Early YearsĬalvel was born in 1913 in the Tarn region in south-west France. He pointed out that for slow-fermenting breads (such as sourdoughs), what was important was not the quantity of gluten in a flour, but rather the quality, so that it could stand up to the long, slow rising times. He advised that for the best yeast performance, the amount of salt used in a bread recipe should be 1.8 percent of the weight of the flour. He took a modern approach to preserve and improve an ancient art. (One of the tips that he taught her, she said, was that within a few minutes of starting to cool, a soft crackling noise should come from the bread.) Ĭalvel was a chemist by training. She said Calvel taught her to pay attention to the noises that bread loaves make as soon as they start to cool out of the oven, as an indication of the quality of the bread. She packed up American ingredients and flew over to France with them, for her and Calvel to experiment with. Julia tracked him down and asked him to help her figure out how to make French breads with American ingredients. Her husband Paul had been trying to make French bread to help Julia, but then gave up and pointed Julia at Calvel, whom he’d run across references to. Julia Child referred to Calvel as her first breadmaking teacher. Raymond Calvel (1913 to 2005) was one of the 20th century French leading authorities on bread.
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