Poilâne-Style Miche

Is it wrong to love one Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge bread so much more than all the others?  To play favorites, when there are so many really amazing breads?  Well, if lovin’ this one above all others is wrong, then I don’t wanna be right.  (Yeah, I know, that was bad.)

This manna from heaven is made from the method that Peter Reinhart learned when he visited the “most famous bread baker in the world,” Lionel Poilâne in France.  And, of course, the method had to be adapted to home kitchens in order for it to work for those of us who do not have wood-burning bread ovens at our disposal.  Clearly, I am the most ignorant bread-head in the world, having never even heard of Lionel.  That’s right, never.  I’ve been in France once, thirty years ago, and believe you me, every single bite of food I ate was so amazing to this then-young woman from Southern California that I didn’t care who made the breads I was eating.  (And, to be perfectly honest, Italy had my heart, so the breads of Italy were the ones that inspired my adulation.)

Therefore, except for all the hype about Poilâne in the book, I had no idea what I was in for when I made this bread.  I knew it was the loaf featured on the cover of The Bread Baker’s Apprentice, which should have given me a clue.  The ingredients pleased me: sourdough starter, whole-wheat flour, salt and water.  But I couldn’t figure out where to procure the “medium-grain whole-wheat flour” or a sifter that was fine enough to strain out the bran particles in that type of flour.  Luckily, Peter gives the alternative of using half whole-wheat and half bread flour.  Lacking the right flour and strainer, however, I thought I was starting from such a compromised place that the bread would only be okay.

I was so wrong.  This bread rocked my world.  It’s sour.  It’s wheaty.  It’s chewy and wholesome without being too dense.  It lasts forever on the counter; I ate it every day for over a week.  Sandwiches, toast with homemade apricot jam, croutons from torn pieces tossed with olive oil, salt, and pepper, bread crumbs from the last precious bits – the flavor transitioned with each treatment and the passage of time, evoking the essence of toasted walnuts and crème fraîche.  Obviously, I’m totally infatuated.  When I’m finished with the challenge, it will be on regular rotation here, and I may try harder to find the perfect flour and sieve.  Because there are worse things in life than falling in love with a bread, right?

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Tagged as: BBA Challenge, miche, Poilâne, sourdough, whole-wheat bread