- I think the bakery is essentially
the soul of the community.
No matter what style of bakery it is, people gather;
it's been that way throughout history.
So was it new?
Sure, my breads were different than what was out there,
but really I'm doing the same thing
people have done for 10,000 years.
(patrons conversing)
I really didn't go into bread expecting
to have a career out of it.
I was working on farm, and there was a guy
who would bake sourdough loaves every couple of days.
It was enough for all of the people that worked on the farm
to have bread.
And the smell of it, because it was coming in
through my window, drew me literally out of bed.
I wanted to figure out how that happens,
how to make that very compelling aroma and the product.
When I moved to New York, I was pretty much certain
that I wanted to stick with the large format of bread,
but I wanted to really streamline what we were doing
as flavor-focused.
I mean, usually what happens is
if you make something truly delicious, the beauty follows.
I wanted to break down how each step could happen
and maximize flavor.
In the perhaps more recent history
of French bakeries, you'll find that
people don't want to throw away the croissant,
so one of the great things that can be done with it
is to make an almond croissant.
I've found that you could get a lot more flavor
if you took a fresh croissant, cut it in half,
and then toast it -- get that toasted,
buttery croissant flavor in there.
We then dip it in a brandy simple syrup,
make a very nice almond cream.
We fill it with the almond cream, put it on top,
coat it with almonds, and bake for another 15 minutes.
They're fantastic, especially fresh out of the oven.
But the concept is nothing new;
it's just taking an almond croissant
and making it as good as we possibly can.
One of the things that we do in our bakery
is something I refer to as small-batch mixing.
And we're very focused on the spiritual connection
to the dough.
You have a tremendous amount more control
over the fermentation that's going on.
So you end up with huge amount of flavor
that would otherwise be not available.
My goals were to create something that would be
on multiple different levels, pastry, bread, savory, sweet.
Food that people could understand almost on a genetic level,
almost like they could feel their ancestors saying,
"Get the miche."
When making the miche, we are using a blend of
three different rye flours and three different wheat flours.
We bake very darkly.
The crust also hits the smoking point,
so the aroma of roasted grain penetrates
into the crumb of the bread, enhancing the flavor.
But the flavor is already huge,
abundant, from 68 hours of fermentation
and the variety of different grains that are in there.
I would say that our miche is quite approachable.
It's definitely a bread lover's kind of food:
it's a bit like tasting wine or great liquor or beer.
It is a complicated bread, but it's so beautiful
on every different level.
Right now it's spring, so we're able to highlight
some of the flavors of spring.
So I thought, I really want to bring out the flavor of peas.
Nothing speaks more about spring to me than a fresh pea.
So I thought two different applications
would be really nice: both fresh peas and also pea shoots.
The peas are firmer texture, and the shoots
have a more gentle flavor.
This sauce has been made for hundreds of years,
but this one is made with a little bit
of dehydrated shiitake stem powder.
You want to have, when you're building a tart,
a variety of different textures from unctuous, creamy,
to different layers of crunchy.
We've got the flaky pastry, so it falls apart in the mouth.
And then of course the miche crumbs,
and the miche crumbs are going to add
a rather intense crunch.
There's a side to baking that anybody
who gets involved with it will eventually
come to understand, and often sooner than later,
which is that you begin to gain a sense
of the life that's going on inside that dough.
It won't happen I think on the first time
that you try baking at home or something,
but as time goes on, and you're consistently
involving breadmaking in your life,
you begin to develop a relationship
with your sourdough starter and with the flours
that you're using.
I think that there's a lot of information available now
for people to become really talented bakers.
When you don't cut corners and when you take the time
to actually make the product as it should be,
and as it has been, you end up
with a spiritual connection to the dough.