The Fresh Loaf

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Help with Pain de Campagne Rustique

Paulbuck's picture
Paulbuck

Help with Pain de Campagne Rustique

or so says the recipe in the book 'Bread, the breads of the world and how to bake them at home'.

Hello,

I've been baking this bread at least once a week since I first successfully made a loaf in May of this year. My starter is just a piece of dough I carry over from the last loaf and keep in the fridge until needed (keeps about a week before losing some vigor). This loaf has evolved over time from a dense, like kneading a phone book, loaf with a nice sourdough flavor, to a proper looking boule with less intense flavor (certainly more concentrated in the crust than the crumb). After finding this place and reading a bit, I found I was doing a lot wrong. Measurements were always volume. Turns out my cup of flour comes in at around 5.4 ounces. I constantly struggled with the volumes given in the recipe and was always adding water to even get the flour to mix. It was a struggle, would spend 20 minutes hand mixing. Now I weigh everything and life is much easier! However, I've been increasing the hydration (initially I bet the loaves were under 55%) and have found around 58% hydration made a nice loaf that is easy to handle. The crumb is tight still but not dense, before discovering this site I would have thought it normal. Since finding this place I've been tweaking things a bit to produce a darker crust and a more airy crumb. I upped the hydration to 60 % and it was a really sticky dough, I added enough flour while kneading to get it to tacky. This loaf kind of collapsed when transferring from the proofing bowl and the loaf came out pretty flat. Its possible it over-proofed. The crumb did come out a bit more open and the loaf tasted normal. I've been thinking about retarding the ferment in the fridge as I've read about in the hopes of intensifying the flavor and maybe making the loaf a little easier to handle.

Some questions I have:

--How does the levain factor into the hydration? When I say 60% hydration I'm not factoring in the water that went in to making the levain. Maybe this is why 60% to me felt so wet.

--When would I place the dough into the fridge? After final forming and placing in the proofing bowl?

--I've read where some bake right out of the fridge and others when its warmed up. Would the hydration factor in here or is it a preference?

--I've been baking on a pizza stone that I transfer the dough onto using parchment paper. How can I just bake on the stone without parchment paper and not destroying loaf? Just cannot imagine how one of these tacky loaves would slide on corn meal.

--Those with convection ovens; do you turn off the fan? I've done both and now have been going convection free. Not sure why but convinced myself the fan was somehow impeding the oven spring.

--I've started steaming with great results. However, I've got a gas oven and find it hard to get a nice lasting steam without opening up the oven every 30 seconds to mist the sides. How long is it normal to continue to steam? Reinhart in TBBA says only for the first couple of minutes but I've seen as long as ten. What would be a good length of time for steaming or is it dependent on what your baking? If so, then for this bread what would you recommend?

I have more questions but don't want to wear you all out!

Thanks,

Paul

 

Paulbuck's picture
Paulbuck

Here are a couple pictures of the last loaf that had deflated a bit and the associated crumb shot. That loaf is 3 inches high at the highest and 8 inches wide.

Lechem's picture
Lechem (not verified)

Old Dough (pate fermentee) as in leavened by yeast or did it start as a sourdough starter (naturally leavened).

jimbtv's picture
jimbtv

Hi Paul,

Personally I think the bread looks pretty good even if it doesn't meet your expectations. You will find the folks here very helpful.

Would you be willing to detail your formula, along with your processes, timing and temperatures? That will help fill in some of the blanks. Once we see the details we will be able to comment on things like how the hydration of the starter affects the final hydration.

Search this forum on steam. Some use wet towels in a baking dish and others use lava rocks and water. I originally used a hot cast iron pan and a cup of water. In this way we never have to open the door to add more water.

Your starter may be lacking some vigor. I think more is written here on starters than any other subject so you will find a wealth of information on the proper care and feeding of a healthy starter.

Higher hydration dough (70% and up) can initially be intimidating but with time you will learn how to work with it. Once you gain these skills low hydration dough doesn't feel right anymore. You may be thinking that you need to work the dough a lot but you don't. Let time do the work for you. Fermentations of 3 - 5 hours, with a series of stretch and folds, are not uncommon here. Long kneading sessions and the traditional "punch down" are not practiced much here either, at least from my readings. Search here and on YouTube for stretch and fold as it relates to bread.

As far as parchment there is no shame in using parchment paper. I'd put the elimination of parchment very low on your list of priorities at this point.

 Looking forward to your experiences.

 

Jim

Paulbuck's picture
Paulbuck

Hi,

The dough is naturally leavened. My ratios, weights and procedures:

Levain:

--Old dough (1/2 cup or about 3 oz)

--bread flour (1 cup or 5.4 oz)

--whole wheat flour (1/4 cup or 1.4 oz)

--warm water (generous 1/2 cup or 4 oz)

After mixing, the levain weighed in at 14 oz.

