Real bread in Tel Aviv

A customer with baby waiting for her bread Lachmanina bakery, Tel Aviv (Israel)
Haven't you dreamed one day to quit a boring, if financially rewarding, career and embark on a real job, I mean a job where what you make with your hands is something real and healthy...This is a story about a new life found in making simple, real bread, and what a bread !
I heard about this story from Zeev who buys his bread from an unlikely location in town, a cramped appartment transformed into a state-of-the-Art bakery, on a quiet leafy street of a residential neighborood with no other shop in view. Neighbors as well as demanding Tel-Aviv restaurateurs and well-informed bread amateurs almost line up to get their hand on the precious loaves, and this all seemed to me a good story proving that real bread, like real wine, is an issue worldwide . Nina began to make artisanal bread in her appartment like many of us do here and there; it was first a routine which lasted several years until it got more serious and professional. In her former life, Nina (who was he then - this is an other extraodinary story inside this already-extraordinary bread story), had worked in many different fields from the artistic scene to the semi-conductor high-tech industry. One day her day job came to an end because the company closed down and she found herself with plenty of time to work on her bread project. The Lachmanina bakery was born.

Nina loading the breads The cramped bakery consists mainly of two rooms, the first one where the loafs are ready for sale and where you make your purchase, considering that the breads displayed on the rolling carts are available, as much of the production is already reserved for such or such restaurant or some regular buyer. There's already the great aromas of freshly baked bread here, with a few slices ready if you want to taste. In the second room, there's the oven, not that large but it should be doubled soon, and there's just enough extra room to work on the dough. This picture above was shot at the door of this second room, you can guess the glass door of the oven behind the cart, and Nina is checking the breads that are soon to be baked. Room is scarce there as you can see. A few loafs of bread When we arrive, we're first greeted by Dganit, Nina's wife, who makes us taste a few breads. Imagine you're eating bread like you would eat a cake : there's no need for anything else to come with it, and the freshness of the thing makes it even more delicious. Among them there was a bread made from spelt, 85 % of it, the starter having been rye (15 %). Very surprising bread which we know was widely consumed between the Bronze age and the Middle Age. In France, it is known as épeautre and was also called the Gallic wheat (blé Gaulois). According to the French Wikipedia page, this variety has some similarities with vines as it grows well on poor soils on hills between 300 meters & 1000 meters high [...] the plant is robust, can resist to cold temperatures, diseases and pests, and doesn't need chemical fertilizers or treatments... It really tastes great, and you don't eat just bread here, it's like if you chew History and ancient religiosity, it seems to me.
But they make a whole lot of breads here (see the bread types), from many different types, the one thing in common being that they're additives free and made with surdough as opposed with the commercial bakeries where yeasts are used. On weekend, Dginat says, they also make brioche and beetroot bread. I think that you can see the brioches on this TimeOut Tel-Aviv article about Nina's bakery. Restaurant breads These square breads designed for restaurants are just as natural as the other breads, and the restaurants who purchase them have chosen to serve the best possible bread on their table. The shape of the bread is thought with slices in mind. Nina can design a bread recipe so that the quality and type (texture, taste) is unique, and some restaurateurs think rightly that the bread is central to have a casual customer become a regular customer. Nina in the family garden As an introduction I presented myself, saying to Nina that while I was reporting mostly on wines, I saw now and then interesting things to say on bread, especially that I could see how winemaking and breadmaking were here and there going through a revival, with many people scattered over the planet going back to the truth of the product and doing the thing naturally without tricks or additives. I didn't tell her that for me the trigger was seeing Pierre Overnoy with his surdough and his breads (and the taste), but she understood my interest. We all went to the family garden next to the bakery and to the living quarters and sat down under the shade to listen to her story.
My first question was how did she discover this passion for bread : Nina has a sister who had been living in France for many years, today she's a blacksmith and lives part time in France and part time in Israel. Whatever, she was living in a village in the Gard region (the south of France) and she had got this recipe for bread with surdough that she used for home needs there. She taught Nina the thing when she came to Israel and she started to do a couple of loaves a week, in the kitchen. This lasted for years, without a particular project im mind other than making one's own bread casually. The bakery's employee ovelooking the dough She had gone through different careers in various fields and at one point she was employed in a high-tech start up in the semi conductor sector when this bread hobby began to take some impetus. She made some research on the Internet about the bacteria, the needed acidity, the temperature and other parameters in the bread making. In parallel, she began to make trials with different recipes and try things, becoming really involved and working sometimes all night on this. Then, the small company for which she had been working closed down, letting her suddenly with lots of time to deepen her expertise. She understood that she wouldn't wish to sit down in front of a computer for a living anymore, she liked working with her hands. holding the unformed dough She began make more breads, still in her normal kitchen oven, and delivered them with her bicycle in the neighborhood to friends, family, acquaintances. At that time she would have 2 or 3 different types of bread, she just used recipes that she had found on the Internet, she says now that she didn't know a lot, really, compared to now. Her understanding of the surdough in particular, was still very poor. But she started playing with variant recipes, she says, and some breads came out beautifully, and soon she was working full time on bread making and satisfying the customers. She was working round the clock on times and going crazy with the multiple tasks and progress possibilities. Then she hired someone to help (not this woman on the picture, there has been many different people since) and now for 3 years they have been growing in volume month after month. They now also work for restaurants and coffee shops. The food media has awakened to this new phenomenon and the famous Israeli food critic Gil Hovav says her bread id the best of Tel Aviv. Nina says that the bread culture is in its infancy in Israel and people are eager to learn. On its way What she makes here is very different from what you find in other bakeries because she takes more time : the process of the dough is about 36 hours, the rest of the dough and the subsequent threading. Speaking of the temperature, she says something interesting for me as an apprentioce breadmaker : she found out that in order to have the dough go up slowly (which is good for a good bread), she manages to have it stay at a cool temperature. I thought myself that the dough had to rest at a lightly warm temperature like in the low 20s' C. Then it's really close to what I hear in the winemaking parameters, like when in the Beaujolais carbonic maceration they keep the grapes in the cold a night before putting them in the fermentation vat. She indeed puts the dow some time in a fridge to extend the rest time : what would take 2 hours at room temperature takes 12 hours in the fridge, and at the end this is considerably better. What happens, she says, is that the high temperature damages the gluten structure, so she works with very cold water (filtered tap water), takes the dough straight from the mixer to the fridge where it will stay a very long time. In the middle of the night she'll take it out briefly for another folding stage. Lengthening the rest time beyond 36 hours wouldn't do good, as she says that beyond a certain point, the structure peakes and begins to deteriorate. She didn't set this 36 hours time by reading a recipe, that was the fruit of her empirical trials, and also in general she likes to take her time to do things. Hands in the dough Her bread is made with just flour and surdough, which is not always easy because the quality of the flour varies all the time, she adapts with playing around and modifying this or that. The only correction she makes occasionally is add gluten if the flour is weak. She adds also some active malt when it is in the middle of its germination, because there are lots of natural amylase enzymes taking apart the starch and simple sugars. When added to the dough (in very little amounts otherwise it goes out of control) at this stage, it helps a lot because it provides it with more available sugars. The fact that this is taking place under a cool temperature helps a lot too. Nina says that the levain has both wild yeasts and lacto-bacteria, and it has a low ph, it is a culture which keeps itself clean, meaning that it is very hard to get spoiled because it is so acidic. His own culture is almost 3 years old now and it keeps as good as ever. But he spilt this levain base into 3 different ones by using different flours when renewing it : white & rye, whole wheat & rye and 100 % rye. She recognizes that she lokes rye very much, it has lots of flavors, good taste, very healthy and lasts very long. Speaking of the number of bread styles, she makes now 8 or 9 different types. Asked if her recipes are secret or not, she seems to imply not really, she is ready to share her tips with someone who has a real passion for bread like her. Even using, say, a recipe that she wouyld give, the bread would come out different anyway because the nature of breadmaking is makes it a very fragile alchemy. What Nina tells me here is strikingly interesting, she says that she knows that some of her recipes are under trials by some people in the country including by industrial bakeries and from what she heard the results yield completely-different breads, so that's not so easy to replicate real bread with an industrial plant. Of course I'm thinking to the natural wine issue where some big-industry interests and enology labs have been trying to find shortcuts to make wines with the feel of natural wine but I'm confident life can't really be imitated so easily. See on the issue this Alice Feiring post and this other article.
Nina sees these imitation tries as a compliment but doesn't really feel threatened by them.
In a couple of months the bakery will move from its present cramped two-room appartment to a larger place 200 hundreds meters from here. They like the neighborhood with all this mix of individual houses and appartment buildings with trees and small gardens. The new place will give Nina and Gdanit some relief and growth possibility, even though they don't want to reach the size of an industry, even a small one.

