How a Fougasse is Cut

A Morning at the Boulangerie

It was a fly on the wall sort of day. As we walked in the door, one of the large mixers was eating its dough (truly). A mechanical take off on the blob... but backwards? Jean Pascal did a quick hello and the baker's hand shape (back of hand to back of hand) before returning to the onerous task of peeling dough off the underside of this motor. We watched, a bit taken aback, but fascinated nonetheless, as he scooped up the heavy orange dough (for his orange and chocolate flavored fougasse) and carried it in three portions over to the alternate machine.

To get out of the way, but also because it's great fun, I took my group back to the baguette corner. There, the tallest of the bakers was hunched over preparing his boules of dough for their rise, and rolling out the dough already properly risen, laying the long ropes of sticky pale dough onto the special baguette racks, to be put into the special chilling/rising/ and convection air oven to bake for the next morning's crowd. Careful and constant repetition of a most important task. After all, bread is the staff of life, and where would the French be without their baguettes?

We then mosied over to another corner of the shop where a young stagiare was making an apple tart atop a layer of pastry cream atop puff pastry dough. Hmmmm



Then a moment's pause for a cup of coffee, before we watched Jean Pascal and his long-time employee weigh out and then perfectly form boules of lemon fougasse dough. And roll, and roll, and roll,.. under the palms and perfectly curved fingers, with just the right touch.

It's mesmerizing.

Ahhh Fresh Bread

For the recipe, do take a look at the blog post on February 13, 2009.

Making sourdough bread in various places

Back in Avignon, I've got my starter for sourdough bread. It's been alive now for a few years and as I make bread weekly, it is refreshed regularly. I've got my stash of multi-grain flour, the honey from my beekeeper, the sea salt, etc., It's a very regular and dependable act for me to make bread in Avignon. My bread comes out nicely airy, with a good crust, sweet, tender... mmm my mouth waters as I think of it. I store my starter in a glass jar in my fridge, which is pretty new and not too cold, but cold enough. (My renters found it not cold enough for their milk, so they turned it into an igloo, but that's another story). I change jars for the starter relatively often, so they are clean, etc.,

I started a starter at JP's last year, during one of the school vacations when I was there longer than a weekend. However, I don't use it too often, and thus don't refresh it very regularly, and in any case, his fridge is way less cold than mine. This, plus the fact that his oven is rather dinky-- can we say simple and minimal needs' bachelor?-- and that I'm often up to other things there and might forget the rising bread (most particularly as I've tucked it out of sight so it isn't on the counter in his way), leads to some less than successful bread making attempts at his house. In general, the bread is heavier and more acidic at his house, lighter and sweeter at mine. So, it's edible, but not truly mouth-watering and yummy.

Here in Michigan, I've got a starter going, and I made one good batch of bread, but the second, well, I wasn't there to plop it in the oven at the ideal moment, and the air is cooler so the rising was difficult to time, and there is more humidity... My second batch turned out heavy, dark and more acidic. It's not bad, but it is akin to the dark, grain-filled Norwegian bread that is often sold in health-food stores in France.

So, what to learn? Sourdough and starters, the rhythm necessary to bake good bread, the attention to time, temperature, humidity, ovens, all are variables that shift the final product. A basic fact is that I live most often in my Avignon home and thus have figured it out. Whereas these other homes find me flitting in and out. Or, is it in the air? the atmosphere? Can one take this as a symbolic of something more?

Recipe Trials - Bread, Wine, Fermentation

Unless otherwise noted, all materials on this blog are (c) 2009 by Madeleine Vedel

I tried re-working that poultry recipe with fresh goat cheese the other day. Sophie's was fun, but ever so complicated. So this time, I blended chopped garlic and fresh rosemary with the cheese and put in the cavity, along with some white wine. I then simply sprinkled some salt and olive oil on the chicken, (a nice firm organic one with good flavor), put potatoes and more rosemary sprigs, onions and garlic in its sleeve in the baking pan and put it in the oven. I did a bit of basting to keep it moist, but otherwise kept it simple.