I start by taking the starter out and letting it warm up a bit then mix in the warm water and break the dough down til there are no more clumps then mix in the flour. I cover and let stew at room temperature (currently in the mid 60's) for about 10 hours or so; I catch it before it collapses).

For the dough currently:

Bread flour: 16 oz

warm water: 9.6 oz (60%)

salt: .32 (2%, I've been playing around with this and have gone as low as 1.5 % with it being colder but have since bumped it back up to 2%).

After the levain has done its thing I then mix it with the warm water until its well broken up. The I start adding the flour a little at a time. My goal is to have no clumps from the levain; at a point in the mixing it is like pancake batter. When there is about a 1/2 cup flour left I throw in the salt into the remaining flour then finish mixing. I turn it out onto the floured counter and knead for about 5 minutes. I place in a lightly oiled bowl and let ferment for about 2 to 2 1/2 hours.

Back to the counter and degas the dough gently (little structure at this point). I cut out a 1/2 cup of the dough for my next starter then shape the dough into a boule, place into a bowl seam side up with a flour dusted kitchen cloth and let proof for about 3 hours or until it passes the poke test).

Transfer to a piece of dusted parchment paper, slash and let rest while the oven preheats. I preheat the oven to 525 with the pizza stone in place and a wide, shallow pan on the rack below (bottom). Stone is set two rack levels above the pan.

When the oven is heated the bread slides onto the stone, I pour boiling water onto the pan underneath and close. After the initial blast of steam dissipates (quickly), every 30 seconds I mist the oven and I do this for about 2 minutes. Then drop the temp to 475 and bake until done. I rotate the loaf once mid way through. Currently, without convection, about 40 minutes or so to achieve a dark crust (my wife is not a fan of this but I'm convincing her it will make the crust better and crispier).

And thats it!

Thank you for the responses!

pmccool's picture
pmccool

Paul,

Some ideas that occurred to me while reading through this thread:

- A close crumb can indicate a dough that has been mixed or kneaded a lot.  It may be helpful, since you are doing S&F during the bulk fermentation, to reduce the amount of mixing; stopping just at the point that all of the ingredients are uniformly combined. The let the S&Fs build the dough strength with a more open crumb.

- Stickiness is in the eye, or hand, of the beholder.  As I've worked with dough over the years, I've become comfortable with handling wetter doughs that would have sent me screaming for the exits some years back.  Technique matters.  So does flour; some will accept more water and some will accept less.  As dab notes further down, the dough tends to become less sticky as the S&Fs proceed.  Then again, with natural leavening, dough tends to become more sticky as fermentation proceeds.  Balancing the two trends can be a challenge.  

- You might want to change your baking and steaming approach.  Try putting a larger quantity of boiling water in the steam pan and bake without convection during the first 10-15 minutes when you need the steam.  Also, forgo the spraying and attendant door openings and closings, since you'll have more water in the oven already.  That will prevent the oven temperature from dropping and it won't vent all that precious steam you want to keep inside.  If you get better results using convection, switch back to convection after you finish with the steaming portion of the bake.

- To minimize the shaped loaf's deflation, try leaving the loaf in the bowl until the oven is fully preheated.  Then tip it out, slash it, and put it straight into the oven.  It won't have nearly so much time to flatten and spread that way.  You can experiment with putting the water into the steam pan before or after loading the loaf in the oven to see which gives you the best results.

- My experience with the finger-poke test is that it works better with yeasted loaves than with naturally leavened loaves.  It may be giving you a false read about the loaf's readiness for baking.  You might want to try putting a small piece of dough in a small container (a shot glass, maybe?) with straight sides so that you can mark the starting point and the doubling point.  Keep the test dough in the same location as the main dough, so that it ferments at approximately the same rate.  The growth of the sample dough will give a pretty good indication of the dough's expansion, even though your eyes may tell you that the dough in the bowl isn't ready yet.

Best of luck in your future bakes.

Paul

Paulbuck's picture
Paulbuck

Thank you Paul. I am excited to start on the next loaf and try out your suggestions. I actually have not been doing the stretch and fold method but will be doing so as the hydration goes up (certainly my current kneading method will not work).

I like the idea of monitoring the ferment with a little dough gauge!

Paul

Paulbuck's picture
Paulbuck

So, I started a loaf yesterday and did place the shaped, final proof dough into the fridge. Just took it out now after almost 9 hours. We'll see how it goes!

dabrownman's picture
dabrownman

where the flour is very weak, I calculate your overall hydration, swith the old dough included as it should be, is only 60% which is very low.  Most folks in the UK would be at 68% to open the crumb a bit and make the bread much lighter.  Here in the states, we would be at 72% and many would be pushing 75-78% dor  bread like this if following Forkish hydrations.

