10/18/2010 - Poilâne-Style Miche

The brief introduction to the Parisian baker Lionel Poilâne that prefaces this formula illustrates one of the reasons that I find bread so rewarding, so worth making. Peter Reinhart calls Lionel Poilâne the most famous bread baker in the world, and he elucidates what it is about Poilâne's method that makes this so - his understanding of fermentation, his commitment to using the finest ingredients, the careful training he gives the bakers working under him. After reading this excerpt, it is striking to note the ingredients that make up a Poilâne-style loaf: whole-wheat flour, water, and a little salt. No yeast is even required, as this bread relies on wild yeast for leavening. From these few ingredients, bread can be made in the style of the most famous bread baker in the world. Before I was a mommy, I was a biologist. I was trained in reductionism. I was taught to assume that a complex system was equal to the sum of its parts. If you understand the parts, you understand the whole. Now, this assumption may be a necessary one in the laboratory, but it seems to me that the best and most real parts of life completely contradict a reductionist viewpoint. What I love about making bread is that you get so much more out of it than you put in. Whole wheat flour, water, salt. From the simplest of ingredients is fashioned a living dough that, when handled properly, may yield a world-famous product.

Now that I've waxed poetic, I will tell you that I did not actually make this bread correctly. I think I must have left my sourdough barm on the counter too long after I refreshed it, because when I made the firm starter for this bread, it never really achieved a full rise. It should have doubled within 4-6 hours. After 7 hours mine still hadn't doubled but I went ahead and put it in the refrigerator. The next morning when I made the final dough, I spiked it with a little commercial yeast to make up for my sluggish sourdough barm. I figured it was better to cheat a little than to have a flat loaf of bread. This formula makes a large batch of dough and it was a bit of a challenge to work with, but still doable. I kneaded it and let it rise for several hours. Then I formed one large ball and placed it in my biggest bowl to proof. After an hour and a half of proofing, I turned it out onto a baking sheet, scored it, and baked it hearth style. I've kind of gotten away from using my stone just because it's easier to bake bread on the baking sheet. And this loaf was so heavy I didn't really care to try to transfer it from sheet to stone and back again.

This loaf was very large and impressive (so large it baked for over an hour!). The flavor was good, but it was a little dense for my taste. I think that may just be the nature of 100% whole wheat bread. I also found the crust to be too hard. The hardness of the crust combined with the large size of the loaf made slicing it a little difficult. However, my two-year-old loved it. J4 actually used it to bribe him into eating eggplant. If that endorsement doesn't make it world-famous, I don't know what will.