Pain de Provence

pain de provence

It is getting to be harvest season in my part of the world, and that means herbs are cheap and plentiful. Now is a great time to try baking an herb bread.

You can bake wonderful herb breads with whatever you have on hand: rosemary, dill, basil, thyme, mint, chives, you name it. I happen to have an excess of Herbes De Provence on hand, a mixture of savory, thyme, fennel, and lavender that you can find in most specialty grocery stores or order online.

I used my standard poolish french bread as the base for this, then added the liqueur and herbs recommended by Bernard Clayton in his recipe for Pain de Provence in his Complete Book of Breads. Feel free to experiment and use a different dough as the base.

pain de provence

Pain De Provence

Makes 1 large loaf

Poolish:
1 cup bread or all-purpose unbleached flour
1 cup water
1/2 teaspoon instant yeast

Dough:
All of the poolish
2 cups bread or all-purpose unbleached flour
1/2 cup Herbes de Provence
1 1/2 teaspoon instant yeast
1 teaspoon salt
1/4 cup liqueur such as Beauchant, Grand Marnier, or orange Curaçao
1/4-1/2 cup water, as necessary

The night before baking, make the poolish by mixing together 1 cup of flour, 1 cup of water, and 1/2 teaspoon of yeast to make a batter. Cover the container with plastic wrap and set aside for 8 to 16 hours until you are ready to make the final dough.

To make the dough, combine the remaining flour with the remaining yeast, salt, and herbs. Add the poolish, the liqueur, and 1/4 cup of the additional water. Mix the ingredients, and, if necessary, add more water or flour until the proper consistency is reached (tacky but not so sticky that the dough sticks to your hands).

Knead by hand for 10 to 15 minutes or in a mixer for 5 to 10 minutes. Place the dough in a well-greased bowl and cover the bowl with plastic wrap. Set aside to rise until doubled in size, approximately 90 minutes. Remove it from the bowl and gently degas it, then return it to the bowl, cover it, and allow it to double in size again.

Remove the dough from the bowl and shape it into a ball or long loaf. Cover the loaf with a damp towel and allow it to rise again until doubled in size, which takes between 60 and 90 more minutes.

While the loaf is in its final rise, preheat the oven and baking stone, if you are using one, to 450. I also preheat a brownie pan into which I pour a cup of hot water just after placing the loaf in the oven. This creates steam in the oven which increases the crunchiness of the crust.

Just prior to placing the loaf in the oven, score the top of it with a sharp knife or razor blade.

Place the loaf in the oven and bake for 20 minutes at 450, then rotate it 180 degrees and reduce the oven temperature to 375 and baked it another 25 minutes. The internal temperature of the loaf should be in the ball park of 200 degrees when you remove it from the oven.

Remove from the oven and allow to cool for at least a half an hour before serving, if you can resist.

pain de provence

I couldn't.

Filed under:

Artisan Breads

Submitted by SourdoLady on October 1, 2005 - 7:08am.

Beautiful Loaf!

OMG, Floyd, that is such a beautiful loaf of bread! It is absolutely perfect, including the spacing of the slashes. What did you use to do your slashing--a lame with a curved blade, or just a straight blade of some sort? The eye appeal is just wonderful.

About the bread--isn't 1/2 cup of herbs a lot? How did it taste? Are you talking fresh herbs (more bulk) or dried? Sorry for all the questions, but I really love the looks of your loaf.

I can't believe it took me a week to find this post. I have my computer set to go automatically to the forums page from a link in my favorites. I think I'm going to have to change that because I'm missing out on the home page.

Submitted by Floydm on October 1, 2005 - 8:45pm.

Lame

Thank you for the compliments. I agree, this probably was the prettiest loaf of bread I've ever baked. I hope I can pull it off again! :)

To score the top I used a cheapo, homemade curved lame:

lame

The handle is a coffee stirring stick courtesy of Starbucks, the blade just a double-edged razor blade.

Typically I am awful at scoring loaves-- you'll notice I haven't done a lesson on scoring yet... that's because I'm not confident enough doing it to give anyone advice yet-- but I got lucky this time. I think part of why it worked out well is that the dry herbs absorbed enough water to make the dough fairly stiff, which makes scoring a heck of a lot easier.

I had the same thought, that a half a cup of herbs would be too much. But Herbes de Provence are pretty mild, and I really didn't find the flavor to be overwhelming. Sure, the herbs definitely dominated the loaf, but that was the point.

Submitted by Paddyscake on April 30, 2006 - 7:27pm.

Most definitely a ...

