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The End of the Blog

by Les Saidel - January 2015 I find it difficult to meet my book writing commitments, my Jerusalem Post column and in addition to that also write blog articles for our website. That doesn't mean I am stopping to write articles. For more more of my articles after December 2014 visit the J ...

What is the philosophy and str ...

by Les Saidel - December, 2014 A question commonly asked of us is - "If you are a healthy bakery, how can you use white wheat flour?" or "How can you use white sugar?" or "How can you use margarine?" "Don't you know these things are bad for you?" It is a question of philosophy and strategy. ...

Dough's Life Lessons

by Les Saidel - November, 2014 I often get mixed reactions from people when I tell them I'm a baker. Some respond with "Wow, that's so coooool!" while others tend to regard me as a lower life form, like a security guard in a mall "Sheesh, how boring can that be!" When I indulge in self reflecti ...

Drafts and Draughts

by Les Saidel - October, 2014 As autumn approaches and the sweltering heat of the summer gives way to cooler, breezier weather I would like to take this opportunity of discussing the subjects of drafts (cold winds) and draughts (liquid beverages). To make the topic a little more interesting, I ...

Circles and Raisins

by Les Saidel - September, 2014 (From an article to the Jerusalem Post, 18 Sep 20124. Reprinted with permission) With the exception of farmers perhaps, few professionals closely adhere to the cycle of the Jewish year as do bakers. A Jewish baker's year is concentrically cyclic in nature. ...

Salt Free Bread

by Les Saidel - August, 2014 For a growing number of people it is becoming necessary to adopt a low-salt or salt-free diet. Common table-salt, or by its chemical name sodium chloride, is ubiquitous in food and has been since the dawn of time. It is the universal spice, without which foods ta ...

Patriotism, Seeds and Health

by Les Saidel - July, 2014 I have recently had the great fortune to participate in and share with you an exciting, new initiative by biodiversity farmer and heirloom grain expert Elisheva Rogosa. Before I delve deeper into the details of this initiative, I would like to provide a short backgro ...

The Health Conspiracy

by Les Saidel - June, 2014 The Internet is a truly remarkable thing. Over 700 years ago the first Guttenberg printing press revolutionized global communication and education. The next major breakthrough since then has been the emergence of the Internet. The "world wide web" provides an immediate, ...

Difficult Customers (Part 1)

by Les Saidel - April, 2014 Nutrition is a tremendously important subject. Your knowledge and application of nutrition (or lack thereof) could very well determine your physical health and well-being your entire life. You would think that such a critical subject would feature prominently in the ed ...

Difficult Customers (Part 2)

by Les Saidel - May, 2014 In this, the second part of my article, I am going to show you how to use a simple, ubiquitous food item - bread, to substantially improve the health of yourself and your family. The reason I have chosen bread as the medium for this purpose is twofold. Bread is the ...

GMO's - Plague or Promise?

by Les Saidel - March, 2014 Almost everyone has heard by now of the term GMO or genetic engineering. Most people unfortunately have only a vague understanding of what this is and how it affects their lives. They know it involves somehow playing around with the genetic material of living organisms ...

Men and Women of Fiber

by Les Saidel - February, 2014 Everyone hears the "buzz phrase" that fiber is healthy and good for your diet. We all naturally rush out to stock up on bran flakes, oatmeal porridge and the like, without fully understanding what it is about fiber that is healthy, how it works and how best to make ...

by Les Saidel - January, 2014 My uncle always used to say "Bread doesn't grow on trees." He was referring to the monetary kind, but it is common knowledge that the edible kind doesn't either. This was not always so. At the dawn of time, in the Garden of Eden, bread actually did grow on a tree, ...

by Les Saidel - December, 2013 Baking in different seasons presents challenges to the baker. Climate probably affects other craftsmen, such a carpenters (wood is sensitive to humidity levels and temperature), but I believe that no other craftsman is more at the mercy of the elements than the bake ...

Channukah Alternatives

by Les Saidel - November, 2013 With the Festival of Lights fast approaching and the daunting prospect of "those-same-old" sufganiyot and latkes looming, I thought it might be a good opportunity to explore some less known traditional Channukah foods and cuisine from around the world to add to your ...

