Pain Poilâne

Le Pain Poilâne is the legendary, best-in-the-world loaf of bread—or miche, the French word for 'loaf'. This epitome of artisanal, traditional bread was developed by Pierre Poilâne and then his son Lionel Poilâne in a Parisian boulangerie in the 1930s. I had a chance to meet Lionel in September 2002 at the Plaza Athénée in Paris, where I was the head baker at the time. He was gracious, precise, and spoke of sourdough as if it were a living clock. But unfortunately, on October 31, 2002, Lionel Poilâne and his wife were killed when the helicopter he was piloting crashed into the bay of Cancale, off the coast of Brittany. Poilâne was survived by his daughters Athena and Apollonia, the latter of whom now runs the enterprise. Apollonia is a graduate of Harvard University. That autumn, standing over my own dough in the Plaza’s kitchen, a million-dollar question popped into my mind: why, when 90 percent (if not a higher number) of Parisian bakers would bank on baguettes rather than larger family-size loaves—a well-known specialty of the French countryside back then? The answer was quite simple: there was a niche. While the rest of the city chased the crispy, ephemeral baguette—a loaf designed to be eaten within hours—Poilâne went the other way. Producing and shipping large, rustic miches with a long shelf life was daring, almost foolish. It meant betting on storage, on transport, on a customer who would keep a half-eaten loaf on the counter for days. But it has become a huge success. After many tries over the years—adjusting hydration, stealing hours of fermentation, chasing that same deep caramel note—here it is, a quarter of a century later my interpretation of the Pain Poilâne for you. It is not a replica. It is an homage, baked in memory of a man who proved that the boldest niche is sometimes the oldest road. Le pain, c'est la vie!