For several months, if not more than a year, I have had the lovely Breaking Bread book on my shelf. The book by King Arthur Flour Head Baker Martin Philip contains a wonderful set of recipes, stories, and illustrations on how one can master several different types of bread.
I have often taken the book off the shelf, admired the pictures, even read a story or two, only to days later replace the book on the shelf. I'll admit that I have been intimidated by the complexity of Philip's yeast bread recipes as they require actual kneading, several rises, temperature checks, etc. – unlike my go-to no-knead bread approaches.
And then a few weeks ago, I finally resolved that I would finally attempt one of the feared recipes on a slow weekend, when I would have the time for multiple rises. I settled on the Poolish Baguette recipe, but lacking baguette shapers, I decided to use the recipe to form a batard, a more rounded, rectangular shape than the skinny and long baguettes.
The result was declared by my husband as the best bread I've ever made, and I have to admit it wasn't THAT onerous as long as you have a full morning free to do all of the requisite shaping, rises and baking.
The bread was super crusty, and the inclusion of an overnight starter (poolish) definitely added more depth of flavor, a slight sourness and saltiness that made this feel like almost it's own main course instead of a bland and boring instrument to sop up other flavors and food.
The dough didn't have as many air holes as I expected, so it was fairly substantive. This isn't a negative attribute of the bread, just a flag that like some no-knead breads, this will serve multiple people instead of airier baguettes.
I largely followed the recipe as is, though I halved the ingredients (using the metric grams to measure them out) to make just one loaf, and I used instant dry yeast, which I proofed before creating the poolish (apparently comes from Poland).
For the dough itself, I didn't pre-proof the yeast, just added the instant yeast as is. One interesting feature of this book mentioned above is that you do have to measure temperatures of the water, flour, poolish, dough, etc. to get the "desired dough temperature" for the type of bread you are making. So my instant read thermometer got a lot of unexpected use, which was relatively easy to pick up after reading through the directions.
So day 1, you may the poolish, or the starter for the bread, which is a shaggy dough mixture of flour, water, yeast, and salt.
Twelve to sixteen hours later, check your poolish and its temperature, before adding in additional temperature-appropriate water, bread, yeast, and salt.
Then begins the rises. First, a two-hour covered rise.
Then a series of 15-minute folds and rises, which at each progressive fold, the dough became more flexible and smooth.
Finally, the gradual shaping, which also requires a number of interim rests and rises for the dough.
Finally, the baking, which I did on the parchment that I had shaped the bread on and did the final rises. I baked the loaf for 32 minutes before it got a very dark brown crust. I did back the loaf won a pre-heated baking stone, and did use steam.
I look forward to making this bread again and again on calm Sunday (or Saturday) mornings. It is a real winner, with more much sour, salty and rich flavors than no-knead breads!
