blog – Page 15

The Grain Gathering 2015

Jumma soft white wheat berries from Pie Ranch Farm in Pescadero, California

I just got back from this year’s Grain Gathering (GG), held as usual on the beautiful grounds on Washington State University Extension in Mount Vernon, Washington. I have been attending the GG since its inauguration in 2011 (back then it was called the Kneading Conference West and changed its name only last year). I enjoyed each and every one of them. This year was no exception. Except that it was maybe even better than the four previous ones. Which came as no surprise. Like good wine, GG gets better as it ages.
Of course some things don’t change. The setting is as lovely as ever…

…the bread good for body and soul…

…all other food beautiful and tasty…

…and I could wax lyrical about the good-natured atmosphere, the sheer pleasure of spending two and a half days in the company of others sharing the same interests and passion, the thrill of hearing big-name bakers and other experts in the field talk about their work and share their know-how, the excitement of catching up with friends and acquaintances but I have covered that angle exhaustively over the years and it is decidedly not fun to write the same thing over and over again (not to mention reading it!). Although if you do want to refresh your memory, you’ll find the links here.
So I’ll go straight to sharing what I saw and heard. Of course, this year like the other years, I had to choose between many appealing classes, workshops, roundtables and talks held concurrently, which means that that my account can only be partial and my outlook limited. I sure wish I could have attended everything. Hopefully other bloggers will cover some of the ones I didn’t get to. For a look at the full schedule, click here.

What struck me as different this year may not be so much the level of energy (it is always tremendous) but how far we have come. Four years ago we were dreaming of bringing back local grain but wondering how farmers could be enticed to grow it if, for lack of local milling infrastructures, bakers had no way to get the flour. Well, today more more bakers are buying small mills to mill the grain themselves. With the help of experienced millers/bakers such as Dave Miller in Oroville, California, they are learning to work with freshly milled flours and clearly excited at the realm of flavors now open to them. Nary a white baguette was to be seen at the GG this year: whole-grain ruled and Dave’s class was mobbed.

Cliff Leir of Fol Épi in Victoria, British Columbia -who seemed like the odd man out four years ago when he showed up with armfuls of wholegrain loaves and the plans to his mill- could be seen under a tent helping Scott Mangold of Bread Farm in nearby Edison, Washington, build his own mill and I heard many other bakers enquire about small mills or comparing notes on the ones they had just acquired. Independent mills are starting up too: Nan Kohler‘s Grist & Toll in Pasadena is one beautiful example. If flour can be milled, farmers can grow grain. With the help of The Bread Lab at WSU Extension, they are learning to select varieties which are not only well adapted to their climate, soil, etc. but offer the flavor and nutritional value craft bakers (and their customers) are looking for not to mention the functional properties required to bake a good loaf.
Still in its infancy, the movement is clearly growing. To most home bakers though, availability remains an issue: living as I do on California’s Central Coast, the only locally grown grain I can get without going online is to be found either very occasionally at my neighborhood farmers’ market or (until they run out) at the farm stand up the coast, in both case at a price that would make it difficult to bake with it everyday. So yes, we still have a ways to go but at least we are moving in the right direction and nowhere is it more obvious than at the yearly GG. If all goes well, I am hoping to post (in various degrees of detail) about the following:

Keynote addresses by Marie-Louise Risgaard and Lot Roca Enrich. Marie-Louise is a baker and teacher and co-owner of Skaertoft Mølle in southern Denmark. Lot is a miller who took over Harinera Roca from her grandfather 25 years ago. Her mill is located in Catalonia, Spain. A welcome look at some of the challenges of organic milling in Europe!
Dave Miller‘s class on 100% fresh-milled whole-grain bread: I was only able to attend the milling part but with the help of a generous friend who took lots of videos, I will be able to cover more. Dave kindly sent me his formulas which I will post as well.
Jeffrey Hamelman‘s flatbread class: five flatbreads, all baked in a wood-fired oven. Exciting international flavors. You’ll enjoy reading all about it. My favorite was the socca (no formula but some tips and one or two pictures) and the anise-chocolate dessert bread (I got the formula for the dough but I think Jeff winged it for the topping, so you’ll have to wing it too if you make it).
Andrew Ross‘s presentation “The Skinny on Gluten.” The goal was to straighten out the facts. It was so packed with technical info though that I am not sure I can do it justice. But if my notes make sense, I’ll share them and you can take it from there.
Conversation with bakers: a roundtable moderated by Leslie Mackie of Macrina Bakery in Seattle. Lively and thought-provoking!
Hand-making whole-grain pasta, a demo by Justin Dissmore, pasta chef at Café Lago in Seattle. He uses Edison wheat and from the tasting we got, I sure wish I could get it where I live.
And last but not least: Whole-grain artisan bread for the home-baker, a lively demo acted out (you’ll see, there is no other word for it) by bakers Josey Baker (yes, that is his real name) of The Mill in San Francisco and Jonathan Bethony, resident baker at The Bread Lab, and by some accounts the baker with the best job in the world since he spends his time testing and baking with the stars. No formulas but plenty of tips!

