The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Hello from Illinois

BP's picture
BP

Hello from Illinois

My name is Becky and I just joined / found the site. I'm a bread newbie and I'm on a quest.... Well let me rephrase. I'm completely obsessed with recreating a bread that I had gotten years ago from a bread store that went out of business many years ago.

The company called their bread a "French peasent loaf" It was round French bread with a nice crust. The crumb was open? With chewey whole wheat berries mixed throughout.

I picked up a copy of Bread Baking: An Artisan's Perspective by Daniel T DiMuzio a while back and learned of the bakers math, but still haven't made anything using his recipes.

The most successful loaf I made to date was from a recipe that had me mix a simple dough, let it rise a couple hours and then fling the dough into a screaming hot cast iron pot on parchment paper. I'm hoping I can find some help here to get closer to my "holy grail"bread.

drogon's picture
drogon

It's probably Pain de Campagne  - which is a loaf typically made with wheat with about 10-30% rye added to the mix. You can make a perfectly acceptable one with just normal bakers yeast, but using a pre-ferment or sourdough starter will make it much better in texture and taste and possibly closer to the one you remember.

My (possibly limited!) research suggests that in the olden days it was hard to grow 100% wheat - unless you spent a lot of money on (poorly paid) farmers weeding the wheat, so you ended up with rye in the mix too - so most "country", or peasant breads seem to have a mix of wheat and rye....

Welcome to the bread circus :-)

-Gordon

BP's picture
BP

I looked at the pain de champagne pictures on Google images and most of them seem like they have a much darker crumb then My mystery bread but I will research more into that loaf. I wouldn't have guessed rye Flour. I was guessing it was a big round baguette and the wheat berries made it peasent style. The interior was very light colored and yellow, but a small percent of rye may not discolor the dough.

 

Herbalgarden's picture
Herbalgarden

Illinois! We used to live there(Near Champeign)  Lots of memories :) You can practically pick and chose any farms you like, any ingredients you like there! (flour, butter, egg etc) Great Amish communities, they have great bread baking source, too. I LOVE their cheese!!

bread1965's picture
bread1965

...and 'just do it'.. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nuHfVn_cfHU :)  Ok, totally stupid, but I can't help but smile when i watch it.. and I thought it would be good advice for you!

back to bread.. my suggestion would be to find a good artisan bread book and "bake it".. start from the beginning and just bake every recipe in the book.. make sure to get a book that's approachable.. it's a great way to learn and you'll find 'your bread' along the way (trust me).. I'm doing that right now and blogging it.. I'm baking Ken Forkish's book called Flour, Water, Salt & Yeast.. it's been a great learning experience.. baking each week lets me think about how the recipes (and bread) evolve from week to week.. enjoy the journey... https://flourwatersaltyeast.wordpress.com/