225BatonRouge.com

Forte Grove turns out a stunning variety from scones and biscotti to French baguettes seen here.

For anyone who has spied cooking school ads in the back of food magazines and dreamed of inspired, classic European instruction, Kathleen Cooper’s story is a testament to action.

Bread had always appealed to Cooper. More than 30 years ago, she and then-boyfriend Bill would drive from their college apartments in Shreveport to Dallas where one of the original La Madeleine restaurants was located. It was rare in those days to see stacks and rows of crusty loaves. Bread was largely squishy, white and mass-produced, she recalls. The experience planted a seed: Cooper wanted to be a baker.

Time passed, and the couple married, had four children and pursued two careers. Living in Baton Rouge, Kathleen worked as a nurse practitioner, while Bill worked in hospital administration. While she loved to cook, Kathleen had long abandoned her dream of baking.

A series of recent events, however, has helped that dream return.

When Cooper’s mother died a few years ago, the couple purchased the family home in Plaquemine. Missing her mother and surrounded by the vast possessions with which her parents had filled the house, Cooper began considering what was important to her. “You can have all these things, but you still don’t have your mother and father,” she says.

When Bill asked what she wanted for Christmas that year, Cooper 
decided on something memory-making and experiential. “I said, ‘I want to go to cooking school,’” she recalls.

Cooper’s homemade loaves are a hit at Red Stick Farmers Market and Maxwell’s Market.

Cooper enrolled in a week-long intensive course on bread baking at the French Culinary Institute in New York. The grueling boot-camp helped Cooper learn the fundamentals behind the ancient art, and she says she relished every minute.

“I would come back to my hotel, exhausted, and crack open a baguette we would have made that day, and I would think, ‘Life is grand!’” she says.

The experience fortified Cooper’s interest in selling bread, and in short order, she and Bill developed plans to build a freestanding bakery behind their Plaquemine home. In May 2008, Cooper gave her notice at work. She made a firm commitment to bake full-time.

Construction on the Tuscan-yellow bakery was completed earlier this year. Behind schedule and over budget, the Coopers say the bakery they name Forte Grove after Kathleen’s middle name and her mother’s maiden name, was the culmination of a dream and the start of an empty nester’s new adventure.

The bakery is operational only—retail sales take place at the Red Stick Farmers Market on Thursday and Saturday and at both locations of Maxwell’s Market. At market, the Coopers relish one-on-one interaction and the opportunity to explain the texture and characteristics of their various breads. Varieties change frequently, but usually include French country loaf, cranberry pecan loaf, brioche, baguettes, biscotti, scones and others. For the holidays, look for pumpkin bread with pumpkin seeds, panettone, braided challah, the German fruitcake-like bread called stollen and sweet potato bread.

Back at the bakery, a simple white board showcases what’s on tap for the day. Cooper and one of her employees, Amanda Rodenbeck, tackle brioche, the buttery, cake-like bread whose texture is tight and compact.

“It should have a fine crumb,” says Cooper as the two cut hunks from a smooth, glistening mound of wet dough and weigh it precisely. Their kneading is deliberate and focused, and soon, each shapeless blob has been formed into a perfect ball that is gently placed inside a silver, fluted brioche tin. The final step is the insertion of a finger to create an inch-deep well. Into that goes another piece of dough that’s been shaped into what looks like a wine stopper.

“I’m not sure why, but it’s called Marie Antoinette’s head,” says Cooper.

Meanwhile, it’s time to turn the baguette dough. Cooper slides to the other side of the room, where large open shelves hold rectangular tubs. She uncovers one, revealing sweet-smelling, moist white dough, whose sides she quickly folds over. Later she will divide the 310-gram mound into exactly 47 baguettes.

So much of baking is about weighing and measuring.

Both types of bread will be baked in a large steam oven. First goes the brioche, which bakes at a cooler temperature, and later, the baguettes, which get the full benefit of the oven’s firepower. The combination of high heat and steam creates a crust that is at once dense and cooperative. Without the addition of steam, the crust would restrict the bread’s ability to expand while cooking.

Busier than ever, Forte Grove is hard at work baking in preparation for the holidays.

“Response has been phenomenal,” Cooper says. “People are yearning for good bread.”

Comments