Guy Allan Davis Known as High Quality Artisan Breads Specialist

Guy Allan Davis is certified Master Chef based in Kelowna, British Columbia. He specializes in pastries, cakes, chocolates and artisan breads, including sour dough, ryes, and whole grain breads.

He has developed gluten-free breads and deserts for people who are limiting or avoiding gluten. And for those who don’t have to worry about gluten, he is known for the high quality artisan breads he has created.

There isn’t much disagreement: not all bread is created equal, and for bread lovers, artisan breads represent the pinnacle of bread making. “How can a nation be great,” Chef Julia Childs once asked, “if their bread tastes like Kleenex?” Compared to ordinary packaged bread available in most grocery stores, the difference is night and day. Real, artisan breads such as those created by Guy Allan Davis possess a flaky crust and light texture that is the real deal; the way that bread is meant to be.

“The smell of good bread baking, like the sound of lightly flowing water, is indescribable in its evocation of innocence and delight.” said the noted food writer M.F.K. Fischer. For most Western cultures bread is a food staple, part of the every diet. Give us this day our daily bread. Artisan bread, like that produced by Guy Allan Davis, refers to bread made using traditional methods. Part of the traditional method of bread making is using a long fermentation process, which allows the natural enzymes to react with the flour in its own time. The result is certainly worth waiting for: the robust flavor and texture that true bread lovers exult in.

Guy Allan Davis, said one of his former colleagues, “is extremely skilled in artisan breads.” He has worked in the bakery department of kitchens throughout Canada, and did internships in Germany, Switzerland, Austria, Italy, and France. He has been certified as a Master Chef since 2007.

Also read: Guy Allan Davis: Gluten Free Breads and Desserts

Guy Allan Davis: Laminated Dough Specialist

Guy Allan Davis is a certified Master Chef who has developed his own artisan breads, and bread doughs that go directly from the freezer to the oven without any loss of quality.

He developed the dough, he says, “to provide a fresh product throughout the day, and reduce lower wage costs and increase profit margins.”

Guy Allan Davis is also a specialist with laminated dough. Laminated dough is a technically complicated type of dough that produces hundreds of flaky, airy layers in baked products. A good example of laminated dough is that which is made for puff pastry and croissants. It is made by a process of folding butter into dough many times, in order to create thin and alternating layers of butter and dough. The folding and rolling process of creating laminated dough also helps to develop the dough’s gluten.

“As you might imagine, there are many factors affecting successful lamination – dough temperature, butter temperature, resting time, rolling technique,” said another laminated dough specialist. “But with a little care and patience during the process, the payoff is a unique lightness and airiness that results from the thin sheets of butter steaming in the oven and puffing the dough. In the case of yeasted laminated doughs, the payoff is even greater: Leavening with yeast results in an even airier crumb, with small, irregular pockets.”

In making laminated dough, the dough is folder over butter, and then rolled out again with an ordinary rolling pin. The more times this is done, the more layers of butter and dough are formed. Guy Allan Davis is one of the few who are skilled in this practice.