So stay tuned (and please be patient as it might take some time).

A Mill in Brittany: Moulin de Trémillec

Once upon a time the wheels of some five thousand watermills used to churn up the rivers of Brittany while the wings of three thousand windmills rustled in its salty breezes. One can only imagine the landscape pulsating with the tremendous whispering, humming, whistling, knocking and gurgling that must have resonated all around: today many of the mills are gone (quite a few were destroyed during the world wars) or no longer active.

Built on the banks of the Pont-L’Abbé River in pays bigouden, Moulin de Trémillec is one of the surviving ones. René Bilien, who operates it with his son André, has been a miller since age 15. He was actually born in another mill, near Pont-L’Abbé. His grandpa bought Trémillec in 1932 and operated it with his own son, also called René, the current René’s Dad, now defunct.
The mill dates back to the 1600s. Originally there was only one building, half mill, half living area. Now the miller lives next door. “Our house is new,” says Monsieur Bilien. A plaque above the front door to the adjacent home indicates it was indeed built in 1837, a mere 178 years ago…
In the old days the mill was all one-level. Grandfather Bilien added an upper floor in 1932-1933. The present René Bilien added the attic in 1950.

On the day we visited, André Bilien, the son, was out and about on business and we didn’t see him. Hopefully I’ll get to talk to him when we next visit Brittany (this tour of the mill dates back to our time in Brittany earlier this year): I’d love to hear his take on the future of small-scale milling in the region, something I forgot to ask his Dad about, maybe because I was so taken by his evocation of a not-so-distant past and so captivated by the many remaining signs of its existence.

René and Odette Bilien

Moulin de Trémillec produces buckwheat and rye flours. The Biliens don’t buy buckwheat from the local farmers because they lack the proper equipment to dry it. “In the old days everybody had a small buckwheat field. They did the harvest, they spread the grain out in the barn and then they walked through it every day to aerate it.” Farmers’ families no longer do that but buckwheat must still be dried out right after the harvest or it starts germinating and becomes useless. Some buckwheat is still grown locally, essentially for tourists, but the bulk of the buckwheat milled and eaten in Brittany is imported from China, Lithuania or Poland. In the old days they used to blend imported and local. They no longer do because tourists are usually big on terroir and insist on single-origin local buckwheat.

The Biliens sell mostly to bakers as well as to other millers who themselves only mill wheat flour.

Imported buckwheat

Local buckwheat

I ask Madame Bilien whether she prefers the local buckwheat or the imported one. She doesn’t hesitate: “I like the imported one better. That’s the one we ate in my family and I am used to it.” As for the rye, right now it comes from the Châteauroux area in Central France. The wheat that can be seen growing in the neighboring fields goes to feed the livestock.

Oops, a glitch!

Fixing the problem

Nowadays the mill uses both river power and electricity. It is equipped with a roller mill, a stone mill and a hammer mill. The roller mill is used for buckwheat (it does a very good job of hulling the grain), the stone mill for rye and the hammer mill for animal feed. In the old days they used the old mill stone to mill oat and barley for feed. It took one hour to produce 100 kg. Nowadays it takes 5 minutes.

Monsieur Bilien shows us three different garnitures for sifting the rye flour: from T-85 (with the least germ and bran) to T-170 (with all the germ and bran), the one in-between being T-130…

…and he explains that the stones are dressed once a year (in the old days, it used to be once a week). A stone is now good for three generations of millers as it only looses one-tenth of a millimeter each time it is dressed.
He also explains that the buckwheat is milled in seven separate steps in order to separate the kernel from the hull as gently as possible. He describes the various stages but there is no way I can take notes fast enough to remember each of them. So you’ll have to take my word for it: yes, it is a complex endeavor but it is also beautiful like a choreography lovingly retained through the ages. We taste the flour which tastes a bit like chestnut flour. We buy a couple of bags.

