Pico 3

We are starting to get somewhere. First 2 kilo miche in the new oven.

I sort of feel that 2K is the proper size for a loaf and anything less is a bit puny. You get the right ratio of crust to crumb, it keeps for ever with the flavours developing, it has gravitas.

Of course, the microbaker has the problem of selling them which you wouldn’t have in France because there you can buy a piece by weight. I used to sell a couple a week, one to a customer who bought every week until his partner did a course with me and that put an end to that.

But I have an imitation Poilane miche recipe (https://thepartisanbaker.com/pain-poilane/) and one summer, during the slack period, I told my customers the Poilane story about what he’d done for French bread, his early death, etc. thinking it might boost sales a little. It did – they ordered 17 of them. Apart from anything else, I only had two 2K bannetons … But the art of the microbaker is dealing with everything that gets thrown at you, so we coped.

Anyway, yesterday I baked a 2K classic in the Pico. That’s 2150g dough, 50% Strong Bread, 50% Wholemeal, 62.5% Water, 28% Starter, 1.6% Salt. (Check out https://thepartisanbaker.com/bread-formulas/).

250C top, 220C bottom, 20 minutes steam, 65 minutes bake – internal temperature 98C. Very happy baker.

Right at the other end of the spectrum, Mae Kochoa Maravilla Haagenstad, a baker from Fargo, put up a really simple cracker recipe on the Microbakery Page using starter and very little else.

Take 200g starter, stir in a tablespoon of melted butter, spread it out thinly on baking parchment, sprinkle with a little salt and herbs. I baked it for 35 minutes, 150C top, 170C bottom. The only problem was, I then proceeded to eat most of it …