fol epi - 'wild wheat stalk'
Hello,
Franko kindly referred me to an absolutely lovely bakery in Victoria, BC, called fol epi -
(fol epi means 'wild wheat stalk').
I had the pleasure of visiting this bakery last month. Thanks Franko! - this place was quite a find!
Having enjoyed a heavenly pain au chocolat for breakfast, I went back to thank the staff,
and got to meet Cliff, the baker.
Not only does Cliff bake incredible things, he mills his own flour - and to top it all off, he sold me some of his bread and whole wheat flour. I was quite happy!
There's a blog post here [1] that has some nice pictures of the bakery, and of course the photos on the bakery's website, www.folepi.ca [2], show lots of beautiful breads and pastries (at this point, the website may still be a work in progress in terms of text?).
My first bake with Cliff's flour is a 'wheat stalk' loaf, using the Miche formula from Advanced Bread and Pastry.
The wheat stalks were made with a live decorative dough (a Team USA 2010 formula featured in a BBGA newsletter I picked up while at IBIE last September). The stenciling was inspired by something I saw on farine-mc's site, shown here [3].
With thanks to Cliff for his really good flour, and to BBGA/Team USA and farine for their creative ideas - although my execution is a bit lacking (perhaps the decorative stuff is best left to the professionals!):
Here's a comparison of flours:
The top is 75% sifted Red Fife
The left is 100% whole wheat
The right is Cliff's whole wheat (lovely colorful bits of bran) - I'm pretty sure Cliff said this was Red Fife too, but I'm not positive and kicking myself for not remembering!!!
Happy baking everyone,
From breadsong