Just Baking

This past weekend, I finally got back to trying my hand at artisan style breads instead of regular white bread.  I hadn’t really looked before, but King Arthur Flour, one of my favorite sites, has a slew of online recipes, too.  I have a few books, but thought I’d try their European hearth bread recipe.  I’d link to the recipe, but the site doesn’t work with direct links.  Just go to Recipes, Yeast Breads & Rolls, French and Italian, European Hearth Bread.

One of the things I like about King Arthur Flour is their baking hotline.  I mixed up the poolish on Friday for the dough, and then mixed the dough on Saturday morning.  It seemed too dry to me, so I just called them, and the woman talked to me about how to tell if the dough is right.  I ended up adding about a third more water than I started with, and it mixed up well.

With this recipe, I found that the autolyse was useful, as it seemed to allow things to mix more easily.  With a wetter dough, though, I wasn’t having any success kneading the dough with the dough hook.  What I did worked well: I took the dough out, kneaded it for just a few turns, and then put it back in the mixer; this worked just great.

My wife and I were going out, so I just put the kneaded dough in the fridge and took it back out when we got home.  Being cold, it, of course, took longer to rise, and it was late, so I just divided the dough, roughly shaped it, and put it in the fridge overnight.  When I got up in the morning, I punched it back down, shaped it into loaves that were kind of squat, pointed baguette shapes, and let them sit out to warm and rise again.  Once the loaves were ready, I slashed them diagonally, spritzed them with water, and put them in a 415 degree oven set on convection bake.  I don’t know why I didn’t remember to do full convection, but that’s how it goes.  I also spritzed the inside of the oven, and had a pan of water underneath my baking stone.

The recipe said to bake for 30-35 minutes, but that seems to be on full bake.  I checked after 25 minutes, and the bread was at 200 degrees internally, so I took it out.  I couldn’t help it - I cut into one loaf right away.  All I can say is I was REALLY pleased with this bread!

One thing I learned, to back up what Freya said in another post, is that higher temps mean crustier crust!  This was GREAT stuff!

After the success this weekend, especially with putting the bread in the fridge to slow the rise, more than once, I can’t wait to keep moving in my bread baking to more types of bread!