boule

This is my second bread from BBA.  I decided to stick with boules even though Reinhart says this is the perfect dough for all kinds of fancy shapes.  Everything went really well until the slashing.  I bought a lame from a local kitchen store and it just was not slashing the dough.  At all!  I tried wetting it, oiling it, using the other side of the blade... nada.  Finally I touched it with the tip of my finger and realized that it's fairly dull.  Sad!

I grabbed a semi-sharp serrated tomato knife to do the slashing instead.  While that actually cut into the dough, it did so with a fair amount of drag, so I didn't get the cleanest slashes.  Ah well.  Time to go to the hardware store to buy a package of razor blades, I guess. 

The recipe said it made three loaves.  They turned out to be rather small loaves, so next time I think I'll split it into two if I'm going to do the same shape.  But there is something nice about these little boules, though.

The crumb on this is decent.  The taste is good, but I think I like the taste of the pain de l'ancienne better.  My husband liked the taste of this, but halfway through a big slice said there was an "aftertaste."  I don't know if he's tasting the whole wheat component (hard red winter wheat berries I ground in my vitamix) or what.  I don't think I let the bread overproof, and he said it wasn't an alcohol flavor, so I'm not sure what he's tasting.

Overall a fairly successful bake.  It was my first time using a pate fermente.  I even considered making two loaves and keeping the other third of the dough for a loaf tomorrow, but I haven't baked with a poolish yet so that might be my next project. 

I have been baking larger (2# ) loaves of rustic Italian formula free form recently. I decided to double the mix and drag out the large linen basket and try one more time to get the proofing right. Usually I over proof and the dough falls with a thud as I approach the slashing table with bare blades. I have been following Mariana's procedure for crusty Italian and my handling of the dough has been more on the gentle side with a strict 1 hour limit on the bulk ferment.

I had just watched a video of a french baker demonstrating how he shapes, slashes and handles his large boules. He bounced the boule out of the basket and onto the peel, slashed with confidence and into the oven. Very inspirational with little care of over handling. So I dumped the proofed dough out and slashed like I knew what I was doing and--well it worked out pretty well.
4# Crusty Boule

Crumb

I baked this very large, rustic Italian loaf (pagnotta) a couple weeks ago from Daniel Leader’s wonderful new book, Local Breads, page 197.  He states that it is to bake until almost black or charred for the most authentic loaf.  I didn’t go quite that far but you can see it developed a lot of color which I always prefer in my loaves.

I generally don’t bake the large boules since there are only two of us rather I prefer to divide a larger recipe and make more loaves so I can share them.  At any rate, I wanted to try the large boule and it was quite an impressive loaf.  (It reminded me of a fully expanded Jiffy Pop for those of you that can relate to that visual.) 

It is renowned in Italy for its great keeping quality, staying fresh up to 7 days.  Unfortunately, ours was not entirely eaten, I hate to admit, but it did allow me to see just how long it stays moist and fresh as is its reputation.  Nearly 10 days after baking it I was shocked to see that the bread still appeared very moist and had no signs of mold having been kept at room temperature in a KAF bread bag.

The recipe uses a biga naturale which Leader calls “Italian sourdough” and also uses a very small amount of commercial yeast.  I’m not sure why the instant yeast is there but that is the recipe.  I do not add commercial yeast to my sourdoughs but I wanted to bake it the first time following the recipe.  I would really like to try it again without the addition of the instant yeast to see what happens.

The flour in the recipe, except for the sourdough, is all high gluten for which I used Sir Lancelot high gluten flour.  The bran sprinkled on the top makes a really beautiful loaf although it is very messy to cut but very well worth it.  I would like to incorporate that in other loaves for the beautiful texture it creates. 

The crumb had a beautiful color and texture.

The Genzano Country Bread was a lot of fun to bake, wonderful tasting and seems an easy recipe for a great boule.  I hope you give it a try.

More photos can be seen here:

http://zolablue.smugmug.com/gallery/3585722#203734681