Handmade chocolates are a bakery specialty

European-style bakery relocates to Fredericksburg.

By MARTY MORRISON

Todd Hamm's family is sound asleep when the Orange County father of four leaves for work each morning.

By 2 a.m., he's mixing bread and pastry dough at Downtown Bakery in Fredericksburg.

"There's no avoiding being tired," said Hamm as he filled the display case hours later. "If I get five to six hours of sleep a day, I'm doing good."

Hamm and his wife, Theresa, opened their pastry shop in Central Park's Uptown section in late January after moving their year-old business from Orange.

They operate a full-scale European bakery with such delicacies as flaky French croissants, Italian focaccia and melt-in-your mouth chocolate truffles and tortes.

"Everything is made on the premises from scratch, no additives or preservatives," said Hamm, a former pastry chef for the four-star Keswick Hall hotel outside of Charlottesville. "We use cream and butter, no shortening. The quality is better. Everything has a better flavor. We think it's more healthy."

Hamm is a classically trained chef from Johnson & Wales Culinary School in Charleston, S.C.

"I've always been interested in cooking," Hamm said.

After a stint in the Army, he worked at Boar's Head Inn in Charlottesville where he enjoyed working with pastry.

"It's more precise and regimented," said Hamm, who concedes he's a perfectionist. "It's also versatile. There's so much to learn. You can go your entire life and never know all there is to know about pastry."

Hamm and his assistant Noah Surface work quietly and methodically through the early morning preparing dough for 50 to 60 baguettes and rolls, plus dozens more loaves of white, rye and brioche. Surface mixes cookie batter in a 60-quart mixer, while Hamm pulls a tray of baguettes out of the oven using a large wooden baker's paddle.

"We need to get focaccia in the oven next after the baguettes," Hamm tells Surface.

While it's still dark, they run thin sheets of pastry through a dough sheeter, a large mechanical rolling pin that turns out paper-thin layers of dough. They coat a layer with butter and fold the dough repeatedly in a process called laminating, to make 100-plus layers. A puff pastry can have about 1,000 layers of dough and butter, Hamm said.

"The sheeter helps so you can roll out dough to the same depth each time," Hamm said. "We try to be as consistent as possible."

By 7 a.m., Hamm begins filling the display case with the early morning's offerings--bear claws with chocolate centers and almond topping, cream-cheese- filled sweet focaccia with a raspberry and blueberry topping, eclairs filled with vanilla custard.

Hamm never tires of creating the sweet, buttery pastries.

"I make it a point to make what I enjoy," he said. "I think it's hard to do something well if you don't like eating it."

When Hamm opened his business in Orange, he planned to run a small-town bakery near his home.

He attracted a small dedicated following who loved the European-style baked breads and the made-from-scratch croissants and cream puffs. But his location off the main street failed to lure the customer traffic he needed to stay in business.

"We wanted to stay, but we couldn't survive without customers," said Hamm, sporting a baseball cap and white baker's apron over his jeans and T-shirt.

Faithful customers have mourned the loss of the Orange bakery that created at-cost violin-shaped cookies for a fund-raiser to support the Orange County schools' strings program.

Among them is Ann Ridgeway, who travels from her home in Madison County to stock up on the breads and pastries to which her family have grown accustomed.

"We love the cheese Danish, the bear claws, the gingerbread cookies," Ridgeway said. "We have yet to taste anything that's not out-of-this-world. It's a totally different bakery than we've experienced."

Besides individual customers, Hamm provides breads and pastries for several restaurants and markets.

Lynda McDaniel, co-owner of Feast-O-Rama specialty food shop on Sophia Street, said Hamm's breads are among the best in the area.

"We have customers who tell us this is the best baguette since Paris, or the best scones this side of the Atlantic," she said. "Their handmade chocolates are exquisite. We're delighted to be carrying them."

Hamm also makes special occasion pastries--pink iced bunny-shaped cookies, hollow chocolate eggs and traditional hot-cross buns.

This morning, he's not happy with the first buns that come out of the oven.

"There's not as much leavening as there should be," Hamm said.

He broke off a chunk from the tray and popped it in his mouth.

"The next batch will be better," he said, dumping the tray of buns in the garbage.

That's one of the risks he takes making a pastry once or twice a year. He takes the loss when his creations don't meet his standards. That's better than his customers getting something he's not happy with.

He'll make another batch of dough later for the buns. He plans to offer the traditional Easter roll for customers on this day.

Hamm moves to a work table to ice a Sacher torte, a classic Austrian dessert named for the chef who created it.

"The cake we use is richer and moister than traditional Sacher cakes," Hamm said. He spreads apricot preserves between the layers, then covers the cake with a thin chocolate fudge icing to create a smooth surface. A few minutes later, he glazes it with a second layer of chocolate.

Unlike most bakers, Hamm tempers his own chocolate in a separate room he refers to as the chocolate room. It stays cooler than the perpetually warm kitchen where there are multiple ovens going.

He uses only imported Swiss couverture, high-quality chocolate with one-third cocoa butter.

"Everything less is considered chocolate coating," he said.

Hamm prepares the area for a batch of hollow chocolate Easter bunnies. First he wipes the oval molds with a cotton ball to remove any chocolate residue. The cotton ball also creates static charge on the mold that helps the chocolate release from the mold.

He heats the chocolate in an electric pan called an effector that keeps the chocolate at a steady temperature so he can work it longer.

He spreads the melted chocolate onto a marble work board, tempering it with constant agitation to cool and crystallize the cocoa butter for a nice sheen.

He has only a few minutes to work the chocolate before it begins to harden. If he leaves it out too long, the mixture gets lumps and must be remelted. If not cooled long enough, the chocolate gets dull streaks called bloom.

Hamm pours a small amount in each egg-shaped mold then seals it with a duplicate mold. He shakes the mold mixture to remove air bubbles, then turns it over and over until both molds are evenly coated.

"You're limited on time," Hamm said. "The chocolate is already starting to set."

Besides the chocolate eggs, Hamm makes all the chocolate candies he sells, including raspberry chocolate truffles and dark chocolate covered with a hazelnut ganache.

By 11 a.m., Hamm wraps up the day's baking and plans for the next day. On his way home, he drops off commercial orders in Culpeper, Madison, Gordonsville and Orange.

There's no rest once he arrives home. He trades jobs with Ther-esa who manages the shop, while he takes over caring for the couple's four boys, ages 1 to 10.

Said Hamm:

"It's nice to have the afternoons free to spend with the kids."

To reach MARTY MORRISON: 540-374-5423 mmorrison@freelancestar.com

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