Pizza Talk: Apollonia Poilane, Keeping Tradition Alive for the Future

Pizza Quest and Pizza Talk have always been about more than pizza. On our home page we write about, “Celebrating artisanship wherever we find it,” because artisans are our real community of kindred spirits, of which pizza is but one spoke (albeit, a very large spoke!). But another big spoke is, of course, the bread baking community and, in that branch of our family there is one name that towers above them all, Poilane! Many of you already know that 18 years ago the most famous bread baker in the world, Lionel Poilane, was tragically killed, along with his wife and their dog, in a helicopter crash on the coast of France. At that time his eldest daughter, Apollonia, was preparing to enter college at Harvard, though she had always, since childhood, been preparing to carry on the family legacy. Childhood ended earlier than expected and, amazingly, Apollonia not only entered and completed her degree at Harvard but, also, traveled back and forth to take the helm at Poilane Boulangerie and, with her sister, to watch over its expansion into a global brand, as well as to write an important book about the four generation bakery called, not surprisingly, Poilane: The Secrets of the World Famous Bread Bakery. Apollonia is here with us now, on Pizza Talk, to tell us the whole story of this visionary bakery. It’s our honor to welcome her now….