First attempt at a pugliese
I am rather new at making homemade bread but it is something I am growing to love. I come from a family of cooks and bakers, mostly from my mom's side of the family. Her father was an excellent cook and baker; I recently stumbled upon one of his bread recipes for buttermilk loaf bread. I have been making this loaf on the weekends for the past year or so. However, he kept the majority of his recipes in his head and didn't write many of them down. This has forced me to branch out on my own. This weekend I prepared a biga pre-ferment for a pugliese from "The Bread Bible"
This recipe does not use Durum flour which is fine because I was unable to locate any at my local grocery. The biga was prepared with a mixture of all purpose flour and coarse rye flour, a small amount of commercial yeast and water. This mixture was allowed to ferment for about 18 hours at a cool temperature.
I was pleased with the way the bread turned out, however I was hoping for a large sized boule compared to the one i was able to develop. 
The crust was soft and the crumb was chewy with a medium distribution of holes.
Overall I was satisfied with the results. I currently have a sourdough starter in the making and cannot wait to make my first loaf in time for thanksgiving stuffing.
I look forward to any comments and suggestions
Cheers,
-M
Comments
It looks to me as if it was well risen, so I'm wondering why you were hoping for a bigger loaf. In any event, if you have some crumb shots, please post them up - we TFL'ers love to see both the outside and the inside of bakes.
Good bake.
Larry
I was happy with the amount of rise I was able to get out of the dough, but I was looking for a little wider base. The dough shrunk in a tad as it rose during the bake. At any rate, it was a first attempt, I recently made a ciabatta which did not have the characteristic airy crumb the first go around; I think i deflated some of the air in the dough. The second time I made the ciabatta I did not poke down the dough nearly as much and the crumb came out nice and airy.
Cheers!
-M