Paulchens FoodBlog?!

While strolling through my most favorite foodblogs I found out that Sher at What Did You Eat? is kitchen of the month of the georgeous Bread Baking Babes!

Her post about a Poilane-Style Miche (never heard of that before) was so lovely and the bread looked so good that I really craved for a buttered slice of it. So I thought I may give it a try and see how it works out…

When it comes to bread baking I do not like to leave my comfort zone. I have a few bread recipes I feel good with and the nearly always work out the way I planned. With those I play around… ths’t my comfort zone so to say…
Something very unfamiliar for me is sourdough and baking a bread with sourdough (and even withour yeast) from scratch is a thing I never did before.

But I gave it a try and guess what? I had fun to see how the “flour and water mixture” changed from day to day and it seemed to work even for me! – thanks to Sher’s details instructions that is!!

I learned new terms like “seed culture” and “barm” and I could not wait till it was the day to bake the bread. This is a hard thing for me as well. Baking this bread from scratch means you need at least - uhm - 7 days?!

And I found out that the timings did not correspond very well to my working hours so I ended up doing most of the things somewhere in the middle of the night. Thank god we had a long weekend ;o)

I did some changes to the recipe posted at Sher’s tho ’cause I can’t use wheat.
So I used spelt and rye.

So here is what I did:

Poilane-Style Miche Recipe

This is an iconic bread from the famed bakery of Lionel Poilane, perhaps the best baker in the world. This bread is produced in his small bakery, The Boulangerie Poilane, in the latin quarter of Paris.

(The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Peter Reinhart)

Firm Starter

1 cup Barm
1 cup sifted medium grind whole rye flour
1 cup spelt flour
About 1/2 cup water, at room temperature

Final Dough

3 cups sifted medium grind whole rye flour
4 cups spelt flour
2 Tablespoons sea salt
2 to 2-3/4 cups water, lukewarm
Semolina flour for dusting

For the Seed culture and the Barm I substituted “unbleached high gluten or bread flour” with spelt flour.
For further instructions on how to please just read Sher’s post there you will find all the answers!

This is my bread:

It did not work out as fine as the others I have seen on several blogs. I think my dough was not enough hydrated as it broke more than it should and it did not rise as much as Sher said it should.
I also think I cut it too deep and that made it break open even more…

It’s my first ever sourdough bread I made from the very scratch and let me tell you: It smells divine. Did not cut or taste it yet as I took it out of the oven just a minute before I had to leave to work this morning!

Well, I really am curious how it will taste though and can’t wait to come home and gobble down a buttered slice!

And just in case you were wondering who the Bread Baking Babes are – here they are:
Notitie Von Lien (Lien), My Kitchen In Half-Cups (Tanna), Bake My Day (Karen), Cookie Baker Lynn (Lynn),I like To Cook (Sara) , A Fridge Full Of Food..And Nothing To Eat (Glenna), Lucullian Delights (Ilva), Grain Doe (Gorel), The Sour Dough (Mary aka Breadchick), Living On Bread And Water (Monique), Thyme For Cooking (Katie)

Be sure to visit them for way better versions of this yummy bread (and lots of other very yummy stuff too!!)!

Update 10:12 pm:

I love the bread!!
As I thought before next time I’ll need to use more water but it is ok tho for the first try! I ate some slices of the bread for dinner and it was wonderful!

Update II

I just got my Buddy Badge from dear Sher and I am very proud of it og course, see: