- Hi, I'm Jacques Pepin.

- And I'm Claudine Pepin.

Papa, I wanna learn bread baking and I need some help.

- Need?

You mean knead?

- No, I'm serious.

Will you show me some of your favorites?

- Sure.

We can start with a classic bread dough that you can make a baguette or a crusty round loaf.

- [Claudine] We can fill the round loaf with a seafood millage of shrimp, scallops, salmon and mushrooms.

- [Jacques] Yes, and I'll show you a dark dance black pepper bread with walnut.

And don't forget mom's favorite, the light golden brioche mousseline.

Fresh bread is easy, wonderful, fun to make and so rewarding.

- So join us for a brick oven bonanza, next on Jacque Pepin celebrates.

- You know, when I was a kid I started making bread maybe as far as my mind, you know, I can remember when I was a kid during the war, I was sent to the mountain by the Red Cross in those big farm and the farmer do bread twice a month, every two weeks.

And there was one oven for both village.

And your uncle was in one village or was in the other one.

But we met on Sunday for church, but every two weeks in that oven, they make those big bread.

Each farm brought their bread.

- No yeast, nothing.

They started flour and water one day and it start just a little bit of the ferment.

You have a little bit of a yeast, a natural yeast in the flour, then you start dyeing, then you have a (indistinct).

You refresh it, you put more water, more flour in it.

- So it gets gooey.

It takes three, four days to really build the dough and that's what it was done.

So here is an envelope of yeast, which is the same thing than the fresh chef here.

- Oh, okay because this is not really available all over.

And then a little bit of sugar, like half a teaspoon to feed it to, you know?

And then we put a little bit of the water.

You have two cup of water here.

The water is tepid.

You can put actually the whole thing in it, which is what I have done over there.

And you can let it proof that I have done here for about 10 minutes, 10, 15 minutes when it starts smelling really yeasty and foam bubble on top.

And that's it.

And with that we put four and a half cup of flour.

And the flour, you pick it up this way and level it off and you put all of your flour in there.

- Okay.

- And we work it.

You start with just a little bit.

(food processor shrilling) And then let it go.

You can add a little bit more flour or a little bit more water.

This will give, you know, a big kneading to the dough.

The dough, now, we work it a little bit on the table.

Now in some part of the country, depending where you are, you'll add more flour than in some other part of the country.

And that has to do with the amount of moisture in the air.

So you can feel when the dough is absorbing more flour and all that.

You see what you do here, you bring it back, you bring it back.

Give me a little more flour.

Now I can feel really the resilience of it.

Okay, so that you could knead it another two minute or three, but now we want to let it proof slowly, you know?

- Okay.

And I tell you, the proofing change.

Sometimes three hours and another time an hour.

The same dough, depending whether it's winter, summer, the temperature of the flower, the temperature of the water temperature outside, the humidity, winter, summer, - I can use any kind of plastic thing?

- You can use anything to proof it, any box like this, empty box like that.

Or if you have a big bowl, if you mix it in a mixer, because you can do that in a mixer, of course, then you can cover the bowl of the mixer and do it in there.

- Oh, okay.

- Okay, so, now- I'm gonna let this proof.

- Yeah, I have another one which has been proof.

Now it should be about ready.

- Wow.

And you see this would be- - This is the same amount?

- Yeah, so exactly the same amount.

So the idea here, you don't look at the amount of proofing, you can look at it, but you look at whether it double in shape and all that.

I don't know if you can see that on the side here and there.

- [Claudine] I think it's got the air bubbles.

- [Jacques] You can see those bubble there, you know?

- [Claudine] Looks like the inside of bread.

- Yeah, so gently, you know, you bring it from the side, you bring your dough on itself like that to break the dough.

This is the first rise.

And we are going to give it another rise, so I'm gonna take it out anyway.

So give me a tablespoon of flour on the table again.

And you can see to a certain extent in the same amount of dough that I had before.

So you can do that in any shape that you want, you know?

Now the classic, of course, is the baguette, you know, so you wanna do- - I love baguette.

Your baguette, you cut it.

Okay, you see the cut, where the cut is here of your baguette?

You wanna close that cut.

- [Claudine] What do you mean close it?

- [Jacques] Well it's cut here.

There is a two lip.

I wanna bring that lip together if you want.

I show it to you this way.

Sometimes, see I bring it with one hand and press it like this.

And when I have the lip brought together, then I can start extending it.

So this can go into one of those machine, which is for bread or then it can go onto one of those seal pad, you know?

We put that in the center.

I wanted to show you this also.

