[MUSIC PLAYING]
APOLLONIA POILANE (VOICEOVER): In the 1930s,
St. Germain des Pres was an up-and-coming neighborhood.
There was a bakery here since the French Revolution.
And my grandfather, when he started,
had a lot of competition.
At the time, the Parisians were favoring whiter breads,
typically the baguette.
To distinguish himself from his competition,
my grandfather baked wheat sourdough loafs.
In baking, these big hugs of breads, my grandfather
found his audience.
This neighborhood was filled with artists and craftsmen
that could barely pay for their rent.
And so they would get some sourdough and it would keep.
And that made a world of difference for them.
Because smaller and whiter breads keep less long.
And that's what set off my grandfather's success.
Yeast is faster.
It's instant.
It doesn't call for any maintenance.
The beauty of sourdough is that it has a distinctive flavor.
It keeps your bread longer.
It gives it a more specific aromatic signature.
But it's a lot of work.
And in choosing a sourdough method,
my grandfather made a choice that was harder, but just so
much more rewarding, because it had a story.
It has a flavor.
The recipe that we do today at Poilane
is the same as we did when my grandfather started.
So in this chapter, I am baking an at-home version of the bread
we do at the bakery.
The recipe that I'm gonna guide you
through is one that reproduces some of the key gestures,
but also some of the key qualities of my bread.
It's got a thick crust, a dense crumb.
The air bubbles are rather small and very well spread out.
And those are the qualities we're going
to look for in the final loaf.
So while this is one of the hardest
recipes in the curriculum, do not be deterred by it.
You can start or finish by this recipe.
Ultimately, it's about building your confidence
and your library of gestures.
So in this recipe, we are going to use
the sourdough starter, the yeast, sea salt.
We have wholegrain flour.
We have all-purpose flour.
And we have water.
In my at-home methodology, I have
used two different types of flour
to recreate the flour I use at the bakery.
Now, the difference between the two is have much of the grain
do we extract?
In the all-purpose flour, you have
less of the outer envelopes.
And the whole grain, it's the whole grain that's ground.
If you have that option, make sure
that your flour is stone ground.
When you stone grind flour, it tends
to keep the natural oils that are in the flour.
The other methodology heats up the grain.
The oils come out.
And the flour is drier.
And this throws off, a little bit, the equilibrium.
So the first step is preparing the yeast.
I use active dry yeast here to boost the starter.
I'm mixing the water to activate the yeast.
After a couple of minutes, if you mix with a fork,
you'll see these little air bubbles,
showing that it's slowly activating.
I know that sourdough is methodology
that tends to scare people.
And I thought that it would be useful to start off
this way, knowing that, as you experience baking,
you'll eventually be able to do without it.
The other ingredient I prepare is
I dissolve the salt in water.
I think this is especially important in home baking,
because whereas at the bakery, when
we're baking a batch of 50 loaves,
the salts can be spread out.
In such a small bowl, you just don't have as much space
to easily mix it together.
In my recipe, I use sel de Guerande.
And we've been using it forever.
And it does give a distinctive flavor to the bread.
At some point, we had an oil spill in France
that prevented us from using it for a couple of seasons.
And we could really taste the difference in the breads.
We used sea salts from the Mediterranean.
And you could tell that the terroir was different.
If you can't get sel de Guerance,
then you should use a coarse sea salt,
a sea salt that might be even a little gray,
because it has a little bit of the glaze, that's fine.
Do not take an overly refined sea
salt. Or if you only have that at hand, maybe
reduce the salt amounts by a third.
Because otherwise, it will just get too salty.
I have my sourdough starter.
You can see the air bubbles on the top.
Try and, more or less, delicately bring it
into the bowl, to not break all the structure it has inside.
I'm gonna put the yeast.
I'm gonna put a little bit of flour on top of it.
And this is just to prevent the salt from immediately touching
the active or dry yeast.
It tends to annul the work of the yest.
So I add the two flours.
And then, I pour the water over the bowl, using the rims.
This way, I can start getting the water to scoop up
all of what's in the middle.
This is not in perfect science.
This is just my habits.
As I've poured in the water, the water has gone through the side
and scooped up all of the matter that's
underneath, the sourdough, the flour, the salt, the yeast.
This is a good indication that we're at a good starting point
here.
I believe that there's nothing more satisfying,
especially when you're baking one loaf,
than to feel how the dough feels in your hands.
I'm gonna flour my hands, just to remove the excess humidity.
This is especially important if it's humid out there.
And don't be worried if you're dirtying the working surface.
Because eventually, we'll turn the dough onto the surface.
You can choose to mix it entirely in the bowl.
But I like to turn it on to the working surface
to really get a feel and just having more space
to knead the dough together.
At this stage, the most important part
is just bringing all the ingredients together.
I keep one hand clean on the side.
And this is so that I can work with the dough thereafter.
So here, with one hand, turning the dough.
I'm just scooping the flour in and blending it with the water.
And very quickly, you'll notice that the dough
absorbs the water, between the flour, the sourdough starter.
Keep the fingers of this hands close together.
That's just because this dough is very sticky.
And it's that much less that you'll need to pull off.
When you have a sense that there's no more water visible,
this is when I would turn over to the table.
Now, even if at the bottom end you have a little bit of flour,
that's fine.
We'll work that into the dough on the table.
My clean hand here comes in really practical.
I'm going to flour my surface.
I'm gonna remove the excess from my hand.
Here, it's just about the bigger pieces.
And I'm gonna use the dough scraper
to just scrape down all of the dough that you have inside.
So here we have this funny-looking dough.
You have a little bit of extra flour.
That's fine.
The idea here is to really bring the dough together.
My clean hands maybe needs a little more flowering.
Remove any excess flour.
You don't want to throw off the balance of the ingredients
you've created.
OK.
So you have this material.
It's coming together.
I will just try and bind this.
And I bind it turning the--
the dough, bringing one piece into the center.
And here, you'll wind up with a coarse texture.
As you progress on this stage, make
sure to not be shy to add more flour on your hands.
Do it as if you were shaking one hand or washing your hands.
To remove any excess dough, don't try and put it
back into the dough.
It's just unpleasant.
Any little piece that consistency
are trying to stay on the table get discarded.
So we have this piece of dough.
It's more or less come together.
The movement we are trying to create here
is I treat this surface as if it were a flour.
And each petal gets folded into the middle,
as if it needed to be folded in.
And I use the bottom part of my hand
to bring it into the center.
As I'm kneading it, I'm constraining the dough,
activating the yeasts and microorganisms.
I'm bringing together all the ingredients.
If you're heavy handed at first, that's absolutely fine.
It may take a little longer for the dough to come together.
But a few tricks here are noteworthy.
First, if it's a really hot day pour your water cold.
Conversely, if it's a really cold day,
you can keep your water warm.
If you feel that it's a really hot day,
the dough will tend to expand quite fast.
So don't be afraid of feeling that you're tightening up
the dough.
Because look, just putting it like this,
it's just moving up and opening.
Conversely, if it's a really cold day,
you'll want to treat the dough more delicately.
This kneading process can last up to 5, 7, 10 minutes at most.
But anything beyond that will be too much.
All in all, between the mixing of the ingredients
and kneading it by hand, you want
to make sure that it lasts no more than 20 minutes.
The dough has come together.
There's lots of little craters.
It's not an entirely smooth surface.
It's a little granular.
But that's OK.
All the ingredients have come together.
I don't see any major flour pockets.
I'm going to flour my bowl.
It's OK if you do a little bit of excess flower here.
And cover it up and leave it to rest for 45 minutes.
This time frame is an indication.
The visual cue we're looking for at this point
is a doubling in size.
If you are in a very warm environment,
you're dome might rice faster.
While I'm gonna cover it up and keep it
in a draft-free, warm space, I'm gonna
check on it after 30 minutes.
If the dough has risen to about twice the volume,
then I will take it there, shape it,
and prove it in its final form.
Conversely, if you feel that the dough is having
a little bit of a hard time after 30 minutes,
then try and find a warm space, not hot, warmer.
Don't uncover the dough.
Because uncovering the dough might create a crust
on this loaf.
And that will prevent it from expanding yeast further.
So covering it up and bringing this
into a draft-free space for about 45 minutes.
The dough has rested for 45 minutes.
It's doubled in size.
That is the visual cue you're looking for.
You can use, on a transparent bowl, a measurement
of how high it's got.
If it's a little under proofed, you can leave it another 10,
15 minutes.
The indications I'm looking for is
a dough that feels airy and responds to your hands.
It's one that if you touch it, you
can feel that it's resilient.