Dganit with a customer The other facet of Nina's story is her trans-gender adventure, which happened as he/she was married and had a young daughter. This is an open matter for Nina and Dganit whose love remains as strong as before. Dganit even runs a blog in Hebrew titled My husband who became my wife who became a baker. Here is the introduction of her blog (special thanks to Diana for the translation) :
Dganina Halevy’s blog
Some seven years ago, my husband - the father of our daughter (then aged four), came out of the shower one morning, having finally realized he’s a woman. It took her 24 hours to tell me, and ask me to stay together, because she loves me, she’s attracted to me, and knew better than ever why she’d had chosen me to marry her. I also knew why – she was attractive, smart, verbal, with a great sense of humour, and we’re from the same place - Kfar Shmaryahu. Unlike her, I wasn’t really surprised by the discovery, there’s been hints all along the way. And I loved. A year and a half earlier, the high-tech company where she was working closed down, and she decided to start baking bread, to avoid ever sitting in front of a computer again. Surprisingly, the bread was delicious. Food critic Gil Hovav, for instance, said our bread is the best in the country, and Time Out crowned us Tel Aviv’s best bakery. So, instead of having the most embarrassing father, our daughter got a dad with the coolest bakery in town, and I got a wife who drives me crazy just as much as ever, when she was still he, but is just as charming and attractive - maybe even more. She is now called Nina. I was always Dganit. Our bakery’s name is Lachmanina and together we are Dganina.

Lachmanina bakery 30 Bitzaron Street - Tel Aviv, Israel lachmanina [at] gmail [dot] com Lachmanina Facebook Lachmanina bakery website

Nina in a food & wine TV show As Nina's fame begins to grow, she was invited on Zahi Buakssatar' culinary show to make a few demonstration of her bread making prowesses. This took place at about the time I visited the bakery but I found out the video only later. Like most of you, I don't understand the language which sounds like Hebrew to me ;-) but you can watch her making bread, and wine is never far when we're dealing with real food, and I had the surprise to see that Nina seems to like this Sauvignon Blanc that the guest opened for the show...
Go straight to the first marker for the Sauvignon and the work on the dough. Gorgeous tree on a Tel Aviv street