Les Misérables

BLACK RYE BREAD

When people talk about Les Misérables, it’s rare that they’re referring to Victor Hugo’s 1862 novel. Embarrassingly enough, until I was fifteen, I didn’t know that it was a book at all. I did, however, know a good bit about the musical from Julia, one of my childhood best friends, because her parents took her to New York City every year to see it.

Julia was the ultimate girly-girl, and her bedroom was absolutely fascinating to me—all floral country bedding and lacy bed skirts. It was nothing like the bedroom I shared with my sisters, my corner of which was covered in reproductions of antique baseball cards that I had bought at Bop City Comics and stuck to the wall with my older sister’s orthodontic wax. The centerpiece of Julia’s bedroom was her prized possession: a dome-shaped glass music box filled with fiber-optic flowers that spit light like some kind of deep-sea amoeba and swayed to “Castle on a Cloud” when she turned the dome’s big iron crank. I hated that thing and wanted it, needed it, in equal measure. It tortured me.

Years later, my aunt gave me a beautiful copy of Les Misérables as a fifteenth birthday gift, and I learned for the first time that it wasn’t just a musical, but an enormous and very serious-looking book—one that looked nothing like the inspiration for Julia’s dome of flowers or the precious song that emanated from it. I tore through it in a week and a half, staying up late and neglecting my freshman-year assigned reading to find out whom Marius would end up with. I loved Jean Valjean through all of his transformations and missteps, going so far as to scribble his name inside a heart in the bathroom stall at school where every girl wrote the initials of her crush in ragged ballpoint pen. I feel very raw admitting this, even now.

Despite my love of the book, I still have yet to see the musical, or the film version either. It could be that these adaptations will always be too much associated with Julia’s girliness, or that in general I despise musicals (which could also be Julia’s doing), but I just can’t get myself excited about either rendition. The constant loop of the trailers on TV and the barrage of posters in every subway did fill me with the desire to read the book again, though—a decision that immediately thwarted my New Year’s resolution to eat less bread in 2013.

Any discussion about food in Les Misérables (or really any discussion about Les Misérables at all) would be incomplete without the mention of bread. The entire plot of the novel is driven by Jean Valjean’s nineteen-year imprisonment for stealing a loaf of bread to feed his starving family. The French Revolution is always quietly (and sometimes not so quietly) present in the novel, which mostly takes place in 1815, just fifteen years after Marie Antoinette reportedly declared “Let them eat cake” upon hearing that the peasants had no bread to eat. Throughout the novel, people’s stations and the direness of their situations are often described in relation to whether or not they have bread or, more often, what kind of bread they do have.

When we first meet Jean Valjean he has just been released from prison, and he is wandering through Digne starving after being turned away from every inn and household for being an ex-prisoner. Finally, he is sent to Bishop Myriel’s house, where he is given one of my favorite literary meals, “a piece of mutton, figs, a fresh cheese, and a loaf of rye bread,” as well as a bottle of old Mauves wine. The meal is beautiful in its simplicity, and especially satisfying after reading pages and pages describing Valjean’s desperate hunger.

Black rye bread was prevalent throughout France at the time Les Misérables was written. It was a staple for lower- and middle-class people alike, and was one of the main foods provided in prisons like the one Valjean lived in for nineteen years. This black rye is nothing like what Valjean would have eaten in prison—it is sweet and bitter and complex and incredibly delicious.

LES MISÉRABLES

Black Rye Bread

This bread would be great topped with cream cheese and lox, or honey and butter, or almond butter—or, of course, a piece of mutton, figs, and a fresh cheese.

Makes 1 loaf

1⅓ cups warm water (110°F)

2¼ teaspoons active dry yeast (1 packet)

1 teaspoon dark brown sugar

2 tablespoons unsweetened cocoa powder

2 tablespoons instant espresso powder

¼ cup unsulphured molasses

3 tablespoons unsalted butter

2 tablespoons caraway seeds, plus more for topping

2 teaspoons fine sea salt

3¼ cups bread flour

1⅓ cups rye flour

Olive oil, for brushing

Flaky sea salt (such as Maldon), for sprinkling on top

Combine the warm water, yeast, and brown sugar in the bowl of an electric mixer fitted with a dough hook attachment, but don’t turn on the mixer. Within about 10 minutes the yeast should be foamy—if it isn’t, toss it and start again (you had a dud yeast packet).

Meanwhile, combine the cocoa powder, espresso powder, molasses, butter, caraway seeds, and salt in a small saucepan and stir constantly over medium heat until the butter is melted and the ingredients are well combined. Remove the molasses mixture from the heat and let it sit for a minute so that it is not scorching hot, and add it to the active yeast mixture in the mixer bowl.

In a separate bowl combine the flours and, with the mixer on medium, slowly add the flours to the molasses-yeast mixture. Once everything comes together, knead the dough until it is pulling away from the sides of the bowl and hugging the dough hook, about 5 minutes. The dough should spring back when you poke your thumb into it. If it is too dry, add more water; if it is too wet, add more bread flour, until you get the desired consistency. Shape the dough into a ball and place it, seam-side down, in an oiled bowl. Cover loosely with a towel and let it rise in a warm place for 2 hours.

After 2 hours, gently punch down the risen dough and turn it out onto a floured work surface. Shape the dough into your desired shape, place it in a Dutch oven (or any heavy-bottomed, oven-safe dish or pot with a lid), and allow it to rise until doubled in size, another 1 or 2 hours.

Preheat the oven to 425°F.

Brush the bread with olive oil and sprinkle it with caraway seeds and flaky sea salt. When the oven is up to temperature, put the lid on the Dutch oven and bake for 20 minutes. After 20 minutes remove the lid and turn the heat down to 350°F. Continue baking until the bread sounds hollow when it is tapped, another 20 to 25 minutes. Cool on a wire rack before slicing.