Such Sweet Sorrow

by Les Saidel - October, 2013 "A spoonful of sugar makes the medicine go down", merrily sung by Mary Poppins, seems to echo what is almost a genetically inbred desire for sweets in humans. What the song doesn't tell you however, is that too many spoonfuls of the wrong kind of sugar are going to r ...

Prevent Bread from Staling

by Les Saidel - September, 2013 According to legend, prior to the battle of Borodino in 1812 between Napoleon Bonaparte and Russian General Kutuzov, the general's wife prepared a tribute to send with her husband into battle, a loaf of bread made with the local spice coriander. This bread (now kno ...

Are All Bakeries Equal?

by Les Saidel - August, 2013 When you walk into a bakery, any bakery, you expect to find freshly baked bread and pastry. That is part of the experience, the sight of freshly baked bread, the wonderful aroma and even the feel, as a fresh loaf springs back under your fingers when gently squeezed. T ...

Teach Your Children Well

by Les Saidel - July, 2013 In our bakery, like any bakery I guess, there are certain highlights in the cycle of the year. One of my favorites is definitely the week of Pesach (Passover) when my family and I close up shop and take a well deserved week's vacation. The runner up to that would hav ...

A Brick Oven in Every Home

by Les Saidel - June, 2013 Saidels Bakery is unique in that it caters both to those who do not bake themselves and also to those who do. We therefore provide a wide variety of ready baked products but also a wide range of organic flours and a consultancy service for anyone wanting to learn to bak ...

Between Artisan and Factory Br ...

by Les Saidel - May, 2013 To most people bread is bread. They are not aware of the nuances that differentiate one type of bread from another. When encountering an artisan bread of the kind our bakery supplies, their natural inclination is to compare it with "other health breads" on the market, li ...

Meditative Baking

by Les Saidel - April, 2013 Baking means different things to different people. To some it conjures up a mental picture of a quaint grandmother humming to herself in a morning-sun filled cottage kitchen as she calmly puts the finishing touches to a pecan pie. To others it is reminiscent of hard ph ...

Spiritual Bread

by Les Saidel - March, 2013 As we approach the festival of Pesach (Passover), we are faced with the prospect of having to eat only one kind of bread for an entire week - Matzo. The reason Jews eat Matzo on Pesach is well known and intertwined with the story of the Exodus from Egypt as describe ...

The Elusive South African Hama ...

by Les Saidel - February, 2013 One of the most vivid olfactory memories of my youth was the day before Purim each year. We would wake up, my 2 brothers and I, to the unforgettable aroma of fermenting Hamantaschen dough. When my Bobba Lily z"l was still alive, it was her job to make Hamantaschen, ...

The Great E-Hoax

by Les Saidel - January, 2013 Perhaps one of the greatest hoaxes of modern times is that perpetrated by the mass produced food industry using the E- encoding system to list their ingredients. The E encoding system began in Europe (the E stands for Europe) in the 1960's and has developed over t ...

Channukah Damage Control

by Les Saidel - December, 2012 With the Festival of Lights fast approaching, bakeries (and home bakers) are getting into gear for the week of "oil's well that ends well". To commemorate the miracle of the jar of one-day oil that ended up burning for eight whole days in the ancient Temple, it i ...

Are Oats Gluten Free?

by Les Saidel - November, 2012 Of the five grains (wheat, rye, spelt, barley, rye and oats) wheat has the highest gluten content. Gluten is a complex protein made up of two other proteins called gliadin and glutenin. In modern, genetically engineered wheat, the gliadin and (hence the gluten co ...

Am I Allergic to Yeast?

by Les Saidel - October, 2012 Yeast is a single cell organism (think of an amoeba) belonging to the family of fungi. The yeast family contains thousands of different species, each with a slightly different structure and behaviour but with the same basic functioning. Yeast cells are microscopic ...

The Low Down on Fad Diets

by Les Saidel - September, 2012 Running a bakery that places health at the top of the list makes you prone to endless enquiries regarding media reports, medical research etc. that supposedly "prove" that certain things are "healthy", "unhealthy" etc. For example I recently received an email with ...