Monsieur Bilien shows us buckwheat hulls, left over from the milling. He sells them to gardeners for use in rose gardens: they are neutral: they don’t add anything to the soil but they don’t harm it either and they are helpful in keeping weeds at bay. Chuckling, he tells us that some tourists insist on whole-grain buckwheat flour, meaning that they want the hulls milled into it. Never mind that all buckwheat flour is wholegrain by definition and that the hull has no taste and no nutritional value! Flour with some ground hull added back actually sells briskly.

Monsieur Bilien also tells us that his dad, who was born in 1902, died in 1974 at age 72: not only was he a smoker but his lungs had been damaged by constant exposure to flour. He himself doesn’t smoke. He is 84 and feels just fine. He says the mill sure keeps him in shape. Handshakes all around and we are on our way, grateful for the warm welcome we received and very much looking forward to our galette dinner.

Buckwheat Blast in Brittany

I guess I could say we went on a buckwheat bender a few weeks ago while visiting family in Brittany. Our niece Anne-Laure – who lives near Quimper in Pays bigouden – shares my love of blé noir (literally “black wheat”) as buckwheat is often called in France and, to our delight, she wove it into almost every meal, be it at local crêperies when we lunched out or at home where she prepared local specialties for us. If that wasn’t enough, in between our several buckwheat encounters, she took us sightseeing. I hadn’t been back to Brittany since my kids were, well, kids, and I had forgotten about beautiful it is. She led us for long walks along the shore…

…to old seaside villages…

…and around the countryside where the fields were abloom with flowers of all kinds (except for buckwheat for which we were too early)…

Originally from Asia but grown in Brittany since the fifteenth century from seeds brought back by returning Crusaders, buckwheat is in the same family as sorrel or rhubarb. While it isn’t a cereal and contains no gluten, it is rich in fibers, amino-acids and antioxydants and therefore very much appreciated for its nutritional value. Seeded in late spring (to avoid frost which it doesn’t tolerate), it is harvested from mid-September to mid-October.
In the Brittany of yesteryear, it was part of a subsistence diet together with pork or beef fat and whatever meat or fish was occasionally available. Poor local farmers and fishermen often lacking the necessary ingredients and/or fuel to make bread, used to make a sort of buckwheat mush which they boiled inside a linen bag alongside bacon or meat scraps, a recipe known as kig-ha-farz (literally “far in a bag”). In subsequent variations, the buckwheat mush was thickened in a pot over the fire, then poured into a dish and baked in an oven. It then become a far, as in far breton (a popular dessert often made with dried plums). Today far breton is usually made with wheat flour.
To fully understand why buckwheat was so readily adopted back in the old days, one should also remember that, by law, farmers bringing wheat or other grains to the miller had to pay a tax to the local lord for the use of the mill not to mention a percentage to the miller as well as a tithe to the church. Buckwheat, le blé du pauvre (the poor man’s wheat) was exempt of such dues and could legally be milled on demand at home in rudimentary wooden mills. Moreover its flowers were extremely attractive to bees, which made for bumper crops of fragrant honey. On the downside, its leaves were toxic to cattle and couldn’t be used as straw or hay. Interestingly, popular belief held that blé noir was a creation of Satan while wheat, which produces white flour, was credited to God.
Had our stay in Brittany be longer, we would certainly have seen many more examples of the use of buckwheat in cooking and baking but because of our time constraints, we experienced buckwheat in four of its avatars only: fish and chips, galettes, kouign-amann and farz. We didn’t make it to any of the amazing bakers I had heard of in the region (they were either inland or further north) and I saw no trace of buckwheat bread at the regular bakeries we saw along the way. Which means I am already making a list for next time! Meanwhile here is a recap of our buckwheat encounters.

Buckwheat fish and chips
Anne-Laure had suggested we meet in Concarneau’s ville close (walled city) where she knew of a little restaurant featuring “fish and chips breizh.” Breizh is Bretton for Brittany and in a food context, it is often a strong hint that buckwheat is around. She was curious to find out and once she told me about it, so was I.

