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APOLLONIA POILANE: What I like about sourdough is
you have a thick crust that's distinctive in color
and in thickness.
I like to have this tight crumb.
You get a sense in the movement of the way the dough was knead.
You have these wonderful smells of the wheat flour.
You have a little bit of the sourness of the sourdough.
And those are the qualities we're going
to look for in the final loaf.
To bake the loaf, you'll need to preheat the oven.
Once the oven is at the right heat,
I put a cocotte inside so that it warms up
the cocotte for about 25 minutes.
I use this Dutch oven so that I can have a stronger heat.
When you're at the bakery, we bake a batch of 30, 50, 100
loaves at a time.
And we have this momentum with the other loaves
and the proximity of the different loaves in the space.
And that helps the loaves grow.
Literally, the proximity of these different loaves
in the oven at a regular interval
helps and creates a momentum that makes for a nicer loaf.
So in using a Dutch oven, I'm trying
to recreate this closeness but also reinforce the heat.
My dough has proofed for about two hours.
It's reached the top of this basket.
This is just about the maximum you want to have it.
If it's a finger away from the top, that's great.
It should not have overflown.
If it has, bake it immediately.
The dough will likely collapse a little bit.
That's OK.
Maybe not entirely, but it'll just
be a little flatter, a little denser.
If you're still more than two fingers away from the top,
then maybe let it proof for another 10,
15 minutes but no more.
At this point, you don't want to over-touch the dough.
But you can get a sense and feel for the texture
by using the back of your hand.
So while it's a little sticky here,
you can feel that it's got fragility to it.
But it's got some body.
This is a good indication, but it's not a test.
I would really trust the rise more than the resistance
of the dough.
I'm going to set the dough aside and remove the Dutch oven
from the oven.
Quickly close the oven here.
Watch out for this is hot.
You can flour the inside.
And here, you are going to toss the dough inside
of the cocotte.
Because this is a flour surface, it
should just plop in as you heard that sound.
"Schploof."
But if it tends to stick, just keep it above.
And try and help it in by just scooping it inwards.
Just bear in mind this is warm.
Now, here I use one of my blades.
It's a razor blade.
It should be sharp and fresh.
You could use a very sharp knife.
It will be harder.
The advantage of a razor blade is that it's very thin.
Scoring is the last intervention you can do to the dough
before it goes into the oven.
It creates a direction to the way
the loaf will crackle in the oven.
I like to give it some simple shapes.
But as you start practicing your art of baking,
then you might get more into details.
The trick here is if your loaf has
risen a lot, make sure to score very
lightly, just marking the loaf top.
Conversely, if your loaf has been having a hard time rising,
this is a moment where you're going
to deeper and a little more forcefully
to give the dough some boost.
So I'm going to score a hash.
That's the easiest shape and the one
that you should start off with.
Now, watch out.
This is warm.
So create the two parallel lines on one
and then the same thing on the other side.
The dough will very quickly open up.
And at that point, you're going to want
to cover it up relatively fast and bring everything
into the oven.
This pot being warm, you want to make this gesture
relatively fast because the bottom part of the loaf
is already starting to bake.
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While a loaf is baking, I'm just going to flour this top
and show you different methods to score this loaf.
If you have a loaf that's really under-proofed,
this is a great opportunity for you
to work on your scoring skills.
In my recipe, I use a simple dash.
This is the one we've been doing at Poilane since 1932
and until 2000 when we started scoring a P.
That's around the time that I started apprenticing.
And my bakers have always told me
that when we used to do a hash, the dough reacted
in a different way than when we started doing the P.
So the scoring really impacts the way the dough rises.
And so start off with a hash, and then
as you build your confidence in your dough
and in your baking practice, venture off
to put your initials or create a landscape.
So if you're doing a hash, I would
use the bottom of the basket as your indication
of where to slash so just creating a hash here and here.
But then if you want to do something a little more
elaborate, say, a wheat ear, then we can do a little cut.
