Daily bread

Hey there old pals. I'm finally getting around to posting some of my own breads to the forum, rather than just parasiting and commenting on everybody else's. One of these days I'll provide a more detailed introduction of myself, but for today I'll just do a write-up on the bread. There are rugs to vacuum and dogs to feed, so this will just have to suffice !

This is the daily bread we eat here at home in Paris, which is always a boule baked in a largish Dutch Oven that we found here in our apartment here in Paris. It is rather bewildering to Parisians that we make our bread at home ; one would think that in the land of bread and delicious food, one would have no need to do any cooking whatever à la maison ! But having gone through baker training here in Paris, I am all too aware that the quality of most baguettes or pains de tradition françaises are of dubious quality at best, often never having submitted to the touch of a real human hand. While I could certainly go searching for a quality bread somewhere in the neighborhood, I didn't receive all that training just to let some Frenchman usurp my right to make my own bread !

Our bread is made normally from a variety of flours, often 50% T80 wheat flour (semi-whole-wheat), 20% spelt, 20% einkorn, and 10% rye, though the percentages vary depending on how fast I want the fermentation to go. This particular loaf, however, is made with nearly 95% T80 flour, since I was testing a new flour that I found at the organic food store (the other 5% is rye). I must admit that I do miss freshly milling local grains at home like I did back in the States, but at least here in France we have a pretty good variety of flour. One of these days, I'll do a write-up on the mill where I worked in Provence this past summer, an old-fashioned water-powered operation that will blow your minds. Hang on tight.

Today's bread was made from 95% T80 flour from Brittany and 5% whole rye flour from the Gard department (just to the west of Provence), totaling 900 g. The 900 g of flour were autolysed with 630 g of warm-ish water for about an hour, after which 18 grams of gray coarse sea salt mixed with 50 grams of warm water were added along with about 150 grams of a young 100% hydration levain (50/50 T80 and rye). Beat the dough up gently until it surrendered to my will (muahahahaha) and resembled something like a dough. Stretch and folds every 30 minutes (more or less, I was watching Star Trek TOS at the time and I did the S+F when it was convenient) for the first 2.5 hours, then a rest until a total of 4 hours of bulk fermentation. Pre-shape into a boule, rest 15 minutes, boule for a final shape and then into the linen-lined basket for 2 hours. Dutch oven preheated in a hot oven (can't give reliable temperatures because my oven can't even do that), baked with lid for 25 minutes, lid off for 30 minutes. BASTA.

This is a particularly delicious bread, though unfortunately my oven has trouble maintaining heat on the top, thus making the achievement of a crispy, dark crust particularly difficult. Sigh. I'll figure something out.

Our little German short-haired pointer, Moulin (French for "mill"), keeps a watchful eye on the bread. She's a tough critic. "C'est pas mauvais," she says, "mais on peut mieux faire !" (It's not bad, but we can do better !)