Richard Hart started his career as a chef, working through the ranks of fine-dining kitchens in London. He moved to California to work with chef Jeremy Fox at Ubuntu and then fell deeply in love with sourdough bread in San Francisco, learning his craft at Della Fattoria and later Tartine, where he was head baker for seven years before starting his own bakery in Denmark, partnering with Noma to found Hart Bageri in Copenhagen. His next project is Green Rhino, a bakery in Mexico City, the place he now calls home.
René Redzepi calls him “the bread whisperer”, Yotam Ottolenghi says he “restores the heart to bread baking”, while Nancy Silverton describes him as “undoubtedly one of the world’s greatest bakers”. Marcus, the pastry chef in The Bear, had a picture of Hart taped over his workstation for inspiration, and actor Lionel Boyce worked at Hart Bageri to prepare for the role.
He has dedicated his life to the pursuit of the perfect loaf. That perfectly perfect loaf might only happen a couple of times a year, he says, but the not-quite perfect loaves are still pretty great, and the understanding he has gained along the way is what he seeks to share in his new book, Richard Hart Bread, an intuitive guide to sourdough baking.
Hart will be baking in person at Melbourne Food & Wine Festival in March, bringing a Hart/Green Rhino pop-up to Melbourne Quarter for the week, but if you’d like to get to know him a little better in the meantime, here’s (some of) what he has to say on bread, the book and the baking life.
I wrote Richard Hart Bread because I wanted to share all my knowledge, everything I had to date. I think a lot of bread books hold back some important details. I don’t know if they’re scared or something, but anyone who knows me knows I can’t keep secrets. I’d really like to see people take all that I have, make amazing bread, and hopefully take it even further, teach me something.
I also wanted to write something with a bit of personality. A lot of bread books bore me. They certainly out-geek me. I wanted my book to be easy to understand, practical, useful and entertaining, to keep you, the reader, interested.
I spent many evenings with my wife, Henrietta, in our Copenhagen apartment working through the stories to get them right, to make it sound like me, but without all the swearing and cockney grammar. And my co-author, Laurie Woolever, unscrambled my crazy brain to get the recipes and methodology in order.
The subtitle is “intuitive sourdough baking”. Wouldn’t it be nice to ditch the scales and chuck a loaf of bread together? Just turning the oven as hot as it goes. Intuitive sourdough baking is how I bake. I do use a scale, but I want you to realize that it’s not just about accurate weights and temperatures but more about understanding your conditions and ingredients and how to manipulate them in your surroundings to make beautiful bread.
The main thing I learned writing it was the realisation that my methods and recipes are always evolving. When I handed in the manuscript, I had already learnt a tonne of news things. I’m always learning. I now dehydrate my active starter in lots of flour, for example, when I’m travelling or want a break in my home baking.
If you take one thing from this book, it should be that sourdough is a simple thing. It’s not crazy precious, you don’t have to keep it going for years and years. It’s simply fermented flour and water and not a family heirloom. You don’t have to get it from a famous bakery – you can make it yourself. If you don’t have time or something goes wrong, you can simply chuck it out and start again.
But when you’re in the bread zone it’s easy to take care of a starter and make wonderful bread.
Also: there are many types of bread and levels of complexity in the book for you to make, depending on what you’re looking for or your time frame. From simple yeast bread to panettone, it’s all good.
If you’re a relatively new cook, give the rye bread chapter a try. Honestly, these breads are so easy to make, they require minimal technique and, man, they are so delicious, healthy and wonderful with tonnes of butter.
But I’d also love it if you tried my English Bloomer. This is one of the breads I’m most excited about in the book. It’s a white bread that is absolutely delicious and not shitty. Usually, these breads are very quickly fermented, using cheap ingredients and additives, and are not usually that good for us, especially digestion wise. I changed the technique so the main bulk of the dough is fermented the day before, creating a much better flavour and making it much better for us to digest. I use great flour and no weird shit. It tastes fantastic and brings me back to my childhood
People worry about a lot of things when they’re baking. One thing I think you could relax about is making mistakes. That’s where you learn, if your bread comes out flat, or a bit dense, or just not how you envisioned it, that’s okay. It probably tastes pretty good.
There are so many factors at play with a living sourdough, it’s easy for it to go wrong, even for me. But I think I’ve given you enough knowledge in my book to correct mistakes. I urge you to really read it and take it in.
Like everything, baking requires practice. You can’t expect to be a great baker without work. I wish that were the case because I’d love to speak a dozen languages and play multiple instruments but, alas, I haven’t had time to do any of these things yet.
On the other hand, one detail that often gets overlooked that will make a difference to the quality of your bake is the temperature during fermentation. Wild yeast in the sourdough need to be kept warm. Without the correct temperature your dough could easily take eight hours to proof instead of the recommended four. If the dough doesn’t sit at the correct temperature for the duration of the bulk fermentation you’ll end up with a wet, soupy mess. The gasses from a correct fermentation in the dough help the wet dough stiffen up and hold its shape
If you’re looking to extend yourself a bit more, meanwhile, take a deep dive into the world of panettone. It’s described as the Mount Everest of breads and for good reason. Years ago, while trying to teach myself this bread I failed and failed hundreds of times. The reason this bread gets a whole chapter is it’s a really tough dough to master. That said, I’ve done all the failing for you. What you have here is a recipe that explains everything you need to succeed in the king of breads. I’ve seen some examples of people making my recipe on Instagram and I’m blown away. They are so beautiful.
I’m coming to Melbourne for the festival in March, and I’m looking forward to being in Australia with all you wonderful people. I’m coming to Melbourne to do a pop-up bakery. I’m so excited to share my baking with you from the past in San Francisco and Copenhagen and into the present in Mexico City. We’re going to feature Hart Bageri and Green Rhino breads and pastries and we’re going to be there for a whole week. Also, I’m just so excited to meet everyone and talk shop with everyone and anyone.
When you’ve finished reading Richard Hart Bread I hope you’ll be even more deeply in love with bread and baking. This is a love story I’ve been on for a while now and it would be amazing if everyone who read my book got as much fucking joy out of baking as I do. I can’t wait to get up every day and make bread.
Catch Richard Hart at MFWF at Melbourne Quarter in March; Richard Hart Bread (Hardie Grant, $55) is available from good booksellers and online now; follow his adventures at @richardhartbaker, @hartbageri and @greenrhino_mx.