And this dough will collapse a little just
because it's under-proofed.
But you can get a sense by pulling it
what the design will look like.
If your dough is under-proofed, slashing it really deep, say,
like this and creating a really almost finger-deep slash,
you really can give the opportunity for the bread
to rise up to the occasion.
Conversely, if your dough has over-proofed,
then you want to be very delicate and just very slightly
caress open the dough.
Now this comparison allows you to see
what force you should put as you slash the dough open.
Scoring is really about directing the natural cracks
which will happen.
So you could even choose to not score whatsoever or just simply
do a big cross or just one big slot open.
If you over-score, what will happen
is that the dough will tend to collapse.
While initially, for an under-proofed dough,
it might help it get a boost, if you put too much air in it,
all of the air pockets, all of the structure
you've been working on for the past couple of hours
is just going to break through.
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Our loaf is ready.
And what you're looking for is a crust that is golden.
And you can bring it to a level that it's
bien cuit as we say in French.
I like bread when it's well cooked.
Thoroughly cooked bread is more digestible.
The baking is what breaks down the proteins in the bread.
So let's take this one out.
You can even use a wooden spatula to help you pull it up.
The main thing here is the loaf is hot.
So do watch out.
I'm going to bring this closer and hold it and knock it.
Now that clear sound, not muffled, just very clear
like I was knocking on a door--
that's a good sign.
Now, if you look at this loaf, it's
the minimum bake on the surface that I want.
Anything under this color is an indication
that it's probably not thoroughly cooked inside.
If not only do I have a very clear color on the outside,
but as I knock, it's muffled, you
can absolutely take this loaf.
Put it back in your Dutch oven.
Put it back in the oven for five, 10 minutes
and get a little more of a bake.
Once this loaf is out, it's on the rack,
you absolutely need to cool it.
I know that the smell of bread is irresistible.
But you must refrain from it.
Because as this bread is cooling down,
it's carrying on its baking.
I would leave the loaves to cool down for about an hour.
If you can hold it for a couple of seconds in your hands
without feeling that it's overly warm, then you're good.
After an hour, your loaf may be still a little warm inside.
And that's OK.
The residual heat in there will quickly
vanish as you cut through it.
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Once your loaf has cooled down, prop it up on the side.
And hold it at arm's length.
Holding it at arm's length it gives you more strength
to work through the crust.
Now, that sound, clear, simple, strong sound, is a good sign.
It indicates to me that the loaf is thoroughly cooked inside.
The moist dough is not muffling the sound of the knife cutting
through the crumb.
I like to cut my bread this way because it gives me
a better grip.
If you're cutting through size like this,
you have a much wider surface here
to cut through and that much more opportunity
of going a little sideways and sometimes
even cutting your fingers.
So it's just about stability as you're cutting through.
So I just cut through this loaf.
And it's nice to look at and compare both halves.
The air pockets are regular.
There's one or two that are a little bigger here and here.
But overall, you have this tight crumb.
You get a sense in the movement of the way the dough was knead.
You see the sort of, like, circular movement in it.
You have a thick crust that's distinctive in color
and in thickness to the crumb.
What I like about this dough is that it's nicely risen.
So it's not the same height in the center
as it is on the last third.
You have a little bit of the sourness of the sourdough.
But especially in your first batches,
that may not be as potent as in the batches you develop later.
You have these wonderful smells of the wheat flour.
You have the presence of the sourdough.
But overall, you get a sense of a density
and thickness in those smells.
They're lingering, and they're present.
And those are all good signs.
This bread will keep for five to seven days
because it's got a dense structure.
If the air pockets were bigger, the bread would dry out faster.
Because this is quite a complex and hard dough to make,
what I would recommend when you're working on this dough
is to keep a log.
Take a sheet of paper.
Write your impressions, your feelings as you
walk through the different processes.
When we train our bakers at the bakery,
we have nine months to attune our five
senses to how it is that the perfect loaf will rise out
of the oven.
