Free Virtual Masterclass
Baking Sweet Corn Brioche
with Apollonia Poilâne

Hosted by Sudeep Rangi


Sunday, July 12, 2020
11am ET
LIVE on Zoom and Facebook
In English



Let them eat cake! In French, Marie-Antoinette was actually referring to brioche! Celebrate the Bastille Day holiday by making the buttery “viennoiserie” with Apollonia Poilâne, CEO of the famed Poilâne Bakeries in Paris.

LIVE from Paris, Poilâne and food enthusiast and bioethicist Sudeep Rangi will lead an interactive masterclass and answer questions about baking techniques and the history of the infamous bread.

View list of ingredients below. The full recipe will be sent to the RSVP list ahead of the masterclass so you can follow along with the live demonstration.

Duration: 60 minutes

Sweet Corn Brioche

List of Ingredients

  • 5 large eggs, at room temperature
  • 1 large egg, beaten with 1 tablespoon (15 ml) water for egg wash
  • 260 g (2 cups) all-purpose flour
  • 240 g (2 cups) corn flour (very finely ground cornmeal)
  • ⅓ cup packed (56 g) light brown sugar
  • 1 package (2¼ teaspoons; 7 g) active dry yeast
  • 2¼ sticks (9 ounces; 255 g) unsalted butter, cubed and softened until just pliable, plus more for the bowls and pans
  • 2 teaspoons (11 g) fine sea salt
  • 1 tablespoon (15 ml) orange blossom water (optional)

The recipe will be shared with attendees during the masterclass.

Perrier Pop-Up Class

Following the baking demonstration, mixologist Nico de Soto will show us how to make a Perrier® Grapefruit Mint Splash. The refreshing summer mocktail will pair perfectly with Poilâne’s sweet corn brioche!

Learn More

Apollonia Poilâne

Apollonia Poilâne is the third generation to run the bakery founded in 1932 by her grandfather in the Saint-Germain-des-Prés district of Paris, and developed both in France and internationally by her father Lionel Poilâne.

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    • Cradled in a bread basket by the passion her father dedicated to his craft, Apollonia naturally chose her path. As a small child, she spent her Wednesday and Saturday afternoons at the bakery, shaping the bread into figurines, putting the shortbread into bags, and offering them to customers waiting their turn, as her grandfather taught her. Growing up, Apollonia fed her passion by continuously learning in the bakery at rue du Cherche-Midi, where her father was also formed.

      Following the accidental death of their parents, Lionel and Ibu Poilâne in 2002, Apollonia who was 18 years old at the time took over the family enterprise, in complete agreement with her sister Athena, who is 2 years younger.

      From 2003 to 2007, Apollonia oversaw the direction of the company from Harvard College in Boston, where she was a student. By organizing regular meetings with her teams, via phone calls, email, video conferences and frequent travel between Boston and Paris, she assured her role as leader while following her economic studies, validated by a BA in 2007.

      Apollonia fully adheres to the company’s philosophy of valuing quality over quantity. She is also a worthy successor to the “retro-innovation” culture that was so dear to her father Lionel Poilane: taking the best of the past and combining it with the best of the present.

      The artisanal craftsmanship, a guarantee of quality, is unchanged: Poilane® loaves are always leavened, handmade, and baked over a wood fire.

      At the same time, Apollonia is resolutely turned towards the future.

      Since she took the business over, Apollonia opened 3 more boutiques in Paris and London. She has expanded the business internationally, and Poilâne now ships to more than 5,000 loaves to forty countries. Poilâne has six bakehouses in Paris, London, and Antwerp.

      The introduction of new products (a gingerbread, small spoon shaped cookies, granola, a Pepper Loaf, buns, Yule logs, cornbread, a range of rye/buckwheat/barley/corn/oat/rice biscuits), and the development of the dealer network, in France and abroad, testify to the will of Apollonia to move forward and pass the family business one day to a 4th generation Poilâne.

      Apollonia’s book Poilâne: The Secrets of the World-Famous Bread Bakery was released in 2019.

Sudeep Rangi

Sudeep Rangi is a born on the Louisiana bayou, bourbon slinging, bubbles imbibing, bow tie wearing, bike riding, bread loving bioethicist based in Paris.

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    • With degrees in Interdisciplinary studies in Culture & Society (BA, Emory), Bioethics (MBE, UPenn) and currently studying Ethics, Science, Health and Society at the Espace-Éthique at the University of Paris-Sud School of Medicine, Sudeep can be found holding court behind the bar, at conferences, on terraces and dinner tables discussing the social merits of athletics to aesthetics just the same.

      From co-founding his first non-profit at 19 years old (ashrayainititve.org) to create a home for street children in Pune, India to stints behind the stick on San Francisco’s Smuggler’s Cove, Comstock Saloon (Absinthe Group), and the Slanted Door Group’s former Wo-Hing General Store to acting as a Food Consultant to contemporary art travel agency, he has always found a way to meld his academic interests with cultural and social impact.

      He received a grant from Cointreau and New Orleans’ Tales of the Cocktail Foundation to write on the “Cultural History of Drunkenness”. He led UNESCO’s Bioethics and Ethics of Science and Technology contribution to the European Commissions’ 4-year long SATORI project, which developed a common ethics assessment system to be utilized in the development and implementation of research and technology within the EU. His work and name have appeared in James Beard-winning books to policy documents distributed to governments around the world.

      For Sudeep, food is fundamentally a question of health and justice. Food is not a metaphor for life, but rather a substance of it. A 21st century humanist about town, he is always ready with an anecdote or an antidote – breaking bread with a smile and a clink of a glass.