thom leonard's french country bread

On X-mas we'll be having a cheese-thingie going on with friends, so I made my first 4 pounder today. It looks quite spectacular I think:

This dough is quite soft, and I forgot to fold it 3x early on in the ferment, so i did one fold and at the end of the 3 hour ferment and hoped for the best. It came out flatter than I wanted, but it did get a substantial oven spring, so I'm  happy.

I made sure that the time between the dough leaving the rising basket (well, more like a bucket in this case, lol) and it going into the oven was minimal, but the dough is so heavy, there's just no keeping it from loosing its shape.

I haven't tasted it yet, it's still cooling. I'll post a pic of the crumb after we cut it at the dinner table

I made a "year in baking"- slideshow; if you would like to see: here it is

greettings from Amsterdam

Freerk