Over the next couple of months or years
that you practice your baking with my methodology,
you will start developing this library of gestures.
Attune your five senses to how to bake
a constant and beautiful loaf, not
be discouraged by failed attempts.
We've all made mistakes.
That's what our apprenticeship is about.
And that's what your journey is about.
All right.
So I'm cutting through the middle
here and then cutting through a slice.
Still a regular crumb.
It has a rather sponge-ish texture here.
It's ever so slightly moist.
I would recommend using salted butter.
And maybe it's just my own personal taste.
But it just brings out all of the flavors you've worked for.
And this will make for the perfect bite.
Mm-hmm.
The first bite into your first loaf,
the first bite into your nth loaf,
there is nothing that makes me happier than biting
through a fresh piece of bread.
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This sourdough bread is not all that big.
So you can probably will eat it in the next three to four days.
But to keep it up to a week, try and make sure
that you put all the pieces together as if you
were to rebuild your sourdough.
And you can leave it on a piece of wood and cover it up.
What you're trying to do is actually strike the balance
between dryness and humidity.
The cloth that you surround yourself with
will help absorb the excess humidity
or give back a little bit of humidity to the loaf.
If you are in an extremely dry environment,
the dryness will go through the weave.
In that case, grab a plastic bag.
Cover it up.
But still use a cloth so that it has
a little bit of an in-between.
If you're in a very, very humid environment,
still use this cloth.
Just make sure you change the cloth as soon as it's humid.
If you're going to freeze the bread,
make sure to freeze it in as big pieces as possible.
A half is ideal.
Wait until it's entirely cooled down before you freeze it.
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I'm going to walk you through some mistakes that happen
as we're baking the loaves.
You may never run into these mistakes,
or you may do it over and over again
until you manage to overcome it.
Let's start with some raw dough.
In this case, I wanted to demonstrate
the over-proofed dough.
The over-proofed dough will have stuck to the linen.
So this if I were to bake it would be extremely sticky.
And it will deflate as well.
This conversely is an under-proofed dough.
It hasn't risen enough and has somewhat collapsed inside.
At this point, I would still bake the loaf.
But just don't expect the dough to be very airy.
It will be very compact and tight.
You can also use this for an entirely different use.
What I would do is just use it as sourdough
for a batch of pancakes instead of using yeast.
Moving on to the baked doughs, this
is a range of problems you may run into as you're
baking your loaves.
This loaf is clearly overcooked.
It's burnt, in fact.
The black on the crust is indicative of its being burnt.
This burnt crust can come from two things.
Either your oven heats up too much.
And in that case, you need to adjust your temperature.
Or you've left your loaf for too long.
In this case, we have two issues.
First, I slashed too deep.
And so we see on the side that we have very wide scorings.
And while you may be looking for it,
it actually doesn't make for a great rise
and doesn't really help the momentum.
And in this one, you have these very large air pockets.
Especially in your first bakes, you might have that.
And the dough here seems to have almost like two circles.
This probably has been fostered by the way
we've slashed the dough.
In this example, we have bread that's under-proofed.
And there's several ways I can tell.
First, comparing it with loaves that are thoroughly proofed,
it's not as high.
I think what happened here was the dough went into the oven
and had a crust.
As it was proofing in the basket, it may have dried.
And as a result of that, even though we
slashed through the dough, that dryness
prevented the loaf from rising further.
I can tell this by the dryness around the scoring
and the wrinkles on the side.
In this loaf, I'm looking at a loaf that was undercooked.
This very blond wheat-colored loaf
doesn't have enough of a bake.
If you've baked it the right amount of time,
that means your oven needs to be set at a higher temperature.
I would not use this bread to eat plain.
I would toast it.
The other way I can tell that this is undercooked
is by knocking.
The sound is a little more muffled and a little less
clear.
In showing you these examples, whether they're
raw dough or baked loaves, I want to bring and feed
your mental library of what the right look, feel, scent,
touch is.
As you develop your baking practice,
you will make this second nature.
But this is a jumpstart.
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