Poilâne Cookbook Review

Poilâne: The Secrets of the World-Famous Bread Bakery

It is almost Christmas day, so we decided to dedicate this whole week to cookbook reviews. If you don’t have all your Christmas shopping done yet, stay tuned because we might have what you are looking for. For this first day, we decided to bring the Poilâne Cookbook: The Secrets of the World-Famous Bread Bakery.

To food lovers, the world over, a trip to Paris is not complete without a visit to Poilâne. For the first time, Apollonia Poilâne, third-generation baker and owner, provides detailed instructions so bakers can reproduce its unique sourdough loaves at home, as well as the bakery’s other much-loved bread and pastries. This book tells the story of how Apollonia took over the global business at age eighteen and steered it into the future as a Harvard University freshman after her parents were killed in a helicopter crash.

‍

‍

More Than a Cookbook

As we have been saying throughout our reviews, a good cookbook has to offer more than just recipes. The Poilâne cookbook does exactly that! Besides sharing with everyone the recipes that make Poilâne Bakery famous it also tells the history of how the Poilâne family built an empire around bread. For us, just the fact that this book tells this amazing story is already worth its money.

But stories are not everything that this book as to offer! From Poilâne-Style Sourdough to the Black Pepper Pain de Mie, Apollonia covers the great breath of breads her bakery specializes in. She will explore the worlds of grains like rice, corn, barley, and oats. She will also teach you decoration techniques, how to pair your bread with Homemade Cultured Butter and a lot of other things.

The Poilâne cookbook blends a bold narrative with fantastic and easy recipes. Framed from sunup to sundown, the book traces Appolonia’s day, moving from breakfast to dinner and deep into the night where Apollonia dreams up new and exciting ideas. Using the philosophy of bread her grandfather created, Apollonia gives us the tools and knowledge to master the labor of love that baking is.

‍

‍

More Than Bread

For all of you that are questioning if this book only has bread recipes, we have the answer for you. NO! Inside the Poilâne cookbook, you will find recipes for pastries such as the bakery’s exquisite but unfussy tarts and butter cookies. You will make the tarts, croissants, and cookies that are popularly sold in Poilâne every day.

Whether it’s their Tartine For’Bon, on the menu since its café opened in 1996, our Punitions, the little butter cookies available for customers to nibble on while waiting in line.

Apollonia goes even further in this book, teaching you how to make the most form a loaf, from crust to crumb, in recipes like Watermelon Panzanella or Chocolate-Covered Bread Chip, or by exploring the world of grains: rice, corn, barley, oats, and millet.

Final Thoughts

The Poilâne: The Secrets of the World-Famous Bread Bakery is one of that books that any food lover should have. We are saying this not only for the story and recipes but for all that this book represents. As Alice Waters said, “all of the good bread we have now in the United States exists thanks to Poilâme’s levain loaf”. And this is not only happened in the USA, Poilâne bakery, change forever the way people look at bread.