Hey All,

I had a friend Russ in town from LA that I haven't seen since his wedding about 5 years ago...  He finally made it out to NYC, 13 years after we had first met in college...  Funny thing is that last Christmas, I send a loaf of bread to another friend Greg in LA that we both know.  Greg was raving about it to Russ and his wife...  Anyway, many months pass, Russ finally makes it out to NYC, and his wife jokingly asks him to bug me for some bread...  Of course as an obsessive baker, I don't turn down many opportunities to bake for my friends...  I have been baking Poilane style pain au levains for the past fiew weeks trying different things with levain, flour combinations, hydrations...  I've been playing around with 68% hydrations levels which was inspired by Dominique Saibron of Le Boulanger de Monge: http://www.leboulangerdemonge.com/

He says on his website that they use 68 parts of water: http://www.leboulangerdemonge.com/du-moulin-au-four/la-composition-du-pain.html

So here's recipe and process:

Ingredients:

1576g Total flour (5% Rye/10% WW/ 85% AP)

1072g Water

38g Kosher Salt

316g Liquid Levain (100% hydration fed night before and refrigerated.  I keep mine an ever changing mix of rye, ww, AP)

3000g Approx total dough yield

Method To Madness:

9/18/10

4:45pm - Place all ingredients in large mixing bowl in the following order: water, levain, flour, salt.  Mix with large rubber spatula until a shaggy dough is formed.  Mix with wet hands to ensure all lumps and dry bits are gone.  Place bowl in large plastic bag and let rest.

5:00pm - Rest

5:30pm - Turn dough, divide into 2 equal pieces (1500g), transfer to lightly oiled plastic tubs, cover, let rest.

5:45pm - Turn dough, cover let rest.

8:30pm - Turn dough.

10:00pm - Turn dough.

9/19/10

12:40am - Shape into boule, place in well floured linen lined banneton, flour top of dough, place kitchen towel over each banneton, place bannetons into large plastic bag, proof for approx 4+ hours.  (Be sure to flour the bannetons very well as this is a very long proof with a wet-ish dough.  I had to be very careful when turning the boules out as they did stick a little and I had to be very patient for the dough to unstick itself and drop...)

5:00am - Place 2 baking stones on 2 levels along with steam pan with lava rocks.  Place a few cups of water in steam pan.  Preheat oven to 500F with convection.

6:10am - Turn off convection.  Turn boules out onto well floured peel, slash as desired, place in oven directly on stone.  When last loaf is in, place 1 1/2 cups water in steam pan, close oven door.  Turn oven down to 450F, bake for 30 minutes.  After 30 minutes, remove steam pan, rotate loaves between stones, turn oven down to 425F, bake for another 30 minutes.  After 30 minutes are done, turn off oven and leave loaves in for another 10 minutes...

7:10am - Take loaves out of oven, check internal temp and weight.  Should be around 210F and 15-20% lighter than the prebaked weight.  Cool completely before cutting and eating...

These are by far the most open crumb that I have ever achieved using levain only...  I have no complaints here other than I should have used more levain to speed up the dough...  This was about 14 hours from start to finish...

Enjoy!

Tim

I am trying to make the Pain Poilane from BBA.  About 50% of the time, I am successful.  When it does not turn out, here's what happens:

1. The dough does not rise during firmentation.  If it does, it is very little.  The problem is, when I'm in the started stage, the starters behave beautifully.  They rise, they smell good.

2. When I bake it, it may rise a little.  But it does this weird thing where the bottom of the loaf will rise in the center rather than rise uniformly from the top. 

3. The crumb is dense and wet, even though I don't pull it out until the internal temp is around 200F.  Also, there are large wholes sporatically throughout the dense crust.

4. Taste is not very good compared to when it turns out right.

I just can't figure out what is going on.  I've tried shortening the rise times thinking that I was tiring out the yeast.  I've tried lessening the amount of starter I used thinking it was too acidic (I was doubling the amount from BBA).  They all seem hit or miss.

Notes: These are 10 cup 100% sourdough wheat loaves.  Lately, I've tried making it 80:20, Wheat:White.

