They make huge, dense round loaves of bread that have the reputation of being the best bread in the world. Probably the most expensive too. I've never bought a whole loaf, but you can buy small packets of the slices in some shops in the UK. I've bought one of these, and although the bread was probably a bit stale it tasted incredible. I saw some for sale in Sydney once too, I wonder how fresh that would have been? People line up to buy this bread for hours (so the rumour goes) but honestly, I can't be bothered doing that and anyway the last time I went to Paris all the shops were closed because it was a Sunday. And a gypsy cursed me. So I am going to try and make a vague approximation of it at home.
Paul Wolfert is an American cook and food writer. I think her books are astonishing for the amount of research, history and clarity of the writing that goes into them. She's known for her interest in slow cooking, Mediterranean food, North African cooking and probably most famously the cooking of South-West France. Her latest book is all about cooking in clay pots, which sparked my interest in using these for bread. This recipe comes from "The Cooking of South-West France" and is a refreshing book for its celebration of things like bread, lard, goose fat, cream and the remainder of the 5 food groups.
Ingredients:
1.5 tsp dried yeast
3/4 cup water at room temperature
1 cup strong white flour
1.5 cups lukewarm water
4.5 tsp salt
1 cup wholemeal flour
5.5 cups strong white flour
This is a time consuming recipe with multiple rises and is not for those who are time challenged.
First, make a starter with the first 3 ingredients, the 1.5 tsp yeast, 3/4 cup of water and the 1 cup of white flour. Mix it and cover with cling film. Leave it at room temperature for 1-2 days. The longer you leave it the more of a sour dough character it will develop. If you live in a warm climate like me it would be best to leave it in an air-conditioned room, or even the fridge. If there's any liquid on top of the starter stir it in before the next step. It does smell very sharp but that's ok.
The next day, add the 1.5 cups water and the salt to the starter, and mix it in. Add the cup of wholemeal flour, and mix it in. Add the remaining 5.5 cups of white flour 1 cup at a time. If the dough is too wet, add another 1 or 2 tablespoons flour. The texture should be quite soft, but not wet, and also not too tough.... sort of a Goldilocks dough, I suppose.
Anyway, knead it for about 10 minutes. Be careful if you use a dough hook. It's such a large amount you could burn out the motor. Best to knead it by hand. Put it in an oiled bowl, cover with cling-wrap and leave somewhere warm for 1-2 hours. Mine took 2 hours to double in size at an outside temperature of 33C, so it seems the yeast has to recover a bit from the starter. At first I thought it wouldn't rise at all, but the second hour did the trick.
After the 2 hours, knock down the dough and knead for a couple of minutes, place back in the bowl, cover and leave somewhere warm again for another 2 hours.
After this, knock down, knead for a couple of minutes and shape into a ball. At this point you can cook it in 2 ways, one which I used and one which I didn't. The first, and to my mind the easiest way, is using the cloche system.
Preheat oven to 230 C
Put the dough ball onto the base of a cloche which was had some polenta scattered on it
Leave dough to rise for about 45 minutes covered in the cloche
With a razor blade, make some deep slashes in top of the loaf, any pattern you like.
Leave it for another 10 minutes to recover
Cook in cloche at 230 C for 50 minutes
Take off lid, and leave for another 10 minutes or so until brown and the crust has developed.
Place on a rack to cool.
For those who do not have a cloche, Paula Wolfert gives the following advice:
Flour a bread-rising banneton or put a tea towel in a 20-15cm bowl and flour the tea towel heavily. Put the dough in the bowl, cover with another cloth and leave for 1-2 hours. Preheat the oven to 230 C and tip the dough gently upside down onto a baking tray covered with polenta to prevent sticking. Just before putting the bread in the oven, spray the oven with a few mists of water in a squirter, which will help the crust develop. Cook for 50 minutes, but keep an eye that it does not burn, you may need to reduce the oven temperature.
I'll let you know how it tastes tomorrow, but I'm impressed with how much it rose in the oven. As it cooled the crust cracked like a mosaic.
A couple of years ago I stayed in Paris, and in the ground floor of the apartment building was a bakery/cafe called Le Pain Quotidien. I learned French at school for 5 years (not that anyone going to Doncaster High School in the 70s was likely to be in a French speaking environment for some time, but that's another story). I can read French, sort of, and speak food related French very badly. They had wonderful loaves of bread, and it was a lovely spot for breakfast and lunch. After a very nice lunch, with lots of gesticulating to make myself understood, I asked if it were possible to buy one of the hessian lined straw bannetons that festooned the shelves along with bottles of olive oil, tapenade and other things ostensibly on sale. The very nice waitress (in English) assured me that this was fine, so I waited at the checkout to pay my bill and get my basket. After a long wait, a man I assume to be the manager appeared, and proceeded to lecture me in French, extremely rudely and loudly, that this was impossible, out of the questions, insupportable etc. Despite the fact the baskets had price tags on them. This ruined what had been a very pleasant lunch, and I did not go back into the shop again as a result. I managed to find another one somewhere else, luckily, but that was an unpleasant taste of how awful the French can be. The other example was the appalling desk bitch in a hotel in the Marais who refused to order us a taxi, but that's another story as well. Bon appetit.
Probably the nicest tasting bread I have made so far
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