Made from Cabernet Sauvignon grape yeast, the Pane Francese Loaf is a wine-friendly collaboration between Hightower Cellars and Seattle’s Macrina Bakery
Breadmakers and winemakers have enjoyed an intimate relationship with yeast for thousands of years. In early winemaking, wild natural yeasts found on the grape skins fed on the sugars of the juice, converting it into alcohol and carbon dioxide—a process we call fermentation today. In bread making, yeast works similarly. These little fermentation factories feed voraciously on the sugars in flour and produce carbon dioxide gas, which causes the bread to rise.
When Seattle’s Macrina Bakery & Cafe founder Leslie Mackie hit upon the idea to make a new artisan bread, she decided to use natural yeasts from Cabernet Sauvignon grapes grown by Hightower Cellars on Red Mountain. The result is the Pane Francese Loaf, a truly remarkable one-of-a-kind bread. It’s a hybrid between a French baguette and Italian ciabatta. Shaped in long sticks like a baguette with lots of outer crust, the bread retains the somewhat soft, porous texture typical of ciabatta and is light to the touch.
PAIRINGS
The soft tang, crisp crust, and elegant chew of the Pane Francese Loaf goes perfectly with bruschetta or spreadable cheese paired with a bottle of the Hightower Cellars 2007 Cabernet Sauvignon. The wine has a bouquet of dark fruits, Red Mountain sweet minerality and just a hint of butterscotch. Or try the 2009 Out of Line Red blend, produced with grapes sourced from its Out of Line estate vineyard, the same source of the natural yeast in the bread.
WARM BREAD TIP
If you are planning to serve the bread within a couple days, keep it tightly wrapped in a brown paper bag. Before serving, place the bag of bread in a preheated oven at 325 degrees for ten minutes. For longer storage, freeze the bread; just defrost and reheat when ready to eat.
FIND THE BREAD
Pane Francese is available at all Macrina cafes in Belltown, SODO and Queen Anne
www.macrinabakery.com
Hightower Cellars is open Fri.-Sun. from 11am-5pm
www.hightowercellars.com
Written by John Vitale