Pain a l'Ancienne {bba}

It's been quite a while since I've posted a hearth bread on this blog.  Truth be told, I don't bake many hearth loaves; most of the bread consumed in our house is in toast form, so I'm usually baking bread in loaf pans to be sliced and toasted for breakfast.  And (maybe because I make so many sandwich/toast loaves) I'm not very comfortable baking hearth loaves. 

At any rate, Peter Reinhart's book The Bread Baker’s Apprentice has a hefty share of free-form loaves, so I inevitably get some practice as I make my way through the book as part of the Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge - an endeavor that I am still erratically pursuing, although I will be skipping the part of the challenge that deals with sourdough starters.  It's a bit too much of a challenge for me right now!  Anyway, enough digression. 

The next bread from BBA is the Pain a l'Ancienne, a venerable baguette in which all of the flavor of the wheat is unlocked via a process of delayed fermentation at controlled temperature, ie, using cold water and storing the dough in the refrigerator for a time.

Although it sounds pretty complicated, if you follow Reinhart's directions it comes together fairly easily.  I'm still not very confident in my bread-shaping abilities, but my loaves turned out decently and I have to say the aromas wafting through my kitchen as the bread baked were tantalizing!

n.o.e.'s notes:

-  I made half recipe of this bread, which yielded three baguettes.

-  I have to admit that I didn't keep many notes when I was making this bread, but you can see step by step photos of how this bread is made on this post by BBA Challenge founder Nicole.  Members of the Challenge are asked to not post the recipe.

-  The crust of my bread developed a beautiful golden color, but the crumb was a bit denser than I would have liked - some big holes would have been lovely!

 I ordered this cool bamboo cutting board here after hearing about it from Jaden of Steamy Kitchen

the verdict:

I served this bread to my to book group, and it was a resounding hit with everyone.  I was smitten with the chewiness and flavor of this bread; in fact it might be the best loaves that I've ever baked!
If I had my druthers, I would have preferred large airy holes inside, but who can quibble when the bread tastes this good?

Italian Bread {bba}

I'm glad that the Italian bread happens to be the bread that immediately follows the French Bread alphabetically in in Peter Reinhart's book The Bread Baker's Apprentice because I was able to compare the two breads that I baked in succession in the BBA Challenge.

n.o.e.'s notes:

- This bread uses a pre-ferment mixture called a biga. I used regular bread flour and
1.5 tsp of fresh yeast in my biga.

- After the biga rests and ferments in the fridge for a day or so, it's time to mix up the dough. The biga is cut into 12 pieces and mixed with new ingredients, in my case King Arthur's "European style flour" and fresh yeast. I love the elegance of using a food processor at this stage, as it cleanly and efficiently incorporates the biga into the new ingredients, producing a lovely supple dough in just a minute or two.

the verdict:

I made a series of missteps in the rising and the shaping and the slashing, but in the end it didn't matter because the first rule of the kitchen is "taste rules" and this bread tasted amazing! We preferred the more substantial taste of this bread to the French bread of a few weeks before. This is likely to become my "go to" hearth bread, which should give me plenty of opportunity to perfect the aesthetics of my Italian bread loaves.

French Bread {bba}

Peter Reinhart's book The Bread Baker's Apprentice is organized alphabetically, although it seems as though suddenly we are getting to a section of the book with serious breads: lean doughs where the flavor comes from how the flour water yeast and salt are handled, how long the dough ferments and rests, how the loaves are shaped and baked. There are few enriching ingredients such as milk, eggs, fruit, nuts or sweeteners to cover any baker deficiencies. No, these breads are veritable proving grounds, or so it seemed to me when I surveyed the upcoming breads: French, then Italian, and a bit later Pain a l'Ancienne, Pain de Campagne, and Pane Siciliano. Whew, these are the real deal!

Just the thought that I was going to bake French Bread was enough to produce trepidation, if not outright fear. It seemed so, well, French, and so perfect. We're talking baguettes here! Just as I was getting ready to tackle this bread I was browsing in a fancy kitchen store and saw some baguette forms. I bought one on impulse, hoping that would help me prevail in the challenge of baguette-baking.


n.o.e.'s notes:

- My new baguette mold is made to hold two, loaves, and Reinhart's recipe makes 3 loaves, so I scaled the recipe to 60%.

- The French bread formula is a two step process, with at least a day between making the pre-ferment dough and making the final dough. In this case the pre-ferment dough is a pate fermentee, which has the exact same ingredients and proportions as are added the second day to make the final dough. Making the first half of the dough in advance allows for the flavors to fully develop from enzymes breaking down the starches in the flour over time.

- In the pate fermentee I used instant yeast, bread flour and all-purpose flour, and I mixed it in the food processor. It was pliable and perfect in a matter of minutes. The dough rose a bit on the counter, then I deflated it and popped it in the fridge. What followed next was a series of fridge and freezer sessions for the pate fermentee. I was trying to get this bread baked over Thanksgiving, but there just wasn't time.

- Finally the day dawned for baking French bread! For the final dough, all of the pate fermentee is used, and additional flour, water, salt and yeast (in the same amounts and proportions as had been used in the pre-ferment dough) are mixed in. I had ordered a bunch of specialty flour when King Arthur Flour had a free-shipping special, and for the final dough I used French Style Flour rather than all-purpose. (King Arthur's description: "This high-ash, medium-protein flour makes extra-flavorful baguettes and boules.") Additionally, I used fresh yeast, stirring it into the water before adding it to the dough. I mixed my dough in the food processor.

- Once the dough has risen, it is important to handle it lightly when shaping the loaf into loaves, so that the final bread will have lovely holes inside. I formed the loaves and let them rise on the baguette forms, then baked them right on the forms.

- I had a few missteps in shaping the dough (I'll spare you those details!) and my baguettes were a pair of ugly ducklings when they came out of the oven. They had cracked sides, and were a bit pale, not at all like the perfect crusty baguettes from a bakery. But they smelled wonderful!


the verdict:

My baguettes weren't very pretty, and didn't get very crusty in the oven, but oh! the taste of this bread was out of this world! Luckily, I found - yet again - that bread is forgiving.

Garden Tomato Bread

When I received a Tweet from @SunsetMag linking to a page of tomato recipes I immediately fell in love with the picture of Garden Tomato Bread (whole wheat, herbs, and garlic along with a healthy quantity of ripe tomatoes and their juice - recipe here) so I earmarked some ripening tomatoes on my counter just for the bread and baked it this week; I had a few mishaps in baking a half recipe of the bread (in the excitement of converting to fresh yeast, I forgot to halve the water), but thankfully "bread is forgiving" and I was rewarded with two small hearth loaves of savory bread that was delicious with seasoned olive oil and even better as a grilled cheese (with aged cheddar) and my husband, who had earlier pronounced that "tomatoes belong in sandwiches, not bread" found the bread "surprisingly, good," although to him "good" does not mean "very good" or "fantastic" or, apparently, "I'd like some more," so I gave one loaf away and will be finishing the other loaf - happily - all by myself!

[This post is part of the One-Sentence-Blog-Post-Week Challenge! Also, the bread is going to Yeastspotting hosted this week by Macheesmo, look for the roundup on Friday. Some of my Twitter buddies baked this bread at the same time, see their posts here and here]