It's got some elasticity to it.
But it still is rising.
That's a good sign.
If you touch a little down and it deflates, it's over proofed.
And there's nothing really you can do at that point.
I would stop the recipe there.
If it's a little hard and it hasn't
grown that much, leave it a little more
time, but not too much, because otherwise the dough will
go sour, it's over fermented, and that's not pleasant.
And just-- it will not rise.
So we bring it back to the floured surface.
Remove any excess.
This is just about making sure it
doesn't stick on the surface.
And we are going to take the dough and shape it.
Now, by deflating the dough a little bit and then shaping,
it gonna give it a breath and an energy.
We're going to give it the momentum so that it can rise
to become this beautiful loaf.
And you have two options here.
You can use a wicker basket covered in cotton or linen.
Or you can use a much more do-it-yourself version
using a colander and a piece of cloth.
In both cases, make sure that you flour them adequately.
Don't be shy.
Rather have a little too much flour at the start.
You can always brush it off once the loaf is finished proofing
and about to bake.
And even if it's after baking, you
can still remove a little bit of the excess flour.
At Poilane, we use wicker baskets with linen cloth
inside.
And we use them again and again.
We don't wash them.
We scratch the excess crust, that the hydration
of the loaf and the flour creates in the bottom.
But ultimately, this is an environment
which favors the fermentation.
And as you bake batches of bread,
you will notice that your fermentation
will be faster and faster in this proofing stage.
All right.
So I really brush off, with my hand, the excess flour here.
I can just dry out my hands and pour the dough.
Now, you can use the dough scraper here.
And that's really the best method.
And you'll see the dough, putting it face down,
comes into one quite nicely.
So I take the dough.
And I get a sense of how it feels like.
It still is sticky.
But it comes together much faster.
If I leave it on the table, you can see it expands slowly.
And that's a good sign.
It means that you have the good fermentation activity
that you want to shape it.
I have the piece of dough that's poured out on the table.
I take it and I tuck it over, do this sort of fold.
And then, I grab it.
And I'm going to create a movement top left
to bottom right, turning, tucking
the dough underneath it, and using
the other hand as a stopper.
This is a gesture you will do over and over again.
Once you've come into sync with this gesture,
you'll actually realize this is kind of like giving
a breath to this loaf of bread.
This is one of my favorite stages.
And one where, once I acquired it,
I really felt that I was becoming a baker.
When you're doing this for the first time,
a classic beginner's mistake is to just think
you're just tucking, like you would
tuck the sheets under a bed.
Here, you're really tucking into the center bottom of the loaf.
And I'll show you where this makes a difference.
You have this clean top surface.
I'm going to pour the loaf into the box.
And here, I have a good loaf.
And I know this, because the key of the loaf is just here.
It's just this little hole or this little scarring
that indicates that I've really brought the dough together
into one spot.
All of the rest of the surface is rather smooth.
When you're a beginner, what tends to happen
is you just tuck the dough on the sides,
moving it along and using the flour
as the thing that basically just sweeps the dough around.
The effect it has once you turn it, the dough into the basket,
is you tend to have this hole that's more about 2/3
of the inner side.
And that means that you haven't done a good job
at shaping the dough together.
As long as you don't feel like you
have a volcano's little crater here,
I would just leave the dough to that.
You don't want to overwork the dough.
This is a stage where you want to give
some strength and some force.
You want to give some breath, whatever word to you
means that you're giving life to this loaf.
But do not overdo it, because you
don't want to strangle all the fermentation activity that's
going on in here.
Here, what I'm looking for is for this
though to rise to just the top of this basket.
It should be about a finger away.
It can be up to the top but not beyond that.
If it's gone beyond, then you've over fermented the dough.
And more likely than not, in your oven,
the dough will collapse.
At that point, you can decide two things.
You can not bake your dough and use it for another use.
Or you can carry on baking it and know
that you're gonna have a crumb that's much denser
and use it to make French toast, for example, or croutons.
The dough is in the proofing basket.
And I'm going to let it rise for another two hours
in a warm, draft-free space.
Here, you really want to treat this loaf
as if it were a pet, a child that you really want to shield
from drastic environments.
So keep it in a stable environment, draft-free.
Cover it up, so that the bottom of the loaf
doesn't become crusty and doesn't impede the rise.
And two hours later, we'll have our loaf ready to bake.