Pain de Campagne - With French Flour

Submitted by Doughtagnan on March 16, 2010 - 11:19am

Pain de Campagne - With French Flour

After seeing quite alot of blog entries from my fellow bakers regarding French Flour I thought i'd share a pic of this loaf made earlier today. I spent last weekend in France so picked up some Pain de Campagne flour (Francine) from the massive Carrefour Hypermarket outside Caen. I have used it and Francines white flours before with good results though they are more expensive than the flour I buy in the UK. Total flour weight was 550grams + rye starter and around 350ml of water. Yesterday, I made up a sponge with 250g of the flour & all of the water then added the rest of the flour plus some olive oil and a little salt once it was good and bubbly. After a leisurely kneading it was retarded overnight in the fridge, warmed up, shaped and proofed for couple of hours before baking in a cast iron casserole (from a cold oven) for 45mins on max (250c) then lid off for an extra 5mins at 200c. It was even nice enough for a pic outside!, crumb pic to follow cheers, Steve

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french flour

Submitted by Bee18 on March 16, 2010 - 4:07pm.

french pain de campagne

Thank you for sharing your last baking.

I'm French but live in Sydney (aust) and bake a rye bread almost every week, using a rye starter, unbleached flour and few grams of rye ,with high hydration, and bake it in a cast iron pot.

Is the Pain de campagne Francine contain Rye flour and whole flour mixed + unbleached flour ? I don't have this Francine flour here but a Ready Rye mix flour which might be close to the Francine flour. If you could give the list of ingredients in the Francine flour I could compare.

Looking at the result on your photo I'm very much interested by your recipe, but one measure is missing : how much ( in grms) rye starter did you used? and for the salt did you put 2% of the total weight of flour or less ? and the last thing is why did you make a sponge when you are using a sourdough starter ? did you use the sourdough starter in the sponge instead of yeast ? how long did you leave the sponge to ferment ?

I realise that it's a lot of questions and it would be nice if you could write the exact way you make it, because the making of a bread with rye need to be as precise as possible otherwise it's ended in desaster.

The photo is beautiful and remind me the bread I was buying sometimes in France.

Hope to see your reply soon. Bee

Submitted by Doughtagnan on March 16, 2010 - 4:58pm.

French pain de campagne

Hi Bee, i'm not one for precise measurements on my starter as the recipe I 1st used for sourdough suggested a "good ladle" for twice the amount of flour that I generally use, so I guess it's a good couple of heaped tablespoons (50g maybe?). That recipe (my regular!) always has a sponge made up of the sourdough starter, all of the water and 250g of whatever flour i'm using. I left the sponge to ferment for a good 7-10 hrs, by then it looks nice and feisty and bubbly (which gives me confidence that it will work!) I usually do this overnight but I kicked this off during the day and then mixed/kneaded in the evening and left in the fridge overnight. Regarding salt, just a few twists of the sea salt mill as I use minimal salt for high BP reasons! and also find I do not miss it. The Francine website is http://www.francine.com/ so you can check the flour compo (it's all french to me on the label!) I do find sourdough very forgiving as my kneading/folding techniques are not advanced (very neanderthal) and you are in luck as we had some this evening with some fromage so I have a crumb pic!. We know Sydney quite well and also have friends in Perth which we know even better! Regards from the UK, Steve