La miche de pain. Dix façons de la préparer

If Mata Hari were a loaf of bread, it would be our rye-and-raisin loaf : a combination of sweet and sour flavors. A rye flour based bread, speckled with currents from Corinth, to be precise. We have nicknamed the loaves "pavés" - or bricks, because of their compact texture. My father used to butter two slices he would join together in a sandwich as a snack in my schoolbag. I definitely had an edge during recess. One common use for our rye and raisin bread is for the cheese platter. And the bread is especially good with blue cheeses. It is also a good base for a British bread and butter pudding since it has both the bread and the raisins. But that's not all... the richness of the flavors of the bread calls for versatile uses whether is it for seafood, poultry, or vegetables...

It is almost impossible in present-day America to find the firm, close-grained, evenly rectangular, unsliced type of white bread that is essential for professional looking canapés, appetizers, and fancy sandwiches. In French this is "pain de mie", meaning that the mie, the crumb or inside, is more important than the crust ; in fact, the crust exists merely as a thin and easily sliced covering. At Poilâne, we have a special ?pain de mie' recipe. It is unlike the loaves you find in other bakeries, and unlike those you find in the anglo-saxon world. My father, Lionel Poilâne invented our recipe. Our ?pain de mie' is thin crusted and has a firm crumb. It is a very fragrant bread I smell baking in our ovens every afternoon ; that's how I know what time of the day it is. Mostly, I enjoy it toasted on one side with a spoonful of honey for breakfast, but there are many other uses for this bread. For instance, did you know that the ?Charlotte' is a cake that used bread instead of biscuits in its original version ? If you reduce the crumb of the bread to a powder, you can easily use it to replace almond powder or semolina. I have adapted a few recipes in that spirit. I could not get myself to throw away the crusts of the rectangular shaped loaves I used in my test kitchen so I experimented with them too as tart crusts.

Enfin je me rappelai mi pis-aller d'une grande à qui l'on disait que les paysans n'avaient pas de pain, et qui répondit : qu'ils mangent de la brioche. " Jean-Jacques Rousseau (1712-1778), Les Confessions Il y a d'abord eu le goût de la brioche. Le beurre et les oeufs frais... L'idée d'une chantilly qui aurait le goût de ce pain, ou peut-être devrions-nous dire de ce gâteau... voilà d'où tout est parti ! Le patrimoine " pain perdu " en tête, j'ai découvert que la brioche avait d'autres recettes à son actif : la polonaise, le bostock, sans oublier le fameux pudding anglais... J'ai tenté un burger bien personnel en hommage au terroir français, en en clin d'oeil au pain brioché des recettes anglo-saxonnes. Et puis il y a eu la texture de la brioche. Dès les premiers essais, une tranche épaisse de brioche sans croûte en main, j'ai pensé à la couleur, jaune lavé, des éponges de mer... Et pourquoi ne pas entamer un repas avec de petits morceaux de brioche au goût d'anchois ? Mais pour réaliser ces recettes, il vous faudra une brioche pur beurre... comme celle que j'ai pétries au début de mon apprentissage, à la main, pour retrouver le goût et la texture de ce pain gâteau.