Many years ago I met the boulanger Pascal Rigo. My brother Philippe worked with him in LA and I first tried a fabulous loaf of bread his crew made that they called Campaillou. It's a rustic bread from the Bordeaux region, and it's a wheat/rye speckled loaf. Amazing flavor and shelf life, it was shaped in a large Couronne and cut in huge slabs.

No matter how hard I tried to coax the formula from Pascal I wasn't successful. Years later when I started baking school at French Culinary Institute, I found a familiar tasting loaf called Bordelaise. After baguettes, it was the most popular bread at my school amongst the students and faculty. I've been trying a formula for this Bordelaise rustique, converting it to just levain without great success.

The other day, for instance, I tried a high extraction flour in it… which was silly, as it called solely for rye and wheat. The result, the opposite of impressive. It happens, at least to me, getting too many ideas. Anyway, campaillou is a colloquial derivitive of pain de campagne, and maybe the higher ratio of rye makes it more rustic.

If Pascal isn't too busy perhaps he'd take up an invitation and do an interview and give us a hint on Campaillou. In the meantime, I think I've got a possible positive out come on this wonderful bread.