Your bread is the way it is because your mix is so dry.  Up the water for the dough by about 2 oz and all will be well.  You need to learn to handle a wet dough and develop the gluten over time.  It will become less sticky as the ferment and proof is completed.   See Trevor Wilson's youtube videos on how to handle a wet dough.  He is quite the baker and posts on TFL too.  All of his videos re wonderful.  Just remember that he is using N American flour that is much more thisty than Europenan varieties.

Her is one of them  How to Mix Wet Dough (Rubaud Method)

Just search Trevor Wilson on youtube

Happy baking

Paulbuck's picture
Paulbuck

Thanks for the reply. I live in the states and if you think 60% is dry you should have seen the sawdust I was baking before!!

I'll take the advice given and get at the next loaf!

By the way this last loaf was very similar to the one before; got a half inch more rise  and the boule came out great. Crumb is the same as before. I want to believe the taste is a bit better with the 9 hour fridge proof but I'd be maybe wishful. Still yummy of course (aren't they all!).

Thanks again,

Paul (here in Sacramento, California)
.

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

When you say "old dough", is that a bit of the dough from the previous batch? The only thing that differentiates old dough (pate fermentee) from a stiff starter is the inclusion of salt in the former. I make a recipe with pate fermentee as the starter and don't add any salt to the final dough. Maybe try playing with the salt again?

Paulbuck's picture
Paulbuck

Yes, by old dough I mean a 1/2 cup I take from the previous batch prior to shaping and final proof. I hadn't thought about the salt included in the starter. Right at the moment the starter (old dough) is really vigorous so I've been increasing the salt a bit to temper that (hopefully I have that right). I'm going to try lessening the amount of salt per your suggestion to see how it responds. May I ask how much pate fermentee do you use in your recipe?

Thanks Lazy Loafer!

Lazy Loafer's picture
Lazy Loafer

That recipe has 20% pate fermentee (e.g. for 1000 grams of flour in the dough, there is 200 grams of pate fermentee). But I misspoke originally - there is in fact salt added to the final dough as well (what was I thinking?) So maybe that's not the problem.

Paulbuck's picture
Paulbuck

I still play pretty fast and loose with the pre-ferment. It's been mostly bullet proof so I still just cut out a 1/2 cup which when I did weigh it came out to 3 oz. Just weighed my current puck and it's 4 oz. So about 20% here also. When done, what % is your levain to the flour? Do you include the flour used in the levain in your total flour weight? This part confuses me somewhat.

joc1954's picture
joc1954

Maybe  with a little bit more opened crumb. But this is famous Poilane bread from Paris that I bought last week while being there. I could not resist to publish this picture before I actually write about visiting this bakery. But when I saw picture of your bread I immediately remembered at this bread.

Happy baking, Joze 

Paulbuck's picture
Paulbuck

Thank you Joze. That does look similar doesn't it? I'm guessing that loaf tasted amazing (probably similar to mine!! ;)

I wonder if the Pain de Campagne Rustique is actually a sourdough? Honestly, mine has just a mild sourdough flavor. The first loaf took 5 days total from making the chef to bake. I read here where sourdough starters can take up to and over a week to develop. Maybe with this bread the idea is to capture the yeast and not so much all the bacterial goodies that make up a sourdough starter?

I do love this bread (I should, I bake a loaf at least once a week) and want to bring out the best in it.

Thanks and all suggestions welcome!

Paul

joc1954's picture
joc1954

What I have learned so far is that my bread fits to my taste and it is the best one for me and also for those who eat it like my wife, children and grandchildren, neighbors, friends. I make it according to my taste and that is the most important fact.

Because of that I must say that I probably expected too much from Poilane miche. It had more sour taste and my grandchildren have first eaten my bread and then they finished Poilane miche. This does not mean that it was not good, it was just different and my grandchildren are used to the taste of my bread. Thanks God we have different ideas about how something should taste and SD bread is no exception. 

I visited Poilane bakery because I was in Paris and had time and wanted to taste the famous bread. The same I did in September with The Mill and Tartine Bakery. I just wanted to get idea what their breads taste like and compare with mine, not to change anything but just to get feeling if my bread is like theirs and if I am on the right path. Sometimes I make a bread per recipe and I can find it great  but it can simply happen that I will never bake that again because it is not according to my taste. 

Happy baking and merry Christmas!

Joze 

jimbtv's picture
jimbtv

I thought you might find this interesting:

http://www.pri.org/stories/2016-12-19/how-best-bread-paris-ended-my-freezer-and-why-it-made-me-think-about-death

 The link was recently posted on the BBGA forum.