Any suggestions?

Could it be the tap water?  Should I try bottled when I make the dough?

Thanks,

David

After going to breadtopia.com I decided to try the Poilane-style miche. I was amazed at how easy it was! Unfortunately the crust went from 'done' to 'oops' in the last couple of minutes that the inside was finishing. I probably should have put the lid back on as it got a bit more toasty especially on the ears. BUT, I shall focus on the good qualities!

It's poofy, the slashing turned out nicely and didn't have -huge- ears. It SMELLS wonderful, and it is the first well-shaped loaf I've made with the starter I made from scratch. I think some of the darkness comes from the fact that I substituted stone-ground whole wheat for lighter wheat, rather than simply being overdone.

The inside texture is nice and chewy with a slightly open crumb typical of whole grain breads.

I think the next time I will add a tiny bit of sweetener as it does have that very 'whole grain' flavor. The butter, though is just enough to counter it. As you can tell, I couldn't wait!

Oh... and why 'Dr. Evil Bread' - because it's a Mini-Mi(che) of course!

I was up for a challenge recently, so I decided to try the Poilane-Style Miche from Peter Reinhart's "Bread Baker's Apprentice."  It's a 10 cup wheat, 100% wild yeast loaf.  It is also the cover picture of the book.  What a loaf of bread!

I ended up doing a variation on the recipe.  After 6 days of working on it, the final loaf turned out much better than I could have hoped.

As you can see, it rose much more than I expected.  I had made a deep cut in a pound-sign pattern, and the crust still broke at the edges from rising.  I have taken to using the "hearth-baking" steam technique outlined in Reinhart's book.  So the crust was thick and had two discernable layers on the pallate:  The outside was crispy, while the inside part of the crust was chewey (also a feature of sour-dough, as I understand it).

The crumb was somewhat irregular, but didn't have the big holes.  I don't think I could have expected it though given the style of loaf.  It was chewy, cake-like, and moist. 

The taste was really tangy, because I purposefully increased the percentage of starter.  I was concerned about it rising enough.  Although, next time, I think instead of doubling it, I'll only do 1.5 x's as much starter because it was a bit too tangy.  Here is my short version of the variation I followed:

Seed culture:

1. One cup of rye to make seed culture
2. next day (or when ready) add another cup of rye (1/2 cup water)
3. Remove one cup of 2 cup mix and add another cup of rye
4. Repeat step 3 on the fourth day

Barm:

1. Take 2 cups of rye starter and add: 2.5 cups white and 2 cups water.
2. Refrigerate overnight.  Ready next day.

Firm Starter:

1. One-half of Barm (which amounts to 2 cups or more) + 2 cups wheat + 1/2 cup water
2. Set it out and let rise.  Then refrigerate overnight.

Dough:

1. Add all of starter + 6 or more cups of wheat + 3 and 1/4 tsp salt + 2 and 3/4 cups - 3 cups of water.  (My final loaf was an 8 cup total mix.  I followed the recipe, but it wasn't enough water for 10 cups.  So I've adjusted this variation to have more water and thus more flour.)
2. I proofed it in a large mixing bowl with a towel lining.  It worked great.
3. Two rises at 70 degrees F (it's about winter here) until it doubles.
4. Punch back very gently.  I just lifted the dough out of the bowl and flipped it upside down to punch back.  Reinhart seems to think with these style loaves, it is best not to completely de-gas it.  It worked for me.

So there you go.  A great tasting loaf with nothing but flour, salt, and water.  Praise God!  Enjoy with a cup of Irish Breakfast tea and a steaming bowl of oatmeal.

Bristol Farms, an upscale food store near me, sells bread by Poilane flown in from Paris.   I bought the Poilane sourdough and rye currant.  Both are excellent. The sourdough had more of a tang than I expected.  The crust is somewhat soft and not very crisp, presumably from being packaged in plastic and being as least a day old.  It's difficult to characterize the taste, but it seemed to have an earthy taste, almost like of minerals. I assume that the flour helps to impart that flavor.