French Pain Noir

Three little slices are all that's left of my journey to discover what Pain Noir - black bread - looks like. In one evening by the fire, we mopped up with this richly flavorful beauty of French origin. Yes, we nearly devoured an entire loaf in one sitting - what you see are remains of the day.

Notice, the bread is not black but it's certainly dark, and why not, since there's molasses and bittersweet chocolate in the dough. Mashed potatoes, too. Bernard Clayton, the master baker (now deceased) who shared the recipe in his "The New Complete Book of Breads" volume, suggests that it goes well with cheeses. Might I add that it also goes well with grilled chicken and roasted tomato basil soup paired with a good set of crackling logs? Trust me, it does. (If you make the soup, consider removing the pepper flakes, or plan to add cream and a pat of butter to lighten the fire.)

Now to divulge the truth: Either I messed up this bread by shoving it onto a hot baking stone, or we need to tweak the ingredients, because the dough is extremely hydrated at 88% and quite wet, loose and sticky. It cracked in the oven like Humpty Dumpty's head. During rising, I never saw this bread double in size as the recipe suggests. Who cares, when it comes out so scrumptious? Listen, cracks don't bother me because once you've sliced the bread, nobody knows.

Clayton suggests sprinkling kosher salt on the top before baking to give this bread a savory sensation against the sweetness. For this, I used the Murry River Pink Flake finishing salt, a product of Australia and available at Sur La Table. I went with pink flakes for their color and size, but a smoked Salish or Fleur de Sel would also be "yum toy," as my dear mentor in words Gay Smith used to say.

Next bread to tackle is the Pain de Campagne Poilane, which takes three days from starter and sponge to dough. I've mentioned before that Poilane is the famous bakery in Paris where taste as art is revealed. When I visited one of its outposts on Rue Grenelle last year, they had an Eiffel Tower in the window, entirely made of bread. This recipe is also in Clayton's book, but others also have attempted to capture versions of the legendary country loaf, including Peter Reinhart in "The Bread Baker's Apprentice." For more on the Poilane legacy, check out "The Village Baker" by Joe Ortiz.

All three of these books have now joined me by the fireside, and what good companions they are. Oh, the places we'll dough!

Bread for the Soul

I had 3 choices for a book to haul down to the courthouse for jury duty, mon dieu, not that! Two of the choices were bread books, the other was "Little Bee," a best-seller but one that I had been warned would make me question my character. That little step I was not ready for on a Monday morning headed to a large and chilly room filled with hundreds of people bearing up under the same dread as I was. Too early for character scrutiny.

Why take a bread book to court? It represented escape from everything around me - the prospect of catching the flu from those who were coughing loudly and often, of being seated on a jury and hearing awful details involving sawed-off shotguns, houses set on fire, or worse.

I considered taking "The Art and Soul of Baking," a book from Sur La Table, which would carry me off to thoughts of pastry as well as bread, but it had a big drawback, weighing in at 5 pounds. The other was Bernard Clayton's "New Complete Book of Breads," a better weight at 2 and a half pounds. Clayton understands the weaving of back stories and bread histories - how to transport you to a different time and place, how to see that bread come to life. He can take you below decks of the SS France to read about boulangers toiling in their skullcaps to produce thousands of fresh rolls for the passengers. He'll set you down beside Antonin Careme in the early 1800s with his daily bread recipe, surviving all these years. He knows a good detail when he sees it, like biscuits nicknamed "touch of grace," or a Viennese bread shaped like a Zeppelin. He knows all about taste, how to get it, shape it and bake it. He offers the breads the world adores; you can't help but drift away.

While sitting on various chairs and benches, I turned down the page ears on several fronts - for Pain Noir, a French black bread; for the Pain de Campagne Honfleur, from the Normandy coast. Also Pain de Campagne Poilane - well come on, how could I not want to throw that together, since I have visited Poilane in Paris in both of its city locations and once plunked down 49 Euros for one of their canvas-lined wicker banneton baskets. When you have eaten Poilane bread, you understand all things. It sticks to your soul like no other. Of course I can't re-create it in Dallas, not really. I have the same chance as making sourdough that tastes like a San Francisco boule. No, it can't be done, but it can be imagined. That is bread's power.

Thinking about it soothed me to the core. Believe me, I needed a core workout. I later made an absolute fool of myself in a room full of potential jurors hearing a robbery case. Robbery? Doesn't the story line of "Les Miserables" involve a theft of bread? No, I couldn't handle it. I owned up to my quirky biases and was out of there, cheeks flaming, bread book wedged under my coat.

Switching tracks, why is there a cupcake on this page? It's from one of the classes I taught at Sur. I like how the student didn't pipe one long curl of buttercream but broke it up into dollops hither and yon. It's not bread, but it has promise.

I think it might be good for the soul. If I can't eat it, at least I can think about it while choosing which bread to go bake. A bread that is braided into a beehive. Or something in black, I think. Pain Noir