I can’t say that I actually tasted the buckwheat but the fish was extremely fresh (any fresher, it would have jumped on the plate by itself) and the outer layer of the fillets was arrestingly crunchy: they had been perfectly deep-fried in a finely textured batter. Anne-Laure asked the owner what percentage of buckwheat she used but she wouldn’t say. It had taken her a while to develop the recipe and, understandably, she didn’t feel like jumpstarting the process for the competition. Coming from the United States, what struck me the most is how small (three pieces) the serving was compared to what we are used to back home…

Buckwheat kouign-amann
After lunch we made for Le Guilvinec, a major fishing hub where our niece had said we would watch the fishing ships come in and buy fresh seafood for dinner.

But on the way over, we glimpsed a road sign advertising a buckwheat kouign-amann. Since kouign-amann (Bretton for “butter cake”) is usually made with wheat flour, we were intrigued enough to stop.

The legend says that the cake was invented in the late nineteenth century by a Bretton baker who found himself one day short on flour but long on butter and sugar. I was amazed to see how different the cake we got was from the leavened laminated pastries generally known as kouign-amann. So was it the local version of the real thing or a tourist trap? As we were leaving, we saw a passel of silver-haired seniors exit a bus and head determinedly towards the store (which offered souvenirs as well as local bakery items), so who knows? In any case, such as it was, our buckwheat kouign-amman had a pleasant nutty flavor and if you could get over the amount of butter and sugar (the Man clearly had no problem with that), it was a lovely dessert, more flavorful (and actually less sweet) than the wheat version (the person behind the counter kindly had kindly let us sample both).

Farz en sac (literally mush in a bag)
In our honor, Anne-Laure decided to make far en sac one night. Since we were out and about all day, she didn’t have time to make a true kig-ha-farz, so she decided to boil the farz on its own in salted water seasoned with seaweed and to serve it alongside fillets of lieu jaune (pollock) gently cooked over a bed of sautéed leeks. She already had the bag (which she had fashioned out of an old linen dish towel), she had buckwheat flour, she had sea salt, she had eggs, she had cream and butter, and she had not one but two identical recipes (from the back of the bags of flour). We were in business!

(Anne-Laure used two different flours because she had some flour leftover from another recipe).

I found a gold mine of information on farz in Fars bretons et Kig-Ha-Farz by Patrick Hervé. While researching his book, he had talked to many elders (some of whom were born in the 1890s) who told him that there was no vegetables in kig-ha-farz until after the French Revolution and that the authentic recipe actually called only for meat and buckwheat. The farz was also sometimes boiled separately in water, with a bit of lard added for taste. When a household had no dedicated bag, the homemaker would either use a dish towel (as Anne-Laure did) or sacrifice an old shirt and use the sleeves, seams on the outside, (one sleeve for wheat and one for buckwheat). After use, the bag was rinsed out, never washed. Fully seasoned, the best ones were kept in the same family for generations. Some seniors recalled that the boiled buckwheat mush sometimes became so compact that it could be sliced and that leftovers were pan-fried the following day. Others said it should crumble when taken out of the bag so that it can be rolled almost as fine as couscous. Differences in texture may be due to cooking times and to the various ingredients used or skipped (poor families sometimes had nothing more than buckwheat and water, sometimes milk, at their disposal). It’d be interesting to experiment. As it was, Anne-Laure’s farz was of the crumbly sort and the perfect foil for the delicate taste of the just caught fish. Merci, Anne-Laure!!! It was a memorable dinner.

Galettes de sarrasin (buckwheat crêpes)
On our last night, our niece took out her billig (crêpe maker) and made galettes.

Since we had been on a steady diet of buckwheat crêpes whenever we lunched out, she first checked with us to make sure we hadn’t been over-crêped. We had not. Actually we had heard so much about Anne-Laure’s galettes through the family grapevine that we would have been disappointed to leave Brittany without having any. So once again she whipped out her buckwheat flour, took an egg out of the fridge, measured milk and water, and went for it.

I wish I had taken more pictures but the minute Anne-Laure put the first galette on the table, all thoughts of reporting left my mind. Let us just say that of all our buckwheat encounters during this trip, galettes de blé noir were my absolute favorites. Especially Anne-Laure’s… I could practically live on those! And in case you are wondering about the technique involved in using a bilig, here is an informative video from the Krampouz website:

It looks simple but it isn’t. As I discovered from experience, working a bilig is a lot like getting into Carnegie Hall, it requires a lot of practice. But then what doesn’t?

Gâteau nantais

Many thanks to Éric and Cathy for generously agreeing to share their recipe.

