smarkley's blog

Pain Météore

I was really inspired by Tim's Meteorite bread.. and decided to try one myself, this weekend.

Here is Tim's blog post, if you have not seen it.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/19450/9310-it-meteorite-or-cow-pattie

The original inspiration came from Farine..  

http://www.farine-mc.com/2010/07/meteorite.html

Tim's bread looks great, I don't think mine came out looking as good... I wanted to make sure that I had a great dark color so modified the recipe *liberally* by adding coffee and molassas.

Once I had the goopy mess out of the fridge and divided it into two... I got a little scared it would spread so much that it would not fit on the baking stone! So I put one of the loaves in a dutchoven. The other loaf was done on the baking stone. Also, I wanted a cratered look to it... so in the spirit of the whole project, we picked a few small rocks from the garden, washed and sterilzed them. Then pushed the rocks(well oiled) down into the dough while it was proofing, and took the rocks out before baking,  since I did not want explosions in the oven. Deciding we wanted a little variation in color, I sprinked a little flour over the surface.

As you can see from the pics, it came out plenty dark.. and has a great semi-sweet old fashioned flavor. I was totally ready for this bread to taste terrible and had a nice surprise. Note: my wife and I were giggling about making this bread the whole time, we worked on it. And since the recipe was modified so much, we  decided to name it -- Pain Météore

Here is the highly modified recipe:

300 grams   King Arthur AP flour

300 grams  Stone-Buhr  WW flour

120 grams  Sour Dough   100% hydration

300 grams  Water

300 grams  Coffee (cold)

1/4 cup - 75grams  Molasses un-sulphered

8 grams Yeast        Active Dry

12 grams Salt        Sea Salt

Method

1. Mix all ingredients

2. Stretch and Fold 4 times over the next 1.5 hours

3. Chill overnight

4. Divide loaves in two

5. Placed rocks in the dough

6. Let proof for an hour 

7. Pull the rocks out

8. Bake.. 500 degrees for 40 minutes.

What a goopy mess!

Putting some rocks in the dough, what was I thinking???

Ready to Bake

The Finished Loaf

The second loaf... baked on a stone

The crumb shot

Have fun, if you decide to try this... and make sure you take the rocks out before baking! 

Steve

Oh... and I promised my wife and daughter I would do more serious baking tomorrow!

Heh heh... had a baking weekend, every morning. Friends are wondering if I am OCD now!

Started out with a fun Multi Grain Bread... Using Stone Buhr AP and WW flour, toasted sesame, toasted steel cut oats, toasted sunflower seeds, then a menagerie of rolled grains, oats, barley, rye, and wheat! This bread is very good, nutty and with lots of good grain flavors.

and the crumb shot....

Then I did some Pain de campagne... 

Finally finished up with 8 baguettes... 4 of them here, the rest were still proofing! Hat tip to SteveB. I used his recipe and method, which is wonderful by the way! Can be seen here at his Breadcetera site:

 http://www.breadcetera.com/?p=8

Very productive weekend... pass the butter please, and hold the electric bill! 

Steve

Hello all...

We would like to use our cast iron Dutch Oven for baking bread. The problem I see is, when we heat it up to 400+ degrees the Dutch Oven smokes a lot... we are using canola oil for seasoning the Dutch Oven, and I wonder if that is the problem.

Does anyone have suggestions on how we can fix this, so we can use the Dutch Oven for baking at higher temperatures? 

Thanks in advance... Steve