Errant Scoring Slip Results in Immediate Reclassification of Miche as 'Rustic-Chic Scraps'

A lame that skipped across a proofed miche on Saturday morning has resulted in the loaf's immediate reclassification as "rustic-chic scraps," a style, according to the baker who made it.

The loaf in question was a 1.9 kg miche at 78.0% hydration, mixed with a 12.7% protein bread flour, bulked four hours and twenty minutes, retarded fourteen hours, and pulled to an internal temperature of 96°C. It was, by every logged measure, on schedule. The problem was one gesture: a single long score intended to lift a grigne into a pronounced ear, executed at roughly thirty degrees, in which the blade caught, dragged, and opened a second and third rift across the crown.

Baker Wren Halloway, who owns the oven, did not bake it again.

"I didn't lose control of the knife. I found a style," Halloway said, arranging the torn sections on a wooden board at the counter. "A ear is one idea. This is three ideas happening at once."

The counter card was amended within the hour. Staff were briefed that the item was not damaged, that it was rustic-chic, and that customers who asked for "the broken one" should be told the correct term. A single board sold out by noon at four euros eighty a wedge, which is thirty cents above the price of an intact miche slice from the same dough.

Dorian Iverson of the regional standards board, quoted here for the third time this year on the question of what bread is allowed to be called, offered a ruling: "A scrap is a piece separated deliberately. A torn loaf is a piece separated by a blade that did not know where it was going. The customer may buy either. The card must not confuse the two." Iverson nonetheless declined to say whether a torn loaf could be styled, observing only that style is "a claim made after the fact, and usually made loudly."

The reproduction problem surfaced Tuesday. Halloway mixed the same dough, same hydration, same retard, and scored it with intention, three times, at thirty degrees, trying to lose the blade on purpose. All three came out with clean ears.

"On Saturday I wanted an ear and got a landslide," Halloway said. "Yesterday I wanted the landslide and got an ear. I have since scored forty-two loaves and the accident will not repeat itself."

A dog belonging to the shop's morning dishwasher has been positioned beneath the bench each day since, in anticipation of the scraps reaching floor level. On Wednesday it happened. The dog has not commented.

Halloway has kept the counter card. When a customer asked on Thursday which of the wedges was the mistake, Halloway gestured at the whole board.

Which brings us to the first term in Kiran's First Questions: grigne. Every newcomer to this desk has pronounced it, nodded at it, and ordered accordingly without ever having seen one in daylight. A grigne is the flap a score opens as the loaf expands, the ear's proper name when the ear is behaving. On Saturday, the grigne was three separate objects. Whether they were rustic-chic is a question for the dog, who has eaten the evidence.

The counter card, for the record, does not describe the crumb. It should.