Give Us This Day Our Global Bread

Lionel Poilâne sells the most famous bread in Paris. In fact, he sells 15,000 loaves of bread each day -- 2.5% of all bread sold in Paris, by weight. But he doesn't think of himself as a mere baker. Most bakers simply mix dough, shape loaves, and shove them into the oven. And while for many years he did all of those things every day, that still doesn't make him a baker.

Ever since Poilâne, 55, took over the family bakery from his father roughly 30 years ago, his life's work has been to elevate the level of his own craft. In doing so, he has adopted an approach to his art and his business that is equal parts ancient and modern, historically grounded and technologically sophisticated, locally based and globally aware, product-oriented and philosophically informed. Poilâne somehow manages to bring all of those elements together in a simple, delicious loaf of bread.

The bread itself is decidedly old school: Thick, chewy, and rich with a dark, fire-tinged flavor, Poilâne's bread traces its heritage back to the original French bread. But his business is remarkably modern. Today, Poilâne has a new shop in London and two older ones in Paris. And on the outskirts of the City of Light, he has his own global baking facility, where 40 bakers work at 16th-century ovens in teams of 2. Each day, Poilâne-branded bread travels by company-owned trucks to more than 2,500 shops and restaurants throughout Paris, and by FedEx delivery to Poilâne aficionados in roughly 20 countries around the world.

Poilâne's secret isn't hidden in a recipe. After all, there are only four ingredients in his basic loaf: flour, water, salt, and the starter (which provides the yeast). Poilâne's secret is in his philosophy and creativity. Armed with a deep knowledge of how bread has changed over time, Poilâne has developed an approach that he calls "retro-innovation," and it has made him successful in a city where people take bread very, very seriously. "Retro-innovation takes the best of the old and the best of the new," Poilâne explains. "You can only do it if you free your mind, if you don't belong to anything."

Old Bread, New Bread

When Poilâne first became an apprentice to his father at 14, the family business was still quite small. There was just one Poilâne bakery in Paris, and it was only in the previous few years that Lionel's father had started experimenting with the large, dark, old-fashioned loaves that are a Poilâne trademark today. Intrigued, Lionel threw himself into the project -- even though nearby bakeries had long abandoned the older styles of bread. "There are many ways to solve a problem," he says. "In baking, people are always looking for the new bread. But it exists already. Using old ways is a glorious way to make new things. The man with the best future is the one with the longest memory."

In the early 1980s, Poilâne decided to tap into the memories of the oldest bakers in the country to see if they could give him advice on how to reproduce the older styles of bread. With the help of two students, he contacted more than 10,000 bakers over a two-year period. "I conducted an ethnography of my own business," he says.

Most of the bakers had only fading memories to offer, but some were thrilled that he was trying to revive older bread-making traditions and offered to bake him sample loaves. By the time he was finished with his study, Poilâne had tried more than 75 different types of bread that he'd never tasted before. He eventually wrote up his findings in a book -- a study that is still used today in baking schools throughout France. He also amassed a library full of books on bread, which today contains more than 2,000 volumes.

Armed with all of this information, Poilâne perfected his father's technique. Then he waited, hoping eventually to persuade others to try it out. "Regional, dark French bread had almost disappeared because it was once the bread of the poor people," Poilâne explains. "After World War II, the chic bread was white. It became the rich bread. It was new, and it represented freedom, even though it wasn't really French." According to Poilâne, the white bread that became most popular -- the baguette -- actually originated in Austria.

Today, the baguette remains popular; it is impossible to walk more than a block or two in Paris without crossing paths with someone who is toting one. But with a texture somewhere between cotton and marshmallows, and with a taste that barely registers wheat, the vast majority of Parisian baguettes work best as a staging ground for sandwiches or as a tool to sop up soup. Poilâne refuses to make them.

This deep understanding of history gives Poilâne and his bakers the background -- and the inspiration -- that they need to make old-fashioned bread each day. The bakers' work doesn't look particularly complicated or difficult, but small subtleties can make a huge difference. "You can make thousands of products with only three ingredients," Poilâne says. "The water and flour can, of course, be very different. Then there are the conditions: the geography and the climate. There's yeast, fermentation, time, oven, and shape. Manipulation is important too."