Note: The amounts given for the syrup have been edited to reflect the quantity actually needed for the recipe (although it doesn’t hurt to make more as it keeps beautifully in the fridge and can be used on babas and other cakes).

Makes 5 individual cakes (100g each)

1. Rhum syrup
Ingredients

74g water
100g sugar
174g strong dark rhum (110 proof if possible) (PBC uses rhum ambré 54°)

Process
Duration: 15 minutes

Add water and sugar to a pot and bring to a boil
Let mixture cool, then add the rhum
Reserve in a cool spot

2. Cake batter

Ingredients

130g sucre
105 g butter
85g white almond flour
35g pastry flour
130g eggs
3g fine salt
30g strong dark rhum

Process

Duration: 25 minutes

The day before: take the butter out of the fridge and leave it at room temperature overnight so that it is soft and creamy
On the day of the baking: mix it (either by hand or on first speed in a mixer) with sugar and almond flour
Slowly add the eggs
Mix well, but do not whip
Sift the flour and add it all at once to the mixture
Add rhum at the end. Mix well
Oil five cake pans (10 cm x 2 cm) (foil is fine) with melted butter, using a brush
Using a pastry bag or a spoon, pour 100 g of batter into each pan
Pre-heat oven to 350-375°F (180-190°C)
Bake for 18 to 20 minutes till the cakes turn slightly golden
Test with a sharp knife (the blade must come out clean)
Take the cakes out and pour on each 1 or 2 teaspoons of rhum syrup (according to taste)
Let cool thoroughly before unmolding.

3. Glaze

Ingredients

20g dark rhum
40 g hot (122°F/50°C) water
360g icing sugar

Process

Duration: 5 minutes

Sift icing sugar
Add hot water and rhum to sugar
Mix well with a spoon

4. Glazing

Duration: 10 minutes

To facilitate glazing, it is highly recommended to first refrigerate the cakes for one to two hours. They will be less brittle and much easier to unmold and glaze.

Unmold the cakes and put them upside down (smaller diameter surface down)
Using a tablespoon, put up to two spoonfuls of glaze on the cakes
Using a small spatula, smooth out the glaze (making concentric circles from the center towards the edges). Don’t strive for perfection, some irregularities should disappear as the sugar firms up
Put the cakes back in the fridge, glazing facing up
Take them out one or two hours before serving.

Tips

Gâteau nantais is best after resting for one or two days. Plan accordingly if making it for a special occasion
If making it in a bakery setting, don’t unmold the cakes as they would dry out too fast. Glaze them in their pans making sure to cover any and all space between pan and cake (see picture below) so that the flavor of the rhum doesn’t escape (that last tip was contributed by Cathy and, boy, does she know what she is talking about!)
Enjoy!

Meet the Baker Éric Marché

Meet the Baker: Éric Marché

For me, stepping into Boulangerie Pains, Beurre et Chocolat (PBC), in Nantes, France, was like entering Dame Tartine’s famous edible palace (if you didn’t grow up to the accents of Il était une dame Tartine you may need to check out the English version of the lyrics to see what I am talking about): my pulse quickened and my brain went into serotonin overdrive as I took in the dazzling display of breads, bretzels, viennoiseries and pastries. I had definitely entered another, wondrous, dimension. The young salesperson flashed me a glorious smile. Before I could introduce myself, Éric Marché stepped out of the lab and came towards me. He too was smiling. We shook hands and talked a while. Then, picking up a buckwheat Menhir nantais (a menhir is a standing stone), one of his signature breads, he good-naturedly agreed to pose for a picture before shepherding me to the back to put my coat down and meet his wife Cathy. Five minutes later we were chatting like old friends.

Like several of the bakers I have met over the years, Éric came to bread from another walk of life. He was 40, working for a regional newspaper and living in southwestern France when he switched tracks. He was already a serious home baker: “I couldn’t find bread I liked where we lived. The only way to get the kind of bread I was looking for was to make it myself.” Five years earlier, Cathy had quit her job as a business facilitator working for the local chamber of commerce to become a pastry chef. Now it was his turn. He applied to École Banette near Orléans and was accepted. Within six months, he had graduated with two diplomas: the CAP (certificat d’aptitude professionnelle or certificate of professional competency) and the BP (brevet professionnel, a higher professional certificate). Within the Banette system, a beginning baker may be supported by a miller who helps him or her get a foot in the door by providing market research, technical and commercial assistance, etc., in exchange of which the baker becomes a customer. Éric and Cathy thus learned of a bakery coming up for sale in Le Croisic on the coast of Brittany, fifty miles or so west of Nantes. (Le Croisic is right near Guérande, known worldwide for its famous sea-salt). They sold everything they owned and in 2004, as soon as school let out for the summer, they uprooted themselves and their three kids and moved to Brittany.

