Hearth Style Bread with Red Fife Poolish

Earlier this month I decided it was time to start over and build a brand new rye starter for myself since my old one had become adulterated with various types of wheat flour over the last few months and I wanted a pure rye sour to use in some upcoming projects I have in mind. I'd hoped it would be ready by this weekend but it's seems the pH went out of balance over the last few days making it not quite ready for prime time. The cupboard was bare for bread and I needed something for the next days sandwiches so I thought I'd just make something using a poolish that I could leave overnight and mix up for a dough the next morning. My first thought was to make a baguette dough with the poolish, inspired by Larry's recent post of what he called his “odds and ends” http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/21724/odds-amp-ends as well as LindyD's terrific post of the Hamelman series of videos that took us through the entire process of baguette production. http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/21730/video-lessons-master-baker-Jeffrey-hamelman

The problem with that kind of dough for me is that while I love the flavour of baguettes, I'm not keen on having a wide open cell structure if I'm making a bread to be used for sandwiches, nor did I want a long skinny loaf. What I ended up doing was using more or less the same ingredients and percentages for a baguette dough but reducing the hydration and adding some of my dormant rye sour to the final mix for a bit of extra flavour. Honestly I'm not sure what to call this bread other than rustic or hearth style, which is fine with me since the name is less important to me than the end result. I'd intended to make two large loaves from the dough but when it came time to divide it I decided to make some baguette shapes after all, just for fun and to get some shaping practice in at the same time. In the end I wound up making 2x 250gram and 1x500 gram baguette shapes and the remaining dough as a simple hearth style loaf. The two small baguette shaped loaves turned out OK, but the scoring and final proof on the larger one left a lot to be desired. The hearth loaf had a good jump and formed a nice crunchy crust with Sylvia's steam system providing plenty of steam during the initial bake. The bread has a nice balance of flavour, with the malt and rye sour doing a kind of sweet and sour thing that works well with the nutty wheat flavour of the Red Fife poolish. The crumb is what I hoping for, with no large holes and fairly uniform, so while it's not close to being a baguette type of crumb, it did make for a good sandwich bread which is what I was after from the beginning.

Franko

Hearth Style Bread with Red Fife Poolish

PROCEDURE:

Mix the poolish and ripen for 12-16 hrs @ 65F

Mixing by machine:

Add all ingredients to mixing bowl and mix on 1st for 3 minutes then 2nd for 3-4 ½ minutes. DDT-76F

Mixing by hand:

Add all ingredients to mixing bowl and mix by hand for 10 minutes until you have a soft, slightly loose dough. DDT-76F Note: a slightly higher water temp should be used to make up for lack of friction heat from hand mixing v machine mixing.

Bulk Ferment-2 hrs. Fold once after 1 hr, repeat if needed for proper development.

Divide in 250 grm pieces for small baguette shapes or 500 grm for large baguette shapes, the remaining dough for batards. Preshape in rounds and rest for 15 minutes.

Shape accordingly and proof for 1-1 ½ hrs. Score as desired.

Bake at 480F with constant steam for 10 minutes. Remove steam apparatus and lower oven to 440 and continue baking for 10-15 longer for baguettes , 20-25 minutes for batard. Cool thoroughly before slicing.