Spelt or Wheat?

by Les Saidel - August, 2012 Recently there has been a lot of buzz about products made with spelt flour rather than wheat flour, claiming that spelt is healthier and branding wheat flour the new "bad guy". The purpose of this article is to clarify the facts behind the hype and give you the reader ...

One of the Greatest Secrets of ...

by Les Saidel - July, 2012 What I am about to present to you is nothing new. You probably know it by another name, as it has many names and myriad applications. Consider the following picture - What you see above may look like an eye, but it is in fact a spherical ball placed in a semicir ...

Why Bother Being Healthy?

by Les Saidel - June, 2012 I am reminded of the old wives tale you hear being bandied about so often, inevitably about some great uncle or distant relative, who lived to the ripe old age of a hundred and ten and who spent his life drinking, smoking heavily and indulging his every desire. The inex ...

Stone Cold Life

by Les Saidel - May, 2012 I will start this month's article with a story. It was 1978, I had recently turned 13 and it was a big day for me, for I would finally be getting my first wheat grinder. I had done a lot of shopping around and the Messerschmidt (nothing to do with the WWII airplane ma ...

Professional Pesach Baking Tip ...

by Les Saidel - April, 2012 With the festival of Pesach (Passover) almost on our doorstep and cleaning going full throttle, you may not think this is an opportune moment to consider reading an article on baking tips for Pesach, being up to your eyelids in cleaning fluid. However, for those of ...

The Science and Art of Cake Ba ...

by Les Saidel - March, 2012 Queen Marie Antoinette is accredited with the statement "If they don't have bread, let them eat cake!" Marie, born in Austria, was no foreigner to baked delicacies, at a time when Vienna was the epicenter of the baking arts, centuries before that mantle passed to the F ...

Gearing up for your Purim bake

by Les Saidel - February, 2012 The Jewish festival of Purim is almost upon us. It is a time to be merry and to celebrate salvation from the evil decree of Haman to exterminate world Jewry (in ancient Persia around 465 BCE). It is also time to be gearing up for your Purim bake with some new and in ...

Flat Breads From Around The Wo ...

by Les Saidel - January, 2012 Ancient mariners used to think the world was flat, that if you sailed far enough you would fall off the edge. To ancient bakers, bread was also flat. Since the discovery of fire, the oldest type of bread known to man was made from a flour/water mush, rolled flat a ...

A Perfect Score

by Les Saidel - December, 2011 As little as 300 years ago in Europe, bread baking was a communal activity. Only the very wealthy could afford to construct their own private brick ovens in spacious estate kitchens. The simple folk, being mostly poor, could not afford such luxuries. As a result, la ...

The Anatomy of a Bake

by Les Saidel - November, 2011 Despite the numerous tasks that a baker must perform - mixing ingredients, kneading dough, shaping into loaves, leaving the bread to rise and finally baking it in the oven, these other preparatory tasks have not come to signify the essence of a baker. The very fa ...

Jewish Bread - Legends, Facts ...

by Les Saidel - October, 2011 Bread is highly ingrained in Jewish culture and a prominent feature both at everyday meals and on religious occasions. Bread is mentioned numerous times in scripture and in the writings of the sages, being recognized both as a staple of the diet but also elevated to ...

Light Bread, Inflation and "Ye ...

by Les Saidel - September, 2011 Since the beginning of Saidels Bakery we have been inundated with requests to make something called "light bread" (I am talking about light in texture, not light in color). These requests usually emanate from people who are on some form of diet and are watching the ...

Getting Control of your Fats

by Les Saidel - August, 2011 When the experts talk about fat, they tend to use terms like HDL, saturated, partially hydrogenized, trans, LDL, polyunsaturated, fatty acid - it's enough to make your head spin. In this article I am going to try make some sense of this "quagmire" of terminology an ...

The low down on Sprouted Wheat

by Les Saidel - July, 2011 Sprouted wheat and sprouted wheat bread is the latest rage amongst the health conscious, but what exactly is sprouted wheat? and is it really healthier than regular dry wheat? So firstly, what is sprouted wheat? These are simply the wheat kernels, seeds, berries, or ...