Beautiful loaf Floyd! I just wanted to say that I made this
today and it is awesome. I think the lavender in the herb mix is
what makes it incredible, the aroma while cooking is heavenly
and the flavor after is wonderful. Most definitely a favorite!
Thank you..
Oh..PS..I didn't have any orange liquer..so I used a raspberry
liquer I made last summer..very subtle taste. Pleasant flavor,
but I don't think it is necessary to still come out with an
excellent loaf..it's not what makes this a winner. As you said,
a splash of OJ or water would be just fine.

Submitted by crumbbum on October 7, 2005 - 9:01am.

going to give this a shot today/tonight

In spite of being on weightwatchers now, I'm going to make this tonight. I entered the ingredients in the ww points calculator, and if I can make it into 20 servings, it's only 2 points per serving, and Amy will be home to help me demolish it, so the damage won't be entirely on my hips.

Anyway, I don't have a suitable liqueur, only some questionable Irish creme. Do you think it contributed significantly to the bread, or should I be okay just using water to make up the extra liquid? Or maybe I should add a spot of sugar or maybe molasses to the mix?

Submitted by Floydm on October 7, 2005 - 11:41am.

I couldn't taste the

I couldn't taste the liqueur. The flavor of the herbs totally overwhelmed it. I would just substitute in water or a splash of orange juice.

Submitted by crumbbum on October 7, 2005 - 12:42pm.

thanks

water it'll be, then, unless I go out today. not a drop of OJ in the house, either.

Submitted by jeffbrook1 on March 22, 2006 - 9:01am.

Bread

The bread looks great, I am giong to try it tonight. On the water, you didn't indicate temperature. Is it room temp or hotter that that?

Thanks

Baking in Africa

Submitted by Floydm on April 30, 2006 - 8:03pm.

Water temp

Yes, room temperature.

Submitted by RichC on July 1, 2006 - 1:38pm.

What about fresh herbs?

I'm looking for an herb bread because I have an abundance of fresh basil, rosmary and thyme in the garden right now, but I'm not sure how this would work out with fresh herbs. I think you're supposed to double the amount of herbs if you're using fresh, but how do you think that would work out. A cup of herbs?

Submitted by Mini Oven on July 1, 2006 - 7:41pm.

Fresh herbs

I find my fresh herbs are stronger and have better aroma than dried ones. But I prefer to mix them in cream cheese or cottage cheese and spread them on the bread. Mini Oven

Submitted by RichC on July 2, 2006 - 8:03am.

Tried a different approach

I ended up using the Italian bread recipe from BBA as a base, and then I added basil, rosemary and thyme. I'm guessing it's about a Tbsp of each. I should have hot bread in about 4 hours now. I'll start a new thread to post the results.

Submitted by yholmes on November 27, 2006 - 12:24pm.

Why the extra rise?

I discovered this WONDERFUL site a few weeks ago and have been experimenting since then - i am a brand new bread baker. My favorite bread so far is FloydM "My Pain Sur Poolish (Daily Bread)". I saw this Pain de Provence recipe today and decided to give it a try and use up my herbs from the garden.

However, i am wondering why the 3rd rise? I changed it up a bit and used some WW flour & fresh basil, thyme, rosemary & oregano. i'll let you know how it goes! Great site - just exactly what i was looking for!

Submitted by Floydm on November 27, 2006 - 4:38pm.

Um... because the original recipe called for it?

However, i am wondering why the 3rd rise?

Umm... because the original recipe called for it?

Seriously.... I'm sure you could get a very good bread without three rises. Typically, the longer and slower the fermentation, the better flavor you get. You also tend to get a bread with a longer shelf life. But you could definitely try this with only two rises and probably notice very little difference.

Submitted by sugarcreations on November 27, 2006 - 4:16pm.

I agree. Great loaf Floyd.

I agree. Great loaf Floyd. Looks great!

http://sugarwerks.myikonboard.com

Submitted by SDbaker on April 1, 2007 - 2:14am.

poolish

Floyd, did you refrigerate the poolish or leave it on the counter overnight?

love the site.

SDbaker

Submitted by Floydm on April 1, 2007 - 7:47am.

Poolish

I leave my poolish on the counter.

Submitted by mellie581 on April 2, 2007 - 5:08am.

rubber!

Hi! thanks so much for creating this site--it's inspired me tremendously and brought me away from the NYT no-knead recipies, except... My bread is like a tennis ball! I tried to make the Pain de Provence and it seems quite rubbery to me. Any suggestions? The crust was not as nice as I had wanted, but not bad. It browned quite quickly, so I put tin foil on top of it to prevent burning. Also, I did use a Doughmakers' bread pan rather than just a stone, so the sides came out a lot lighter than the top. As I was making the dough, I think I added a fair amount more flour than the recipe called for--perhaps I'm not leaving it sticky enough? Odd, though, b/c I did feel the 'change' in the dough that made me think it was don. (Perhaps these are unrelated...)

The last loaf I made (my first beyond the no-knead recipes) had a lot of whole wheat and was much the a brick. Well, better with time, I suppose... But does anyone have any ideas on how to improve on this rubber? Thanks!

