The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Pain polonais

david earls's picture
david earls

Pain polonais

OK, my first total failure in the artisan area, but I'll probably try this again anyway.

Dough consisted of poolish with 100% hydration (that's 100% of total hydration), a little bit of flour added at the dough stage with a tiny bit of yeast and "regulation" salt.

Target was 150g of flour at 80% hydration. Think, "baked poolish" - almost. Tried doing it in a cloche - first time there as well. Too many variable changed to succeed.

But I think that if I reduce total hydration to about 70%, make my poolish based on all the water, this could work. Have to stiffen the dough enough to be able to let it final proof outside a proofing container. Pouring slack dough from the container directly into the cloche is guaranteed not to work.

Q for the pros: what if I do final proof in the cloche base (room temp) and just preheat the lid? This one strikes me as as much about the bake as about the dough. You dig?

gary.turner's picture
gary.turner

Try a cold start. Don't preheat the cloche. I seldom enclose my bread for baking, but several here have experimented extensively with starting temps*. Regarding cold starts, I have been cold starting the oven for my panned sandwich loaves now for a while. I get a more even oven spring and fewer blowouts.

A ceramic cloche or cast iron Dutch oven' temp latency may affect the timing, but that's trivial.

cheers,

gary

* Ha, I found one: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/20715/baking-bread-cast-iron-no-preheat-method