See, in a bread oven, a regular bread oven, it's done of stone, and the stone reflect a great amount of heat.

So you know, to duplicate a professional baker oven, I cut a couple of quarry tile like this, put them on the thing and I put that in the oven.

And then you can cook the bread directly on top of this, you know.

So you have to take it out.

If we want to do that, actually what we do, turn your pan upside down.

Put that here so that can slide to be sure it's going to slide.

You put a little bit of corn mill here so that this is going to slide when I put it in the oven, you see?

So I put my first baguette here, okay?

You know what I wanted to do is to roll that in the corn mill.

But I should have water.

Give me a little bit of the water over there to wet this.

And we put it like that.

So the one in the center here is going to have corn mill on top.

So the seam goes underneath, you know?

Now, you wanna put that in a proof box and a proof box, professional proof box there is a great deal of humidity and all that.

So we have to create a proof box and leave it like at least 30 minute, 40 minute again depending whether there humid outside.

Before you put it in the oven, I've created a proof box here.

You know, just have a thing upside down.

No, take the card box, which is my proof box.

- Oh, thought we were moving.

- No.

You see the way those proofed here?

See this is the same baguette than that put in.

They are proof.

Now.

No, you use this, - Okay again.

And you put that on the table, - All right.

cover it with that, and you've created a proof box.

It has to be humid and all that.

So here is what we do, now.

This one in the center, see we put a little bit of cornmeal on the one on the outside.

We put some flour on top to give a kind of effect.

Okay, here with a serrated knife, you know the professional use the razor, so I'm cutting through the bread to see... You see the way it happened?

- Yeah.

To see the mark that you see in french bread.

So those are ready to go into the oven.

Now, to do the country bread, the big bread that we have in the country, I have exactly the same dough as my baguette.

So again, we break the dough here and starting kneading the dough.

And what you want to do here in that big country bread, I really want to bring it in the center here to have my seam over there.

So that goes to be proofed also in another box.

And I have a little piece of dough you have left over and roll it this way to do a head of wheat.

I just want it... See, maybe a head like this and you do it very thin.

- [Claudine] So now you want water on there?

- [Jacques] Well you have to wet that so that thing stick to it.

And then you stick it like this, right?

You see what we are doing here, (indistinct), you know, we call bread that you see in the (indistinct) for the holiday or whatever.

And what you want to do there is to cut the end of it like this, you know?

Remember like if it was ahead of wheat.

So you notice here that I let the bread proof and then I put that on top because if you proof that with the bread... Well you can do it too, but it can to all mingle together.

Now again, we put a little bit of flour to make it country and we can mark it in between, you know, like, you see the way it open?

- [Claudine] Yeah.

- [Jacques] Going to crack in between.

Isn't that beautiful?

- [Claudine] That is beautiful.

- Now again, to imitate, now, what happened in a professional oven, we have to put water in the thing.

So I'll take the big one.

You'll bring the other one, and you'll give me a hand.

We're gonna put that in the oven now.

- All right.

- Should it slide?

Okay, that's perfectly fine.

Now.

- Here.

Here give me this.

I'm putting moisture in there.

You know, like in professional oven, they have an injection of steam.

I put that closet fine.

- And that's it?

So this- Yeah, in like five minute, three minute, I do the same thing.

So now you do the sliding.

- You really want me to try to do this?

Get close.

Get almost to the end.

- Move over.

- Oh, okay.

I'll put it on this side.

- Okay.

Go more to the end of that and start.

Hey, hey perfect.

Look at that, you have three.

- I still have a job.

I'm happy.

- Alright.

Wow.

Wow.

You did it here.

Okay.

- Alright.

So, I wanna show you a couple of specialty bread.

- [Claudine] All right.

- We're going to do a black bread with walnut.

Very, very kind of tough, hard bread, and this is made with... It's great with oyster and stuff like this.

- You are just a mess.

- I'm a mess.

This is, you know when you walk in the kitchen.

So what you have there, you have the yeast, about half a cup of water on top of you.

This again.

- [Claudine] The same thing, - [Jacques] That type of yeast or another yeast, the water should be kind of room temperature.

And in that case, here, it's a little bit of molasses.

- So, it's the same sugar concept that feeds the yeast, - The sugar, yes.

Now you know you mix this, and then you let it proof, you know, the same idea.

10, 15 minute, I let this one proof, and you can see it's all bubbly inside.

Very strong smelling.

- Yeah.

Right?

Okay, so now we add two cup of bread flour.

I have two cup of rye flour, and half a cup about of buckwheat flour.

- [Claudine] Oh.

- [Jacques] So all of that goes in there.