Submitted by Ruth Redburn on May 5, 2007 - 11:27am.

recipes

Ruth Redburn

How do I find some of these recipes mentioned in the comments? I would like to find a good Italian bread recipe like we had in Italy. Thanks, Ruth

Submitted by xlperro on June 23, 2007 - 11:39pm.

I've only been baking for a

I've only been baking for a couple weeks now, but love doing it.

I tried out the Pain de Provence today. My shaping and scoring need some work and I probably took it out of the oven a bit soon but it was 200F in the middle when I did.

Here's the results.

Submitted by Paddyscake on October 4, 2007 - 5:12pm.

Good job!!

How did you like it? I think it's a great loaf..

Submitted by PsDenys on November 10, 2007 - 3:29pm.

Beautiful!

This looks wonderful.

I've only been baking for about a month now and got very similar results to yours in terms of crust and crumb when I made the bread today. I had trouble scoring it with a knife (and don't have a razor blade), so I used scissors. That worked better for me. I'm also still struggling with shaping.

Next time, I think I'll cut back on the herbs. 1/2 a cup left me with very little bread flavor. I think this is because I used dried herbs. Might try fresh next time.

Thanks, Floyd, for a wonderful site.

Submitted by surfing69 on October 4, 2007 - 4:26am.

Ratio of water to flour?

I live in the UK and have tried to convert the cups to grams. My calculations (if correct) show that the flour is 360g and water is 284g - 340g. This ratio would give a very wet dough! And this is not including the liquer.

Whilst I realise that more water creates a more open texture, this recipe would appear very wet. A traditional baguette recipe would use 58g - 64g water for every 100g flour.

Please advise accordingly.

Thanks

Submitted by bwraith on October 4, 2007 - 9:40am.

re: flour to water ratio

I haven't done this recipe, but here are a couple of things to consider.

I would bet the cups would convert better to weight at about 140g/cup. I'm not sure what Floyd uses for his conversions, but Bernard Clayton's book, in which this recipe appears, has a table in the back that says 1 cup of flour is 142g. It probably makes sense to use that conversion ratio. Unfortunately, volume measures vary over a wide range for flour, since people have different methods of packing the flour. I've seen estimates by different authors of anywhere from about 110 grams to about 155g of flour to the cup.

Another factor is that the spices in this bread may absorb some water. I could imagine a half cup of spices absorbing an ounce or two of water.

Overall, if you use 142g/cup, that's 426g of total flour. If you add the water and liqueur together for 12 total ounces (using the lower water estimate), that's 340g of liquid. Subtract from that 30g of water absorbed by the spices, and you get 310g, which if divided by 426g, is a hydration of 73% or so. It's still a little higher hydration than I would've thought, but maybe the spices use more water than I'm guessing in this example.

One last thing is that flours vary over a fairly wide range in terms of the water they need to absorb for a given consistency. So, what may seem a reasonable consistency, using the proportions in the recipe, to someone using a flour available here in the US, may not seem the same for the flour you're using in the UK. So, some experimentation will be inevitable, given we all have access to somewhat different flours.

Bill

Submitted by Wreinie on January 22, 2008 - 10:21pm.

Herb Garden

I grow a herb garden each year in containers, many many containers and am going to make it my goal to make this absolutely gorgeous bread!! I guess I really should get ideas from the community on what herbs are most commonly used in breadmaking?

I grow usually, (giving common names).. mint, parsley, sage, rosemary, and thyme,(yes, due to the song, always grow them)dill, chamomile, to name a few... I think I may have some lavendar seeds that I am going to start off in starter cups this year already.

I let a lot of herbs go to waste this last year, but this year, they will be used :)

I promise that if I can share all my snow with all of you or my cold weather I will :) Don't fret, I am not a stingy snowlover :)

Submitted by gonzalezbrazil on August 5, 2008 - 9:37am.

Good news, some little troubles

This is for me, one of the best breads i´ve ever made in all my life. My bread turns delicious, soften, lighty, tasteful, but unfortunately i ´m worried with 2 problems.

I set the dough on top of black aluminium baker sheet, pre-heated but the loaf didn´t acquired the brown colour we hv in your bread on the pictures in this recipe. It finished nice but with so much pale colour on crust. And the other problem is that on the bottom of the loaf the dough turns brown like an overbaked and for me it isn´t good. The final result is a bread with nice colour, nice crust, excelent crumb, delicious freshned, and flavored, but this black colour like an overbaked on bottom don´t let me be completely happy, about the results.

What´s wrong? What can i do? I baked my bread on a house gas oven, with recomended temperatures!My Provence pale delicious Bread: This is my Pan de Provence, delicious , smooth, flavored, but little bit pale!!!