It was good, but not spectacular. It's an interesting thing putting fresh cheese with chicken. I wonder, having lived in Provence for so long, and with a chef who never but never used crème fraîche, maybe I'm just not really up for appreciating dairy and poultry as a combination? I've become accustomed to the cleaner flavors of simply a bit of herbs, salt and olive oil, with often just a touch of water, not even wine, on my poultry.

It's a strange and challenging act to come up with interesting and alternative chicken recipes! And, how can I not include a use of goat's cheese that the goat cheese lady uses all the time?

Here at the winery, I've also been making my bread, but, it's not the same bread as I make at my house. The starter I have in Avignon is refreshed weekly, and kept in a relatively new and well chilled fridge between uses. My starter here at the winery doesn't get refreshed half often enough (i.e. only a couple of days before I have need of it, which might be then only once in a month or even more rarely), and is kept by the vegetables in the bottom of an old fridge. It's perfectly active and bubbles away. My bread rises well, and looks good, but it is far less tender and sweet than my bread in Avignon. Just as the whey starter for the goat cheese at Isabelle and Paul Pierre's has shifted, so has my starter here. These lively yeast are quite persnickety. Temperature, humidity, the air we breathe. For a non-scientist like myself, it can be frustrating, or humbling as the case may be.

This is one of the reasons JP uses prepared and carefully selected yeasts to start the fermentation in his wines. Many who make organic/bio-dynamic/and natural wines prefer using the indigenous yeast of their grapes, claiming that these are more authentic and give a taste of the terroir. However, JP has had the experience of the indigenous yeast going off. One year (quite some time ago) I found his basic AOC Costières de Nîmes completely undrinkable. The farmy barnyard flavor was just too strong. From his oenologists he learned that in many cases, if you let the indigenous yeasts be your fermenting agents, not only do you loose control, but the stronger will kill off the weaker. The end results can be good, or not. To permit his grapes-- healthy, well-tended throughout the season, hand-picked--to show their true flavors, better to control the start of the fermentation by controlling the yeast that does the work. So now, he starts as clean as possible, disinfecting the tanks before putting in the new grapes, and then adds the yeast, and does his best to control the temperatures over the following weeks.

The art of Fermentation in its many forms. It's like having a dance partner with a mind of his own, or taking photos with natural light when many clouds are passing overhead. You just have to adapt.

Baking Bread

Unless otherwise noted, all materials on this site are (c) 2009 by Madeleine Vedel.



My weekly bread making has become a firm ritual.  I bring it as a gift to the homes of friends when I'm invited for a meal. One loaf goes with me every weekend to my vintner's home. And, whatever else they eat throughout the week, I know that with my multi-grain long-rising bread, my boys are well-nourished.  It was a hit at the bed and breakfast, and during the cooking classes -- much more fun than putting baguettes on the table. Even my mother -- who's made her own bread since I was little -- awaits anxiously my arrival in Michigan in the summer, hoping I'll take over the bread baking there too.  

It's a combination of experimenting and reading matter that have brought me to my current recipe.  I devoured On Food and Cooking by Harold McGee, learning about glutens. Then I spent a year or so reading Cookwise by Shirley Corriher every night, learning more about citric acid, spices, liquid content and temperature. Then I read the chapters on making your own starter in Peter Reinhardt's The Bread Baker's Apprentice.  I went through the entire book of Sally Fallon's Nourishing Traditions soon after receiving it from my cooking colleague one summer.  She inspired me to pursue long and natural fermentation. My local bakers kept repeating the mantra of temperature -- the ideal rising temperature is between 26-27C (78F), which you obtain after vigorous kneading.  And then, along came Mark Bittman's column in the New York Times on no-knead bread. And I was converted.

However, I had a past history in bread baking that could not be ignored, and, I've rarely followed a recipe to the letter (my brother will attest to this at times frustrating quality).