Baguette de l’Erdre (tradition au levain)

The bakery was a big one. In high season when business was brisk, it employed up to six people in the back and seven in the front: Éric and Cathy worked hard and managed to increase production by forty percent compared to the previous owners. But the low season was long (Le Croisic mostly comes to life when school is out: to give you an idea, the bakery used to sell one thousand and five hundred baguettes a day in the summer against two hundred in the winter), the miller’s flour contained more additives than Éric cared to use and the work wasn’t nearly as creative as he had hoped: locals were not really interested in trying out different breads. By 2007, they knew they had to move to a larger city and become independent. They picked Nantes partly because they wanted to stay in the Loire region and partly because competition was fierce in the city: there were many excellent bakers there including La Petite Boulangerie, owned and run by MOF Franck Dépériers, (MOF means Meilleur Ouvrier de France). Making it in Nantes would definitely be a challenge. But at that point in their lives, a challenge was exactly what they were looking for.

Brioche

Éric and Cathy found a bakery in Saint-Félix, a lively and prosperous part of the city, in a spot where there had always been a bakery although at the time the premises were reduced to bare walls. Once again they sold everything (at a loss because they were still paying back their loan) and moved. They chose a local mill, Minoterie Girardeau, which had been in the same family for four generations and still stone-milled all of its organic flours. By then it was 2008. They went to work. This time though Cathy was no longer in the back making chocolate (something she had greatly enjoyed doing in Le Croisic’s cool climate and big lab): the new lab was simply too warm and too small. So she put on a new hat and took charge of sales and catering. “I love interacting with people, so I am fine,” she told me with a twinkle in the eyes before leaving the floor to Éric, only to reappear a few minutes later with a luscious little cake that I was made to sample on the spot, the gâteau nantais, a regional specialty. The taste was like nothing I had every had before: a cross between a French almond cake and a baba-au-rhum. Now I am not a cake person and I never liked rhum very much (my older brother’s favorite cake was baba-au-rhum and I always dreaded his birthday growing up) but were I to be magically transported to Dame Tartine‘s actual palace, Éric and Cathy’s gâteau nantais is what I would wish the walls to be made of! “Very easy to make!,” proclaims Éric, “The secret is to use good butter, good rhum (and a lot of it) and the best almonds you can afford.” There was indeed so much rhum in the slice I had that, had I indulged in a second one, I would probably have been over the legal alcohol limit for driving. Éric and Cathy generously offered to share the recipe for their gâteau nantais before I even asked.

But back to bread. Everything in the bakery (including viennoiseries) is leavened with a natural starter. Éric keeps several different ones, some of them seasonal.

A liquid starter (100% hydration) based on T65, a farine de tradition française, a wheat flour to which no additive can legally be added and which retains 0.62 % to 0.75 % minerals (see this classification of French flours – in French). Used for baguette de tradition.
A firm starter based on organic T80 wheat flour (flour which retains 0.75% à 0.90% minerals). Used for all organic breads besides the kamut and the spelt.
A firm spelt starter. Used for the kamut and spelt bread because of its lower gluten content.
A high-gluten starter based on farine de gruau (T45). Used at Christmas time for panettone.
A levain nantais: liquid starter based on farine de tradition to which beurre roux (brown butter) is added at feeding time. Used for viennoiseries as well as for fouace, a regional bread traditionally made at vendanges (grape harvest) time.
A starter based on levain nantais to which brown sugar syrup is added at feeding time. Used for fouace as well.

For baguette dough, Éric feeds the starter and lets it ferment for two hours. Next he incorporates flour and water by mixing them together for three minutes, lets the mixture autolyse for two hours, does the final mix (four minutes on first speed), lets it bulk ferment at room temperature for two or three hours, divides and shapes, then retards it for sixteen to twenty-four hours. He explains that by treating the dough gently and barely mixing it, he helps preserve the aromas and taste a prolonged high-speed mixing would inevitably destroy.

