From Poilâne to the Fête de la Musique

Ok, so today was the first day of work for each of us. I woke up at 6:30 so I could get to Poilâne by 8. As soon as I got there, I was brought to a really cool back room with a chandelier made out of bread. The walls were covered with paintings of miche (their sourdough loaf of bread) from Poilâne. These paintings were given by neighborhood artists as a meants to pay for their bread. I was then given a white Poilâne t-shirt and led down some slippery stairs to the fournil (the oven and surrounding room). I was wearing jeans with the t-shirt...big mistake; the master boulanger wears linen shorts and a t-shirt. It was 90 degrees in there and very humid. I was hot, but I got over it. At first, the room was very quiet, but then the pastry chefs came in the room; they were a lot more talkative, but everyone at Poilâne was nice. I made some cookies and some miche, along with a few other things. All throughout this time, I was offered croissants, cookies, bread, tarts...so many different things. You need to have some strong will power to not eat something there...I don't know how I did it.

Making the miche is a long process that involves making the dough, letting it rise, cutting the dough, weighing each loaf, shaping it, putting it in a basket to rise, carving the Poilâne P on it and letting it cook. (It's a lot harder than it sounds)

After work, I went out to lunch with Apollonia Poilâne. She is one of the nicest people I have ever met and she is very down to earth. We talked about SG, Paris, food (and an ice cream place that is supposedly better than Berthillon).

When I finally met up with everyone, we went to the apartment and had a delicious dinner. After that, we went out to see the music festival...it's bands all around Paris playing music with people dancing in the streets and on anything they could find; it was a blast. Despite our wishes, we needed to return back to the apartment to get some sleep for work the next day. P.S. The picture of the loaf of miche is the loaf I made myself!