Wednesday, March 24, 2010

Pain de Mie!!!

I have never made bread before.  This is the first loaf I ever made. 

Pretty snazzy, eh?  It wasn't too hard.  You, too, can make bread in your own home.  Just follow these simple instructions (but first a snazzy picture):


Pain de mie is sandwich bread.  It comes after the "French Bread" section in "Mastering the Art of French Cooking, Volume II."  I would not say that I have mastered the art of French Cooking, but I would say that the loaf I managed to produce is about as close to perfection as is possible.  If I didn't know the hallmarks of an excellent loaf of pain de mie, I wouldn't make such a claim, but I do know them, and I have tasted and smelled this bread.

This is what Julia says about pain de mie:


"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 canapes, 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" (Child 75).  



Did she say firm, close-grained, evenly rectangular, unsliced white bread? 

I think she did.  Now you will please enjoy the following movie of the bread-making process:



As it turns out, there are no instructions on this blog.  For those, I cannot recommend with a bigger or more loudly thudding heart the aforementioned cookbook.  I also cannot recommend with a bigger or more loudly thudding thumb that, should you find yourself wanting some of this very bread, and should you be in the vicinity, as they say, and having a spare several thousand dollars or more you wish to lavish onto a budding boulanger, well, I'm him.

2 comments:

Doug said...

Hey, Jono, I can also recommend Tom Jaine's book, Making Bread at Home, which has some slightly irritating and twee descriptions, but also a lot of really good recipies. I've been doing all my bread-baking based on its recipes for the past few years.

Ben said...

yo dood. this bread looks delicious, but time intensive. i look forward to eating the shit out of it as some future date.