International cuisine inspires artisan bread

Regina Miller sells homemade bread at farmers markets in southeast Iowa, including the Washington Farmers Market, where she was Thursday evening. Miller had a table full of various bread products to show to potential customers. Market goers tried samples of Miller?s concoctions on toothpicks before deciding if they would like more of what they tasted.

Miller has lived in Lone Tree for the past seven years but grew up in rural Wellman. She has gone to the Iowa City Farmers Market for 10 years and has come to Washington?s for four years. She has also gone to Cedar Rapids? market, although she said she prefers to come to Washington?s because it?s closer and friendlier.

?This is a really nice setting,? she said.

Miller?s breadmaking journey began when she was a young girl in her mother?s kitchen. She started out baking small batches of bread, but that changed once she moved to Iowa City to attend the University of Iowa. While there, Miller got a job at ?The Cottage,? where she made bread in industrial-sized ovens.

?I learned the big batch-baking there,? she said. ?I did early-morning pastries, so I learned how to make croissants, brioche and scones.?

Miller said that the big batches are baked entirely differently from the way she made bread with her mother.

?You can?t just multiple all the ingredients to make a big batch,? she said. ?You have to figure out how much yeast you need. Oil is a little tricky, too. You gradually learn after making a few mistakes along the way.?

Another source of knowledge Miller has drawn from is Simone Delaty, a retired French professor who lives north of Frytown.

?I learned the artisan breads from her ? the breads of a European style,? she said. ?European breads have a crispy crust and they?re more chewy on the inside.?

Miller fell in love with European bread and has experimented with her own European-inspired flavors.

?I like to tweak recipes by adding fresh herbs or unusual cheeses,? she says. ?I have quite a few bread books, too. If I?m low on ideas, I?ll flip through those.?

Miller incorporates as much local food as she can in her recipes. For instance, her focaccia is made with spinach from the farmers market and her short mint bread is made from mint she grows herself.

The bread recipes are in fact quite simple, says Miller.

?Today, I have a white wine garlic that has five ingredients. I have a pesto baguette, too. The baguette itself has four ingredients and the fresh pesto is homemade. The pesto is Italian but the baguette is French, so I would call it a Mediterranean bread.?

The scones Miller sells come from a recipe she learned when she lived in England. She lived there for a year and a half in the mid-1990s while working as an au pair. The home housed many foreign-language students who were in the country to learn English, and Miller was in charge of cooking for them.

?The food in England is a little different,? she said. ?When I think of British food, I think of meat pies and lots of mashed potatoes. They eats lots of cheese and bread.?

Speaking of England, Miller also makes blueberry English muffins. One of her most popular treats is white wine garlic bread. Cindy Widmer, a frequent farmers market customer for 20 years, said she likes to use the white wine garlic bread to make sandwiches.