Pain ordinaire is a staple French bread made with white flour, salt, water, and a leavening agent. It can be baked in a pan or on a stone and is often made with an old-fashioned starter for a more interesting flavor. It is versatile and pairs well with many foods.
In French, pain ordinaire simply means “ordinary bread.” This staple bread is a staple of French baking and cooking, along with an assortment of more exotic breads. It’s also very easy to make at home, and many bakers who want to explore the world of French breads like to start with the ordinary pain, as it’s simple to make, yet has a wonderfully complex and satisfying taste.
Classic Pain Ordinary is made with white flour, salt, water, and a leavening agent. While these ingredients are fairly simple, depending on how the bread is handled and baked, it can develop into a very complex loaf or a rather plain, bland loaf. Ordinary pain can be very crunchy or it can be handled in a way that encourages the development of a thin crust, and it can have an open or closed crumb, again depending on how it’s handled and the type of leavening agent used.
Many home bakers like to use yeast when making ordinary pain, which is acceptable when experimenting, but the bread is really designed to be made with a starter, not yeast. In France, many bakeries use an old-fashioned starter, which uses leftover dough from the last bake to start the next batch. Old-fashioned starters take longer to work, but develop a much more interesting flavor in the bread, due to the slow fermentation involved.
This bread can be baked in a pan, for bakers who want to develop a regular shape that can be easily sliced for sandwiches and the like, but the pain ordinary can also be baked on a pan or stone. In these cases, the bread is usually shaped into a round loaf and the top is cut off to allow the bread to expand as it bakes without cracking. Some people like to use a cloche in their oven to more closely replicate conditions in a traditional brick oven.
You may also hear pain ordinaire referred to as “farmer’s bread,” since the recipe is so simple. The relatively mild flavor makes ordinary pain a very handy bread to have around, because it can be paired with a huge variety of things, from heavily flavored cheeses to cured meats. Pain ordinaire also makes great sandwiches, and many people like to pack a loaf with picnics.
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