I have two tablespoon of, you know what that is?

- [Claudine] It's cocoa powder.

- It's cocoa powder.

It's bitter cocoa powder.

Oh, it's bitter so there's no sugar.

- Right.

We have baking powder a little bit, dash of salt and crack pepper, you know, black cracked pepper that- - [Claudine] So are we making whole wheat bread or?

- [Jacques] And this is walnut.

And no, is a dark bread kind of a... So we put all the stuff in there and then we start it with the water.

No, one and three quarter cup of water.

And that should now knead for three, four minutes.

Okay, I think we're about ready now.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- All right.

I should have the comb, you know.

Right here, Claudine.

- Oh this thing.

- That's it.

This is called a comb.

Just a piece of plastic.

You know the way we used to do that?

We used to take a plastic bucket and cut a piece to make one of those our own.

And that, come out of that.

Put a little bit of flour there.

- I want to do some of the gooey part.

- [Jacques] Okay, go ahead, do some of the gooey part.

I'm putting that on top, the walnut.

when it starts sticking and all that, take some flour in your hand, you know, should really work your bread until it comes out of your hand clean, you know?

That's about fine.

Now you don't have to film it into bread because now it has to proof.

Then I'll show you one which has proof.

Now this doesn't proof like the other, you know?

It's not... you know, it's a very heavy type of bread.

You know how you clean your hand?

Take some flour in your hand and wash your hand with the flour.

Just rub it like this, too.

That's it.

Okay, a little more flour here.

And this has to proof and have this one which are now proof.

So we'll mark this one just like this in the middle and here, like a kind of petal there.

- Like a big leaf.

Yes.

And I will put this into the oven.

- Into the oven, yes.

Okay.

Okay.

So that particular bread, I have it here, Claudine.

So this is black bread with walnut.

Now, I'll show you another bread that I have here.

This is a cheese bread, which is done a little bit like a brioche.

I have cheddar cheese in it and I have pear.

This is great for- - Sounds like, brunch.

You know, serve with cheese.

I'll serve with cheese.

This is would be- - [Claudine] Oh that, yeah.

- [Jacques] Terrific, you know?

Well this was a big day of yeast and flour and good smell and gooey stuff.

And I wanna show you how to make a brioche mousseline.

But first, we still have those bread in the oven.

I know they are ready.

Let's take them out.

- Let's take them out.

Yeah.

Okay, we take your baguette.

Wow.

- Now this is heavy 'cause of the bricks.

- [Jacques] That's right, the brick, yes.

This is that bread.

I can show you.

- I'm gonna get some tongs.

You know?

Look.

(Jacques patting) - [Claudine] Hello?

It sounds hollow.

- [Jacques] Okay.

- All right, We'll leave that here, Perfect.

cool on the rack.

It's crackling.

And now, it's crackling.

And now let's do our brioche.

Sounds wonderful.

- The brioche is a much richer type of bread.

You know, it's done with a great deal of eggs, butter and so forth.

And we first do a kind of sponge, a kind of leaven, you know?

In that case here I use the freshest.

Although what I say, you know, you can use any type of this and you want to crush it with some sugar, you know?

Make a paste with the sugar because it start the, the fermentation process, you know?

You see the way it kind of melt like this with the sugar, right?

- [Claudine] That's, hmm.

- [Jacques] So we put the rest of the sugar, I have a quarter of a cup of sugar here and half a cup of water.

Half a cup of flour.

Half a cup of water too.

We start a sponge, you know, here, which is going to proof slowly.

We let it proof for like an hour.

You know, it's very yeasty.

So this is the start of our brioche.

And this is exactly what I have in there.

It's been proofing covered.

You know, you want to let it covered and you can see- - [Claudine] Ooh, the bubbles.

- [Jacques] Yeah.

- Tiny bubbles And the strong... and then I have a couple of tablespoon of cognac I put in there, too.

- Do you want the bowl back?

No, this was just to show you so, but it was part of it just to add pair of flavor.

If you don't want it, it's fine.

Doesn't really matter.

So now we are going to add the rest of the mixture.

Add a pound of flour here.

The salt.

I have six eggs and then the yolk, we start this way.

- Pulse?

- Yeah, go ahead.

And then we can start adding the butter.

We have three quarter of a pound of butter here.

It's a very rich brioche.

And then, you know, you can stop it even if you still see some butter.

So I'm stopping it.

It's going to be very, you know, elastic.

So transfer it to a bowl, you cover it and it has to prove very slowly for like 4, 5, 6 hours.

- [Claudine] Wow.

And then after it proof for that amount of time, you break it like you break bread and you let it proof again.

