May 30, 2015 - 3:36pm
Sourdough Batards from Home Page
Howdy...first post here for me. I've been playing with a sourdough starters and making loaves mostly as a hobby lately. I ran across your site and was blown away by the pic of the batards. I don't even know what a batard is but looks awesome :) Anyways, learned a lot of lingo just dissecting the recipe such as Autolyse. My question, is this really needed for that long of period?? I just looked back at it and see that it can be 1-10 hours so I guess a couple of hours isn't that big of a deal but I've never hreard this, not that I have any idea what I'm doing anyways. Maybe I just need to understand what it really does? Also, what's a couche? Can I bake the bread in it? Like put it directly in a dutch oven?
Thanks again for any help!!
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Here is an explanation, some pictures and a way to order on if you need to:
http://www.kingarthurflour.com/shop/items/bakers-couche
recipe on this site. He's done a lot of work refining it and has clear directions about how to make it. I pretty much have adopted it as my standard SD bread (Thanks David!!!). It calls for an overnight retardation in the fridge and a relative short prep period the next day prior to baking. Other than my still to be improved slashing techniques the loaves are flavorful and well risen. I prepare 1000g of dough and split it in two which is just the right size to use a couche for the final rise. To answer your basic question, no you cannot bake on couche.
Thanks guys! I ordered a couche frorm Amazon and I think one of my biggest problems is moving proofed bread to oven without deflating it. The batard dough work pretty well with oven spring. This was the first overnight retardation dough that I've made and perhaps that's why it sprung so well. I do think that I should have proofed it long than the 1 hour!? This dough just didn't rise very much at all during the proofing period at all. I'll post pics of it cut into once I get to work today. I can't eat much bread (diet) but take it to work so everyone else will eat it :)
You might want to use a banneton or proving basket (+ linen liner) rather than a couche. At least initially. that way you can go from basket directly into the oven - onto a stone or into a pre-heated dutch oven type thing - however you bake.
I use bannetons, baskets and a couche depending on what I'm baking but my overall hydrations are rarely over 65% so moving a lump of ready dough from the couche to the transfer board (big plywood peel) isn't hard.
-Gordon
Thanks Gordon!
I'm learning lots of stuff here and just ordered baskets!!
I guess the oven spring is what causes all the holes? I wonder if that is from the cream cheese or the sugar or neither? Anyways, it came out ok and almost looks like the pic.
Autolyse is normally 20min- 30min anything longer is unnecessary. And the correct way to Autolyse is without salt not levain. But it is still quite common to autolyse with the levain but never with salt.
a longer autolyse period and the more whole grains in the mix the longer. I do i hour for white breads and up to 4 hours for whole grain ones. Some do hours or overnight autolyse for their whole grain breads. For spouted grains some say it isn't needed since the grains have already been wet for 24 hours releasing the enzymes before drying and grinding but I do them for an hour too- just to wake them up!
Happy baking Abe
Sometimes I autolyse in the strictest sense (no salt nor levain) but mainly with levain and no salt. I was under the impression that after 30min the benefits of longer aren't so much for adding more time to the recipe, i.e. the first 30minutes is when the most benefit happens. So rather than schlepp it out I've always kept it to 30 minutes max. But if you say that longer does benefit then perhaps if I'm doing more wholegrains i'll work in a longer autolyse. I've also heard that warmer water can speed things up.
things bread and some other stuff too. Happy baking
Just wanna say thanks to all of you for your suggestions and especially to Alan for the Snyder recipe. I made a batard using the couche and another loaf using a round banneton brotform with the Snyder dough and they turned out to be the best ever that I've made. Thanks again for the help!
Glad that we were all able to help out here.
Alan