Challah Braiding Techniques

by Les Saidel - June, 2011 Perhaps nothing intimidates beginner bakers more than braiding. The convoluted instructions of "folding braid 5 over 3 and under 2 ....." seem to bounce off the brain without penetrating. The truth is that braiding is an advanced baking technique and one that will re ...

Obtaining a Perfect Bread Crus ...

by Les Saidel - May, 2011 One of the most important hallmarks of a great bread is its crust. Different breads have different types of crust. For example a French baguette is typified by a crackly, crispy crust. A regular sandwich loaf will typically have a very soft crust and there are many ot ...

The "Correct" way to Knead Dou ...

by Les Saidel - April, 2011 What is the correct way to knead dough? That is a tough one. The diplomatic answer would be "There is no one correct way to knead dough, but many". That is essentially the truth. Many people knead dough in different ways and they are probably mostly correct. I th ...

Where I learnt to bake

by Les Saidel - March, 2011 Many people have asked me how I got into baking and where I learnt the art. That is the subject of this short article. My earliest memories are olfactory related, which is not surprising as I grew up in the home of a master baker and caterer (my mother Savta Phyllis ...

Saidels Sourdough Collection

by Les Saidel - February, 2011 In a previous article I have explained the difference between natural sourdough yeast and commercial yeast. In a nutshell to bring you up to speed, natural sourdough yeasts abound in nature all around us, in the air, on our skin, on fruits etc. There are many dif ...

The Evils of Gluten?

by Les Saidel - January, 2011 Gluten has been getting a bad rap in the media and medical journals in recent years, being blamed for everything from mild inflammations to serious illness, the bottom line being - gluten is bad for you. Now that statement - gluten is bad for you - is not altogeth ...

Prod your Challah

by Les Saidel - December, 2010 For all those who bake their own challahs at home, how do you know when the challahs have risen enough and are ready to go into the oven to bake? Using rising times given in recipes or books are often misleading because factors like yeast quality, weather, temper ...

The Benefits of Whole Wheat Br ...

by Les Saidel - November, 2010 Almost everyone knows that whole wheat bread is "healthier" than white bread, but very few really know why. It has become one of those universally accepted truths passed from one person to another, requiring no further investigation. This is a shame, because it is N ...

The Magic of Sourdough Bread

by Les Saidel - October, 2010 We all know that yeast is a vital ingredient in bread and it is yeast that makes the bread rise. What most people don't know is that there are different strains of yeast. I'm not referring to the different brand names (such as Shimrit), but to the biological strai ...

Baking with Whole Grains

by Les Saidel - September, 2010 For all you intrepid home bakers out there who have tried to duplicate your success in baking with white flour, to baking with alternative flours such as whole wheat, rye or spelt and have met with abject failure or the results have been less than stellar, read on. ...

The Romance of Brick Ovens

by Les Saidel - August, 2010 The atmosphere of an old fashioned, traditional bakery - like Saidels Bakery - has an unmistakeable romance. To watch the flames kiss the bricks of a masonry oven seems to trigger a subconcious memory of a time when life was simpler and more serene. The brick or "h ...

How to get a Raise in your Dou ...

by Les Saidel - July, 2011 How does bread rise? This could be a one word article - yeast! Unfortunately, despite yeast's primary role in the rising effect of the bread, it is, by far, not the only factor involved. So, sit back and read on. In this article I am going to explain all the componen ...

by Les Saidel - June, 2010 What is Rambam BreadTM? The Rambam (Maimonides), famed scholar, philosopher and physician, is the inspiration for our flagship bread line. The Rambam served as court physician to Saladin and his treatises on medicine and healthy living predate his era by many c ...

The Autolyse Process - why it ...

by Les Saidel - May, 2010 According to manuscripts originating in medieval France (1290), bakers in the royal court of Louis I used a technique of separately mixing the flour and water portions of their bread dough and leaving the mixture to soak overnight. The following day, they would mix in th ...

What is Artisan Bread?

by Les Saidel - April, 2010 The dictionary defines an artisan as someone who is skilled in an applied art, a craftsman. When you think of an artisan, it conjures up the image of a whiskered Geppetto slaving away at his bench carving wood, or the shoe maker of legend who breathed life into every s ...