And you know what?

You can leave it overnight.

At that point, you can have a cold proof or hot proof.

You can leave it outside for five hours, sometime, a bit less depending on the temperature.

But you can put it at your, your refrigerator and leave it overnight in the refrigerator, which is what I did here.

So this one is the second proof in the refrigerator overnight, you know?

So, if you go to Paris, you know, the morning you go into the cafe, what you're going to have is Brioche - Brioche.

Or fougasse.

Yes.

- So there is many thing that you do with the brioche.

I wanna show you how to do the classic Brioche.

Brioche about that size, you know?

So you roll your brioche like this.

You know, you feel it gently rolling under your hand.

You get a nice bowl and as you finish rolling, you put your hand on the side and you start slicing here.

So you do a Brioche (indistinct).

You know you have the head, you push it in and you have your little head.

Now we do big brioche.

This is a half a pound.

This is a pound brioche, you know.

gimme a pound brioche.

So this is the big brioche.

(indistinct) You work it.

And, we form a brioche like this.

At that point you probably would want to take a bowl of about couple of answers to do your, the French brioche.

Now let's put one, - Do I have to roll it?

2, 3, 4.

Flour, Claudine.

- [Claudine] Okay.

- Okay, one here.

A second one here.

- [Claudine] The third one right here.

- [Jacques] And the last one.

So all of that again, you want cover them and at room temperature, proof them for like an hour and a half.

So put those over there.

I have some which are proof here.

You know what you want to do here.

If you really want them beautifully glazed, you put your egg wash on it.

Then you leave them outside now uncovered.

So they dry out a little bit and the egg wash, you know, will dry.

And then after that you give more egg wash.

- Oh, so you coat it twice?

- [Jacques] You coat it twice.

For the big one before you put it in the oven, usually, you slice it.

Where is my scissor?

You give it a mark like that.

Okay, Claudine.

- All right.

And I put these in the oven?

- That's ready to go into the oven.

And here is the big brioche.

The brioche panta, an individual brioche.

Oh, and this one too.

Sometimes I do in a can of coffee or whatever.

We butter it good.

You put a piece of aluminum foil on top to hold it - [Claudine] So it both proofed and cooked in the can?

- [Jacques] Yeah, look at that's beautiful.

Let me show you one here, inside.

Very buttery, you know?

You can smell it.

- Mm, it's very airy, very buttery - Deep in the cafe in the morning.

This is the real brioche mousseline And with all that bread, you know - We need a glass of wine.

We worked hard.

- We need earthy type of wine.

Can I pour some of that wine?

- Yes, it's open.

The Chateau of d'Oupia.

- The Chateau of d'Oupia when d'Oupia were in avenue.

Wine from, you know, the end of the Loire Valley in France.

That's going to be great.

And what do we have here?

- Well we have a beautiful California Santa Barbara, Santa Maria Valley Chardonnay.

This is musque, Ganash and, what, 11 other grapes go in here?

- All the great grapes of Counoise.

Now let's see our bread over there.

- All right.

Okay, what we've done.

We do have a lot of bread and a lot of stuff - That's why we have some good wine.

Here, hold that one second.

I have here done the seafood bread.

This is great.

Oh you do in the food processor of butter, a lot of herb, garlic, salt, pepper, and so forth.

And you empty your bread, take the cover up, empty the bread and put layer of shrimp, scallop, salmon, mushroom, the breadcrumb, the butter.

More of it, more of it.

A little bit of red velvet on top.

And you cook that in the oven.

You cook that for about an hour.

- [Claudine] Ooh.

- [Jacques] And you know you're beautiful... Look at that bread.

This is a great bread to take to a picnic, you know, or somewhere else.

- Wow.

A whole meal.

You know, this is great.

- That is really nice.

- Now we have a soup.

You know, you cannot have all of those great bread without a real big country farm soup.

You know, vegetable soup that we do in the farm with little bit of pancetta (indistinct) We have our cheese bread.

- This one you made with oatmeal on top.

- [Jacques] We put oatmeal on top, yes.

Big, you know that very dense, - Black bread.

Black bread that we have.

This one, I didn't show it to you.

And this one was done in a whole wheat bread with raisins in it.

- Oh, this is good for breakfast.

- Yes.

Another cheese bread.

You have your baguette, you have your beautiful big bread that you mark there, and your brioche.

I think we really deserve that glass of wine.

- I do too.

- But I hope that you're going to try your hand at making bread.

There is nothing more rewarding.

- I like it.

- And I hope that you're going to try your hand at making bread with your family too.

And on this happy cooking, - Happy cooking.