Monster Sourdoughs – I love them. There is something special about a loaf that takes up an entire shelf in our microbakery Rofco ovens.
I have always loved the scene depicted in 1887 realist oil painting by French artist Émile Friant “Le Déjeuner des canotiers” (The Boatmen of the Meurthe), depicting a group of friends eating, drinking, and socializing at a shared terrace table, with one boatman casually carving portions from a large miche loaf.
The modern day Miche, probably made famous by Parisian baker Poilâne, can be defined as a very large usually round sourdough loaf. Often sold as half’s or quarters. To be worthy of the term miche, each loaf has to weigh from around 1.5 to over 5 kg! Its very large size means it is baked in the oven for longer, and the protective crust gets thicker. With such a low crust to crumb ratio, a monster miche has excellent keeping qualities, particularly when paired back from one end only – which was important back in the day when people made bread only once per week.
We have been adding to our growing range of brotform baskets recently (the best proving baskets made by Crust and Craft from compressed wood pulp over in Germany) and we snuck a few large form baskets for some family size miche experiments – from 2kg to a monster 4kg form. It adds a new dimension to the question – “one slice or two?”….
doughies 