Menhir nantais

The menhir nantais is made with 15% sarrasin (buckwheat) and 85% farine de tradition and leavened with firm levain. But Éric roasts 5% of the buckwheat flour which gives the bread the unmistakable aroma of the crêpes de sarrasin (buckwheat crêpes) Brittany is justly famous for.

Buckwheat flour: roasted (top) and raw (bottom)

Visually, it is hard to tell the two flours apart but the minute your nose comes into play, you know which is which.

Buckwheat dough, retarding (for up to 48 hours)

Everyone has a favorite bread, right? Éric’s is the tourte de seigle (100% rye) with its subtle hints of honey and spices.

Mine is the tourte de sarrasin, a buckwheat loaf so powerfully aromatic I took one home and had a slice for breakfast for the remainder of our stay in western France. Sliced, toasted and spread with butter speckled with sel de Guérande, it tastes like Brittany itself. So, yes, I am a convert and next time I make buckwheat bread, I too will roast 5% of the flour.

In 2013, PBC won the fourth spot among a hundred or so bakeries selected to compete at the national level in M6 TV show La Meilleure boulangerie de France.

In the two weeks following the announcement of the results, traffic increased by fifty percent: people came in for the menhir, for the gâteau nantais, for the bi-color croissants and for other viennoiseries.

Croissant & moulin à vent au citron (lemon pinwheel)

Pain aux raisins (raisin roll) and raspberry croissant

When traffic went back to normal, Éric found out that his regular customers had become more adventurous: they were willing to try different grains and to trust him with new flavors. Today he makes an average of thirty-two different breads on any given week, including eight or nine organic ones. There is a rule in the lab that everyone must come up with a new bread or viennoiserie every month: some of these creations make it into the bakery’s regular répertoire. So it went for l’Italienne (made with herbs and tomatoes on ciabatta dough)…

… and for the Algeria-inspired Mathloun, among others.

At PBC, flours are either organic or the product of sustainable farming. Ingredients are sourced locally whenever possible: salt comes from Guérande, butter from Laiterie de Montaigu in nearby Vendée, honey from Ruchers du Pays blanc in Brittany, etc. Unsold bread goes to food banks and customers can buy an extra baguette and leave it at the bakery for the first person in need who will walk in and ask for it. Cathy keeps track on a big slate behind the register. On any given day, an average of fifteen baguettes are thus shared. I love it.

When asked what best advice he would have for a young baker, Éric doesn’t hesitate: “Your first concern should be taste. Shape, length, grignes (cuts), they all matter, but at the end of the day, you don’t share a shape, you share a taste. Never lose track of that.” Being a baker is a demanding job: it requires long hours (Éric and Cathy are on their feet from 4 AM to 8 PM with a thirty-minute nap in early afternoon) and it seriously disrupts your social life. Looking back though, they only have one regret: that they didn’t start at a younger age. But their three kids have remained their first tasters and customers and now that a grandchild has joined the family, they know the taste of good bread will pass on to yet another generation. If that isn’t a good enough reason to get up at dawn and fire up the oven, then what is?

Crème des pains

Left: Seeded country loaf. Right: Le Rustique. Front: Le Norvégien

A slice of Norvégien

Crumbs

PBC makes no gluten-free bread
All flour blends are done in-house
Except for the baguette, all bread is sold by weight
Dough for the baguette is hydrated at 78%. The starter gets only one feeding and a two-hour fermentation before being put to work. It gets incorporated in the final dough at the same time as the coarse sea salt
All seeds are toasted then soaked
To roast the flour, Éric puts it in a 320°F oven for a total of fifteen minutes (mixing it every five minutes to prevent it from burning)
Spelt bread contains 40% seeds (sunflower, soy, buckwheat and brown flax). Made with malt syrup and firm levain and hydrated at 120%, it keeps five to six days and is a best seller
The fruit purées that go into some viennoiseries contain only 10% sugar
Crème des pains is made with farine de tradition and crème fraîche. It has a brown butter aroma
The Saint-Félix is made with farine de tradition and wheat germ. It has a thick crust and a robust chew
Le Norvégien is made with three different whole-grain organic flours (spelt, rye and wheat), six different seeds and three kinds of dried fruit (fig, cranberry and apricot). It bakes for two and a half hours in large 3-kg pans. It keeps for several days
Salt content: from 1.77% for baguette and related doughs down to 1.13% for rye, with spelt and kamut hovering at 1.50%.

Moulin à vent au chocolat (Chocolate pinwheel)

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