David's Pain de Campagne...kinda
I've carefully avoided the high hydration slack doughs, fearing terrible results like baguettes that look like they were run over and batard-like blobs of baked dough. Little did I know that David's Pain De Campagne would start me on the road to this challenge. It's always good to have someone give me a little push..I'm the scaredy cat, but once I get going, have a good time. You know, like a roller coaster!
I was a little concerned when I saw my fermented dough hadn't doubled in the 21 hours. David's was bubbly and had doubled. Mine looked pretty much the same as when it went in the fridge. I knew my starter was well fed and happy, so what had I done wrong? I had recently made a similar recipe where the fermented dough rose well in a brotform, but when turned out, flattened. The oven spring though, was remarkable. What have I got to lose..so I kept going.
The dough was shaped and then pretty much flattened while proofing. David describes the shaping as lifting and folding the edge closest to you up over the center. Well, it was more like trying to coax/roll the dough up and over, there was no lifting! On final shaping you are supposed to roll the log like loaf to taper the ends. That wasn't happening, I just ended up with a very long flat baguette-like shape. OK, I'll deal with it.
Bake time came and I tried my hand at baguette slashing, which would have been OK if I had started out a little more to the left. I made 2 slashes and ran out of room for the 3rd. Oh, well..My next problem was the loaf was longer than my stone. All right, I'll put it diagonally on the stone. Easier said than done. I had a good 4 inches hanging off the front of the stone..YIKES.. I quickly grabbed a cookie sheet and slide it underneath the parchment paper and coaxed it back farther on the stone. Phew.
The first 15 minutes crawled by and finally I got to open the oven door..ALL RIGHT!! good oven spring. The loaf turned out OK, believe it or not. Still waiting for the taste test.
Now my new goal in breads..to be able to reproduce those beauties that David always turns out.
Thanks David, for sharing your techniques and recipes.
I'll keep truckin'
Betty