Just Baking

I messed up somehow, big time. I was trying to make a recipe from Hamelman’s “Bread”, and I thought I would double the recipe to make more loaves for a party I was having.

The recipe called for a poolish to sit overnight. This part was easy, just flour, water and yeast. Overnight, it rose decently, and all looked good.

I put the poolish into the mixer bowl the next morning and added the flour and water needed for an autolyse. This is when things first turned not so good… I have a 6 quart mixer, but that doesn’t mean it holds 5 quarts of flour and water AND has the ability to mix.

I turned on the mixer, and pretty quickly turned it off, diving for papertowels… Flour and water were all over the counter, though not a huge quantity, just a big mess. I got things under control and used a spatula to combine the loose flour with the poolish. This worked much better, and the dough mixed much better. I added in the salt and yeast, and the mixer did it’s thing.

I put the dough into a dough doubler and let it sit for about 25 minutes. Who am I kidding? I use a timer with 4 countdown timers on it, and I set in the total time I want the dough to proof, as well as each increment where I need to fold the dough in between. I’m new enough at this I don’t just play it by ear much, and the timer helps me not forget.

When 25 minutes were up, I put my hand in the batter, I mean dough… no, I mean batter. The dough was so wet it was pourable. Now, I know I made a mess earlier, but not that much flour came out. This dough just seemed WAY too wet, but I went on, thinking maybe that it would seem less so as it continued proofing.

At 50 minutes, same thing. So now I’m thinking that I have 20 guests coming over for a party, and I’m going to have nothing but bread batter to bake. It might work in loaf pans, but not as boules, which is what I was going for. I also figured I could just run to the bakery if I needed to, but I didn’t want to do that… I wanted to make my own bread!

Then I had an idea. I went back to the batter and divided it into two bowls. I put one half back into the mixer and turned the mixer on, then I added, slowly, more flour until I was happy with the consistency. I put this back into the dough doubler and did the same with the other half of the original batter. I restarted the timer and waited.

At 25 minutes, I folded what had now become dough, and it seemed much better. I didn’t fold at 50 minutes, but after 70 minutes, I floured the counter and dumped the now 4 liters of dough onto the floured section. I divided it into 6 portions and formed boules, laying them on linen to proof. Once these doubled, they went into a 550 °Foven with steam for 5 minutes, then I turned it down to 460 °F for about 20 minutes. When the loaves looked good and brown, I removed them to a cooling rack.

This turned out to be about as good of a French country boule as I’ve made. Part of it had to do with the Hearthkit I have in my oven, I think. The oven spring was great. A lot of it was luck and maybe finally getting to the point where I was comfortable with the feel of the dough.

I want to try the recipe again, without doubling it, to see if the original consistency was the right way to go. I just couldn’t see it holding any shape at all, other than blob shape. Blob might be a good enough shape, but I didn’t want blob all over the bottom of my oven!

I’ll report back when I try it. Next time, though, I also fixed brioche… which went much smoother.  What I did learn, though, and I think this is important… This is just flour and water and yeast.  It’s cheap.  I can play around with it a bit and the world won’t end.  I just don’t have to be afraid to make a change if I want to; if it doesn’t turn out, I’m out very little other than time.  But if I learn something more, it’s even worth the time.