Making bread with Chuck McGinty

I arrive at Chuck and Laura McGinty's home in Cape Girardeau with a notebook and pen, clothes slightly damp. It's raining outside. I am here because I've heard Chuck makes bread, and I want to learn, too. There is something about bread that resonates with me: it provides for basic, as well as deeper, needs. While I'm here, I find out Chuck doesn't sell any of his bread, only gives it away.

Bread is my favorite food: it's elemental. It's substantial. It's spiritual. It's a common denominator across all cultures and times: everyone has some form of bread.

Chuck shares this sentiment. As an artist, he is attracted to the finished product, the look of the browned parchment paper that doesn't burn in the oven, cradling the loaf in the pan. The fresh-baked smell. The texture of the ridges in the top of the loaf, which he carves into the dough with a lame. It is the reward of this finished product that leads him through the process.

"I love bread," Chuck says. "My Aunt Lena used to make yeast rolls, and that was my first love of bread. And that was years ago."

Chuck has been making bread for two years. He was initially inspired by local bread baker Bob Towner, whose sourdough bread he and Laura purchased regularly at the Saturday Cape Riverfront Market. When the breadmaking class Chuck signed up for was canceled, he decided to take matters into his own hands. He bought "Flour Water Salt Yeast: The Fundamentals of Artisan Bread and Pizza" by Ken Forkish and began to teach himself, asking Bob for help when he would "get a glitch in the system." Additionally, Cape Restaurant Supply gave him much of his breadmaking equipment.

"So I thought maybe I was destined to make some bread," Chuck says of those gifts he received. "I made a couple of loaves, and I mean from the very beginning, they were beautiful. They were just gorgeous. And I'm an artist, so I had just a real attraction to the finished product. I didn't even care if I ate it, I just wanted to look at it."

Now, he makes bread three times a week.

He credits the way his bread turns out to happy coincidences and a higher power.

"They say that every kitchen has yeast in the atmosphere and every kitchen's bread is a little different. So our house must be blessed," Chuck says. "I didn't do anything at all, and people are just dying to have some of this bread."

Cooking with people has a way of fostering conversation. Baking bread is no different. While mixing, Chuck tells about the prerequisite haircut he wouldn't get during college that kept him from majoring in music, his men's small group starting a series on gaining freedom from destructive pain, the yoga he does at Yoga East Healing Arts Studio on Broadway to improve his balance.

Laura joins us in the kitchen after she hears him tell the story of how they met, fell in love and got married. She loves to cook, and Chuck says she is the chef, and it is her kitchen; he just borrows it. He wears a red-and-white-striped apron she brought him back from a cooking trip to Italy. She speaks of their marriage at its different stages, saying Christ at the center is what makes it work. He calls her his inspiration, and means it.

We are nearing the end of combining the ingredients, getting ready to pinch the dough before it rises.

"It looks like it's going to be too dry when you're looking at it, but all of a sudden, it's perfect," Chuck says, mixing with his gloved hand. "You think, 'Oh, I've screwed it up, I didn't put enough water in there.' So your inclination is to add more water. But if you just stick with it, it makes it perfect."

"That's why I love bread," I say, watching from across the counter. "There's so many good metaphors for life with the process of making it."

"Well tell me some, 'cause I don't know any," Chuck says with frank sincerity.

"Like what you just said. Sometimes life looks too dry, but if you just stick with it, you'll realize all of a sudden you're doing exactly what you're supposed to be doing."

"Well there you go, don't quit. Just follow the directions sometimes."

He finishes mixing, and it's time to let the dough sit. It will rise for five hours and then proof overnight in the refrigerator. The next day, Chuck will bake it for approximately 50 minutes before it is ready to eat. It's a slow, meditative process of waiting and planning Chuck feels chosen for, in order to be able to bless others with the finished product. The process, too, has blessed me: it's been a peaceful afternoon baking and talking with Laura and Chuck, unhurried, pleasant, warm, like the bread we've made.

It's stopped raining outside. Chuck sends me home with a loaf of bread.

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Chuck McGinty mixes ingreadients to make bread dough in his kitchen at he and his wife Laura’s home in Cape Girardeau.

Chuck's Bread Baking Pro Tips

"Don't do it," Chuck jokes. But, if you must:

Have plenty of time to plan; build the waiting time into your bread-baking time frame.

Use unbleached, unenriched natural King Arthur flour, found at Schnucks.

The bread is ready to be taken out of the oven if it sounds hollow when the bottom of the loaf is thunked.

The biggest enemy of bread is air. Store the bread in a linen bag to keep the crust from getting soggy, and then store this bag in an airtight container. Consume the bread within two to three days of baking it for optimum freshness.

Eat the bread lightly toasted, with Amish butter.

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Chuck's Artisan Bread Recipe

1. Artisan Mix: Once a day for four days, mix 500 grams whole wheat flour with 500 grams purified 90° F water. Each day, discard 75 percent of the batch before adding more ingredients.

2. On the fifth day, using only 150 grams of the batch, add 100 grams of whole wheat flour, 400 grams of unbleached, unenriched white flour and 400 grams of purified 85° F water. Let sit covered for 8 hours.

3. That evening, use a large tub with a lid to mix 925 grams white flour with 75 grams whole wheat flour. Add 775 grams of 95° purified water, and mix by hand. Let sit covered for 1 hour.

4. Add 25 grams of sea salt, 10 grams of diastatic malt powder, 10 grams of dry yeast and 450 grams of the previously grown "artisan" mix. Mix by hand. This combination will require folding four times during the next hour and a half. After folding, let it grow for 5 hours or until tripled in volume.

5. Divide in half on a floured surface and let each half proof overnight in refrigerator.

6. Preheat oven to 475°. Bake in clay or cast iron, covered, for 30 minutes. Then, bake uncovered for 15 to 20 minutes. Let cool completely before slicing.

Note: Chuck considers the bread ready to remove from the oven when the internal temperature reaches 205°.