Thus, my recipe has evolved into the following:

my own starter which I began a few years' back at this point.  It is quite simple to do.  Take one cup of organic whole wheat flour and one cup of water.  Blend, leave in a bowl with a cloth on top. The next day, add another cup of flour and more water.  Blend and leave in the bowl with a cloth on top.  Repeat all week, increasing the quantities of the flour and water to double the mixture in your bowl.  If the quantity becomes cumbersome, you can pour some of it into your compost or garbage, or down the sink as the case may be. when the mixture starts to bubble you have your own home-made sourdough starter made with the ambient yeasts floating about your home.

Depending on the yeasts in your home, the starter will be more or less acidic, more or less sweet.  I've been able to make a surprisingly mild yet active one here in Provence.  But when I've made one in Traverse City Michigan, it has come out rather acidic -- akin to the San Francisco sourdough.  

Voila, once I've my starter, I can continue the process.  I measure haphazardly, but, this style of bread baking is thankfully very forgiving.  I have a large mixing bowl -- I'm always making at least 3 loaves at a time, remember, I've a household of 5 growing kids to feed, and my bread is one of the staples, along with pasta and raw milk from a farm by their school.  My mixing bowl is 5 quarts (or liters, as I purchased it here in France). I begin by putting all my starter (I've generally 2 cups of it in the fridge in a glass jar just waiting for me) into the bowl, I add 3 or more cups of organic wheat flour, sufficient water to blend it with a wooden spoon -- not soupy, but not too stiff either.  I put 2 cups back into my glass jar and back into the fridge.  Now, what's in my bowl is the beginning of this week's bread.  I pour in my 9 grain flour (in Provence we've a wonderful organic flour supplier called Moulin Pichard which makes a very flavorful blend), at least 10 cups or till it fills 2/3 of my bowl.  I then sprinkle on a handful of sel de Guérande (the gray sea salt from Brittany), a 1/2 cup of good local honey, preferably a wild flower from the Garrigues, or Provence hills. I then pour in sufficient filtered water to be able to stir this mixture together -- not soupy, but not so hard that my wooden spoon snaps.  Far thicker than pancake batter, but still stirrable.  This is not a recipe where my Kitchen Aid gets a work-out.

I then put a cloth over the bowl and forget about it till the next day.  Here is where temperature comes in.  I don't put in warm water -- not necessary at all.  However, this dough reacts very differently as the seasons change.  Now in the winter, in my minimally heated home, it bubbles and rises in about 24 hours. However in the summer, the heat pushes it to bubble much faster, and ideally, if I can, I put it into a cooler place so the fermenting stays slow.

The next day, I put flour on my kneading surface -- a couple cups at least. This might be more of my 9 grain, or some whole wheat or spelt or some such.  I arm one hand with a pastry scraper, and I then pour my dough (which has nicely doubled) out onto the surface, catching it as it tries to slide away. I work it gently, bringing the new flour into it.  I use one hand free, and the other keeps the pastry scraper, helping me lift it off the surface each time this super moist dough sticks.  I don't want to add too much flour, just enough to give the dough a bit more body.

Once it all comes together -- relatively light for its quantity. I prepare my baking dishes. I line them with parchment paper to make life simple, and put a nicely worked lump of dough, approximately a third the size of the dish, in each.  I sprinkle with flour and wait.  This winter, the second rising time has been at least 3 hours, if not more.  I want to let the dough rise and rise, till it is completely filling its baking dish.  FYI, I've rarely had problems with over-rising this dough, perhaps simply because it goes slowly, so whereas for traditional bread, a 30 minute delay can be a problem, for this one, it is not.  Then I heat my oven to 450F/225C.  When the oven is hot, I put my bread in (I use a convection oven), and not owning a spritzer, I take a small cup of water and I throw it on the bottom of the oven (no doubt not a great idea, but so far, I've not broken the oven, so I'll keep it up). The steam from the cup of water helps give a lovely top color to the bread, and I believe improves the oven rise.

I turn the oven down a bit, to 400/200 after about 15 minutes, and I bake for at least 30 minutes, if not a bit more.  I keep an eye on the color of the bread, wanting to bake till it is nicely browned.

If the kids are walking through the door at this moment, a loaf disappears before you can say boo.