Interactive Demo
Contemporary Through Tradition with
Apollonia Poilâne 
Join Apollonia Poilâne for a very special & rare conversation/demonstration of one of her iconic bakery’s breads: Black Pepper Pain de Mie, as featured in her book, Poilâne: The Secrets of the World-famous Bread Bakery.
Apollonia Poilâne will share her unique approach to conceptualizing new baked goods for her bakery plus give insights on how to replicate the intuitive/sensual approach to baking used at Poilâne in order to inform your own baking.She’ll join from Paris, France live from her verriere test kitchen & studio, providing a multi-camera experience to demonstrate her tips and techniques for you.
From Apollonia Poilâne: Pain de mie, which Americans call a Pullman loaf, has a tender crumb and a slightly sweet flavor from the addition of milk. Because it is baked in a special lidded loaf pan, there’s little expansion and no crowning, so the loaf slices into almost perfect squares. (Don’t worry if you don’t have the pan; you can use a regular loaf pan and foil.) We add black pepper to our pain de mie, which creates a subtle floral flavor. It also helps make the perfect sandwich bread: already-seasoned slices that require only the filling. I like the pepper blend made by Olivier Roellinger of Épices Roellinger in Paris. Instead of a single flavor, his Poivre des Mondes (Peppers From the World) offers a concerto of notes. Or, you can make the pain de mie without the black pepper. The dough may rise slightly faster. The bread works well for savory applications, but I really love it spread with chocolate for an unusual sweet bite.
April 30, 2021
Friday, 11:00 AM (New York)/5:00 PM (Paris)
Registration Deadline: April 29, 2021
Skill Level: Beginning to Professional
Apollonia Poilâne has been described as a “fierce defender of a magical tradition and also a brave innovator for a new era.” Alice Waters claims, "In many ways, the good bread we have now in the United States exists thanks to Poilâne. Poilâne bakery and the Poilâne family have revolutionized the way we think about bread, and it is deeply important that we preserve and learn from their legacy." Cradled in a breadbasket fashioned by her mother, raised on the playground of her father’s bakery, and the precocious inheritor & leader of Paris’s most iconoclastic and celebrated bread bakery, Apollonia Poilâne stands at the helm of baking tradition that has been chartering new frontiers for three generations and is a singular authority in the world of bread. After taking charge of the family business at 18 years old following her parents’ accidental death in a helicopter crash while simultaneously completing her undergraduate at Harvard University, she has transformed her grandfather’s “le vrai gout du pain” and her father’s “retro-innovation” with her own “contemporary by tradition” philosophy.
Poilâne’s techniques and philosophy are simple but the execution is masterful. At Poilâne, bakers use their five senses to bake, shedding standardization and calibration and choosing instead to acknowledge the life present in our flour and sourdough ingredients. No loaf of bread is identical from one batch to the next. The consistent quality of their creations, however, is the result of true artisanal craftsmanship. For Apollonia Poilâne, baking is the transmission between each individual baker and their production, the transformation of grain to bread with the aid of fermentation. The bakery and Apollonia stand not only as champions of breadmaking but artisanal craftsmanship in all its forms.
Apollonia Poilâne is the author or contributor to over a dozen books, most recently “Poilâne: The Secrets of the World-Famous Bread Bakery” which has been named Epicurious' "New Fall 2019 Cookbooks We Can't Wait to Cook From", Food & Wine “18 Essential New Cookbooks for Fall”, Amazon's pick for “Biggest Cookbooks of Fall”, Chowhound's “Best New Cookbooks and Best New Baking Cookbooks for Fall 2019.” She has recently forwarded the Modernist Cuisine’s French edition of “Modernist Bread”. Her writings and interviews have been featured in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Vogue, CBS, BBC News, Le Monde, L’Equipe amongst others. She is a frequent invited speaker and has spoken at 92Y, HEC, Parabere Forum, & Google as well as appearances on French, American and British national television networks.
Apollonia Poilâne oversees a team of over 160 men and women in France and the UK. She has six locations in Paris and London, including a café in each city. Her breads and baked goods have nourished generations Parisians and tourists and supply neighborhood residents, cafes, bistros, Michelin starred chefs and the French Élysée Palace. The bakery has collaborated with neighborhood artists to Salvador Dali, who once commissioned the bakery to create an entire apartment made from bread at the Hotel Meurice in Paris. These are complemented by the Poilâne “Manufacture”- an homage to wood-fired oven breadmaking for the contemporary world, which produces handmade artisanal breads available for overnight shipment worldwide. She is a member of the Club des Croqueurs de Chocolat, an avid road cyclist, and contemporary design art gallery owner.
Member Price - $ 95
How to Pay
- You may pay online with the registration button
- Call the Guild office at 707-935-1468 to pay over the phone
Cancellations
In the event that your class is cancelled due to low enrollment, or other circumstances, we will notify you as soon as possible by email and issue you a full refund.
Refunds
If you cancel your reservation with more than a 15 day notice:
- Refund (less a $50 cancellation fee) if the class has a waiting list and we are able to fill your spot.
- Account credit (less a $50 cancellation fee) for a future class if the class is not full.
If you cancel your reservation with less than a 15 day notice:
- Account credit (less a $50 cancellation fee) for a future class if the class has a waiting list and we are able to fill your spot.
- No refund and no credit if the class is not full.