November 13, 2006 - 8:45am
Article on 22-year-old running Poilane in Paris
Interesting piece on Apollonia Poilane, daughter of the Poilane who founded and ran the hyper-famous eponymously named Poilane bakery in Paris. Her parents died a few years ago in a helicopter accident. She's now at Harvard and heir to the family business.
Here's a link to the article.
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Thanks, JMonkey for posting the article. Good for her that she is keeping the tradition alive!
There is a fromagerie here in Lux that has Poilâne bread delivered from Paris twice a week. It is, indeed, expensive, but you can get a miche that weighs 2kgs (the fromagerie will also cut the miche into 250 or 500 gram pieces if you want a smaller amount). You know where your euros went, though. The bread really is amazing, and each day the flavor develops a bit more. Fantastic!
Interesting article. I found it astounding that they mix the ingredients, let it rest only one hour, shape it, let it rise, and then bake it. So all that flavor comes from the levain... unless that final rise is longer than it sounds. I've tasted their bread and it's fabulous, really something to aspire to.
That's pretty much the procedure I follow for my sourdough baking and after being told a few times I'm doing it wrong it's nice to know a well respected bakery is following the same procedure.
Here's a Wikipedia entry on Lionel Poilane, for those who want more info on him.
As for the relatively short fermentation time, I'd suspect that the article is probably a bit off. Even so, at 15,000 loaves a day, I'd imagine that the Poilane starter is well fed and extremely healthy .... :-)