March 22, 2009 - 5:33pm
My Best Looking Italian Loaf Yet
With you pros out there, I don't know if bubbles near the crust are good or bad, but I love them. Now if I can only get my egg white wash on straight. I should put my glasses on when I do this!
If someone would let me know on the bubbles, I'd appreciate it.
21:55 The bread gremlins came a few minutes ago wielding a large knife. So here are a couple of pics of the inside
And I went for the extreme closeup too. Might as well.
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Very nice Niagragirl! Also a creative arrangement.
Eric
I don't know anything about bubbles but the crumb looks gorgeous!
Did you proof overnight in the refrigerator? I think Peter Reinhart said that method will create little blisters under the crust. This trait is not necessarily undesirable! Oh, yeah: the photo is really nice too--great blurring effect in the background!
--Pamela
This was really just a quick loaf to work on my loaf shaping. It's my 30 cent Italian Loaf. No fancy methods at all, no overnites etc. Just used a slacker dough than usual becuase I was too lazy to open up another bag of flour to add the prescribed amount. So the crust bubbles were a very nice surpise to me. I wonder if I can do it again ;-)
Niagragirl, can you direct me to the link with the recipe for the Italian bread?? It looks delicious!!
It was intended to be a standard 70% hydration very plain loaf, the one I usually bake to practice my loaf shaping. But I was too lazy to open another bag of flour to get my 10 ounce requirement, so the flour was about 9.5 or so ounces, and the dough here was slacker, probably about 73-74%.
Flour 10 oz
Water 7 oz
Salt 1 tsp
Yeast 2 1/4 tsp or 1 packet
Sugar 2 Tbsp
That's really it except for an eggwhite wash.
Some friends really like this bread just because it's homemade, so I usually just make them and give them away. To get the looser crumb, just hold back some flour from the 10 ounces.
It's really a pretty flavorless loaf, but it makes good toast, and you can slap some peanut butter on it. My friends appreciate the homemade gesture.