team members are putting in back to back marathon baking sessions with concentrated all-work attitudes. In the practice room at the San Francisco Baking Institute tables have been arranged to simulate the size of the booth assigned to each team participating in the Coup du Monde de la Boulangerie competition at the Europain convention. There is a large timer on the wall above the baking area that is set for eight hours each morning of practice. While the timer is running the three team members; Tim, Tim and Ciril rarely leave the 12 by 12 foot space, stop moving or even look up from their work to answer questions from nosy reporters like this one. Focus is now on perfecting their timing and fine-tuning their routines.

Just as the process of baking relies heavily on measurement and timing, so does the process of winning a baking competition. Each team member’s actions have been mapped out on spreadsheets broken up into 10-minute increments. Some of the categories of their actions are mix, chill, rest, proof, fold, turn, divide, shape and bake. The category "rest" does not mean the baker gets to rest; it refers to the dough. There is no time allotted during the eight-hour period for the bakers to eat, rest, or take care of personal business and none of them want it.

Efficiency of movement is the main focus in perfecting the timing of the baker’s routines. The goal is to be able to piece together a choreography that enables the baker to accomplish a number of things at once without having too run to the oven to many times or having one process slow up another. In the small booth, the three bakers have seven different timers between them all going off at different times and for different reasons. Not only do team-members have to know their own routines but also they have to know the routines of their teammates and coordinate their scheduling. For example Ciril knows that he has to be out of the oven after five and a half-hours in order to have time to assemble the piece. This works well with Tim Foley’s schedule, since he is mixing, and shaping his doughs in the beginning hours. But Tim Healea and Ciril then have to coordinate the use of the ingredients and equipment such as the sheet pans that they must share when they are both using the oven, the sheeter and cooling their products at the same time. If any team-member has even one free minute he is anticipating the moves of other teammates and cutting fruit for Tim Healea’s garnishes or shaping the miniature live dough breads that decorate Ciril’s piece. Assistant Erin Quinn watches every move checking off the time sheets and adjustments are made to optimize the efficiency of movement. With them all relying on each other so much, the schedule must be accurate or it will throw the whole team off.

Coach Craig Ponsford says that by the time the team starts it’s intensive week of practice in France the schedules should be so tight that each team-member will be able to write down what he will be doing in five-minute increments. He says, "You want to go there and be a machine." And he compares the bakers to Olympic ice skaters who are so practiced that they don’t have to stop and think in the middle of a routine and decide whether to turn left or right. He reminds the team how hectic the small space will be, and that it is important to experience distractions and hardships during practices. Remember that in the twelve by twelve foot bakeshop there will be a complete set of professional bakery equipment and three men. By the end of the eight hours they will have produced at least 200 loaves of bread and pastries as well as a large sculpture made of hundreds of fragile pieces. Every spare inch of space, whether it is on the loader or under a table will be covered with cooling loaves of bread. . A sheet pan placed on top of the rolling trashcan is a prime real estate. There is literally no room for mistakes.

Now that the formulas, shapes and designs have been established for each baker’s pieces, attention to detail is the focus. Tim Healea is working out production kinks, carefully analyzing every step of the process and reorganizing any procedures that cause hang-ups or slow down the process. Among other things, he is comparing using cutters versus hand shaping his viennoiserie, adjusting oven temperatures in order to get even coloring and results throughout his small and large pastries, and designing garnishing techniques with respect to the weight requirements. Each of his pastries has several different elements to it, which must combine to equal the designated weight when baked. Tim says, "What we do is pretty ambitious. There’s a lot to do in eight hours." This is something of an understatement.

Baguette and specialty bread man Tim Foley is also making small adjustments to the formulas, shaping and baking of his breads. With so many possibilities to choose from he has finally nailed down the ingredients for his fifth bread. Now he is involved in the process of gently coaxing the live dough to consistently do the right thing. He is constantly tweaking hydration levels and pre-ferments and adjusting baking times and temperatures. He is comparing different shaping techniques and making decisions on whether the dough needs a subtle persuading or a more aggressive handling in order for the shape to be accurate when it comes out of the oven. He is working on baking consistency since the color of the bread also affects the taste. Tim Foley is also the man with the most timers going at once. As dough often seems to have a mind of it’s own when it comes to deciding when to be perfectly fermented, Tim has to constantly monitor and adjust the resting process.

Now that Ciril has finalized the design of his artistic piece he has the opportunity to do what comes naturally to him and fine-tune the engineering and details. But what the piece looks like is a secret, you’ll have to wait for the competition so see it in all it’s glory. The amount of individual pieces, templates and props that go into the final piece is mind-boggling. Each time he finds a way to more quickly and accurately make one part, that frees him up to devote more time to finishing the details on another part. Each time he runs through the process of making the piece it gets more detailed and technically advanced. One of the most challenging parts of the sculptural process is the two hours that Ciril spends assembling the piece using extremely hot, drippy, unforgiving glue that is made of a sugar mixture. Every piece must be put into place quickly and perfectly the first time. Only by carefully watching Ciril’s facial expression can you tell when the heat from the three hundred-degree pastry bag full of glue is seeping through the gloves he is wearing and he has yet another blister on his hands. After so much input from coaches, former competitors and teammates, Ciril’s own creative vision is coming through strong and clear.

Baking team USA has an advantage in that one of its coaches is also a judge for the competition. Craig is starting to practice his judging during the baking practices. He points out possible rule infractions and point deductions such as messy workstations, inconsistencies between pieces, and when the number of products presented doesn’t meet the requirements. He points out that competitors won’t be able to step around to the outside of their work tables so they must adjust their methods to stay inside the booth. At the end of some sessions, instead of informal team critiques and discussions he assembles a group of sample judges and goes through a mock judging process so the team can see where they might miss points. During the actual competition, as a judge Craig isn’t allowed to vote for his own team and as a coach he isn’t allowed closer than 5 feet from the bakeshop. The role of all coaches is limited once the competition starts. Craig will rely on assistant Jeff Yankellow to act a go-between for communication with the team and judges.

In the midst of all this the team was subjected to this reporter going around pretending to be a sports reporter by asking each team-member sample media questions in preparation for an on-camera interview the next day. Although the questions often came out sounding more like game show questions the team-members were good sports about it and came up with some excellent responses while scaling, shaping and baking, with one eye on the clock all at the same time. Media coverage is heating up with articles planned in newspapers across the states including the San Francisco Examiner, The Oregonian, The Chicago Sun Times, The Oakland Tribune, The Boston Herald and cumulating in the teams appearance on the Today show on April 12th, the day before it leaves for France. There will also be a demonstration practice session and open forum at Johnson and Wales University in Rhode Island.

The members of Team USA have grown close through the many hours of intense practice. They are beginning to move as one choreographed entity and can anticipate questions and finish sentences for each other. The biggest challenge is the time commitment involved in being on the team. It is comparable to a full time job when they all already have full time jobs. The time they get to spend with family and friends is short. But the benefits are worth it and they are all enthusiastic about how much they have learned and the opportunity they have had to work with so many different experts in the field. Winning would be nice but they focus on the greater good that is coming out of the competition. Their goal in participating in the competition is to elevate the quality of bread in this country and in the world. As Tim Healea says, "the reason we spend so much time trying to perfect what we do in competition is so we will have formulas (The Bread Bakers Guild) can share with bakers around the country that will be flavorful and work for everyone." It shows that Americans are world class bakers and heightens the visibility of artisan baking in America. To you and me that means more great bread to eat everywhere we go.