Grégoire Michaud is an award-winning baker and pastry chef who has worked all over the world for great chefs and occasionally judging at international competition. Today, Grégoire is the Pastry Chef at the Four Seasons Hotel in Hong Kong, boasting 6 Michelin Stars under one roof.
His family background, from the Rhône Valley in the south of Switzerland, brought him his passion for authentic food and especially for bread and pastries. Today, to perpetuate his family tradition and share his passion, Grégoire enjoys organizing baking outing in the country side, using old fashioned wood fire oven to bake breads and tarts. But nonetheless, he is a seasoned author of several cookbooks on bakery and pastry, notably:
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Hi Greg,
I have a question and would like to seek for your help. Do you know how to make Focaccia? Can you share the recipe and technique with me please?
Many thanks,
Margaret
Hi Margaret,
I am sending you an email with the recipe and method.
Thanks,
Greg
Hi Chef Gregoire,
I am Nicolette from Singapore and recently came across your fantastic book “”Artisan Bread”. I am a stay at home mum and would love to start making my first sourdough bread following your recipes from the book but I have a question and would like to seek your help.
For the fermentation of the raisin, what is the ratio between raisin and water ? I was wondering if I have to use a certain concentartion of fermented juice to make the mother dough.
As I understood, the alternative method is to use the apple cider with liquor content to replace the fermented juice. I just want to confirm is that a 1 to 1 amount replacement if I were to use the cider to make the mother dough ?
Once again thanks for such a great book and hopefully I will have a chance to attend one of your Artisan Bread Practical Class in Hong Kong one day.
Cheers,
Nicolette
Hi Nicolette,
It’s a great endeavor to try making sourdough bread!
There are no specific ratio to macerate the raisins with water, I would suggest about 300gm of raisins for 1 liter of water. The point is to actually use the sugars and the wild yeast present in the raisins skin to ferment the water. It has to be fermented until the liquid turns brown, has small CO2 bubbles and smells like alcohol (from the ethanol created). Personally, I use 100% of fermented juice to start my mother dough.
You can use alcoholic cider to start your mother dough, or for that matter, you can also start it with only water and flour. The difference is the time you need to leave your starter to ripen due to the activity of the bacterias. If you mix flour and water cover it and leave it in a warm place, you will see that 24 hours later, bubbles will start to form.
Making bread can be frustrating at first, but in the frustration lies happiness every time your bread comes out of the oven better than the previous time!
Enjoy and happy baking!
Gregoire
Thank you