Just Baking

Continuing on trying to make better artisan bread, I recently bought The Bread Baker’s Apprentice by Reinhold.  I really enjoyed the book; it’s a good mix of information, and some practical techniques.  I don’t know enough to know if it’s the best book or not, but it does seem to be very highly respected.

I decided to try a technique I hadn’t done yet, using a preferment instead of a poolish.  This is somewhat simply making dough ahead of time and letting it ferment, then adding it to more dough the next day.  The dough was easy to make, using my KitchenAid® Pro mixer.  I refrigerated the dough as soon as I made it and left it overnight.  The next day, I let it warm up, then cut it up and added to it more flour, water, salt and yeast.  I then let it all double, and I decided to make small boules.

My first impression of the results was that I like the flavor of this bread a lot.  The crumb (non-crust part of the bread) had some bigger holes than the boule I had done the week before, but still not as large as I want them to be.  The crust came out very good, even though my spray bottle quit on me.

As promised before, here are the lows and highs of the weekend’s baking:

Lows:

• I still want bigger holes in the bread; I think I have to find a way to let the dough rise at a cooler temperature.  I’m thinking of turning off the heat in the laundry room, when the dryer isn’t running, to let the dough go through its second fermentation in a cooler room.
• I’m still working on moving the loaves around without deflating them.  I think I need to just move them to the peel and let them sit for a while before spraying and slashing.
• I worry about timing too much; I need to let things go longer to the point of the bread overrising, I think, to get set in my mind when the right time to bake is.  By finding the point of failure, I can determine how far I can take the dough before baking.  Letting it rise longer may help with the hole size.

Highs:

• Really good crust.  I want to keep pushing this.  I think I will rig a clay flowerpot that’s big enough to cover the loaves to see if I can mimic some of the bakers out there that cost a lot more $$.  It’s all about steam, and I put a broiler pan on the top shelf and filled it with hot/boiling water when I put the bread in, then I sprayed every 30 seconds for a couple of minutes on the inside of the oven.  I was pretty happy with the crust.
• The taste was very good.  The bread makes great sandwiches, which is a good benefit of holes in the crumb not being overly big.
• I figured out how to put a design on the crust.  I “monogrammed” a loaf with an “M” by spraying the dough, laying a stencil over it, then dusting with flour.  After doing the stencil, I slashed the dough around the letter to ensure it kept its shape.

I’ll keep trying to make boules; so far, they’re my favorite.  I also did some baguettes with the pain l’ancienne method that didn’t turn out great; I’ll keep working on that.  My next post will probably be on lavash crackers, which I made along with the bread, and I really liked them a lot.

Any advice on larger holes, etc. are very welcome.  I may try the same recipe, but add a higher percentage of water, as more hydrated dough is more likely to get bigger holes.  I just don’t know how well the boule will hold shape that way.