Lesson # 3 Time & Temperature

This is my first attempt at the bread recipe in Lesson #3 on this site:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/lessons/timeandtemperature

I was running out of time however and cheated a little, by raising the final dough in the oven to speed things up a little. I managed to reduce the time from 90 minutes to 60 minutes on the first and final rise. I didn't use any type of wash on this loaf as I wanted the crust as crunchy as possible. I did put a pan in the oven and set the oven up to 500F. I placed one cup of ice cubes into the tray just at the same time I put the bread in the oven. I reduced the heat from 500F to 400F after 4 minutes and the loaf went 40 minutes with one rotation in the middle. I did have one minor problem however, I put clingrap over the shaped loaf for the final rise and it stuck on there pretty good. I everso gently worked it off the loaf trying so hard not to push any of the air out of it. It worked out pretty good in the end though. Not a lot of oven rise but none the less my best loaf to date. One last thing to say... my slash was a little wrecked but it didn't look to bad.

The bread came out fantastic. I'm in heaven, thank you all... as this is where I learned how to do it. I've made simular recipes in the past but not as good as this one with the pre-ferment. The crust was a little crunchy and chewy and the flavour was perfect. I'm so happy.

Here are a couple of pictures.