I have lived in Paris for several years and of course enjoyed my Poilane bread quite often. Ever since I started baking bread regularly, I flirt with the idea of making a home-version of Poilane.

I have Bread Baker's Apprentice - so that is one possibility to try, however, I seem to have mixed results with recipes from that book and would love to have some feedback from the experts here.

I searched the forum for entries on Poilane and there is quite a few -

would anyone let me know of a tried and true that would be good for a first timer?  By the way, I have two sourdough starters going, one homemade and another from King Arthur - would either work?

This weekend I baked Reinhart's Anadama Bread and the Poilane-style Miche featured on the cover of BBA.  Someone mentioned the Anadama recipe in another post, and I remembered making it years ago from a Better Homes recipe.  Needless to say, the BBA recipe is head-and-shoulders above my old one.

Here are some picts of the Anadama Bread:

The Miche was a monster, but a lot of fun to build and bake.  Here it is just before slashing and baking:

And fresh out of the oven:

And finally, what miche photo spread would be complete without...

My humble tribute to Peter Reinhart!!

For those who have not visited the bakery you may wish to go to

http://www.poilane.fr/index.php?lang=en

and do some ordering.  If you do, it would be good to have some dough with you.

I have to start off by saying that this was a very rewarding learning experience and I hope to be able to articulate some of what I learned by making this miche.

I have made Peter Reinhart's Poilane-style miche many times, but this was my first attempt at Daniel Leader's version. The formulas are different in a number of ways. Leader uses autolyse, which Reinhart does not, and does not use cold retardation of either the starter or the formed miche, which Reinhart does. Leader uses a higher hydration dough and folding an hour into bulk fermentation.

This is a recipe that Kenneth, a long-time poster to rec.food.sourdough, has posted a few times in response to requests. I made it this weekend and can safely say it's delicious. Tangy, but not overpoweringly so, with a smooth crumb that, though not full of big holes, is nevertheless a moderately light bread. It sprung well in the oven. In fact, it reminded me of some of the better Desem breads I've made.

This relatively recent article  http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/news/world/europe/article1980288.ece discussed Poilane's use of 'grey flour', how good it is for you, etc. Along with thoughts that steam injection is a relatively 'new' invention for us in bread baking and the 'old' french breads did not use this 'technology'...