Baby Steps … to Bread

Recipe from : King Arthur Baking Company. The King Arthur Baking Company Big Book of Bread: 125+ Recipes for Every Baker (A Cookbook) (p. 251). S&S/Simon Element. Kindle Edition.

Getting Ready for the Holiday’s

I found myself reading the King Arthur Big Book of Bread a few nights ago and I stumbled across this bake. It looked difficult but figured at the very least I would learn something. It’s essentially two baguette’s with tons of inclusions, bent into a horseshoe. The French term Couronne translates to Crown in English.

This was my first preferment bread, meaning it has both yeast and sourdough starter. Even with that it doesn’t rise very much due to the inclusions. I also had to mix a Preferment the night before which was nothing more than a very, very dry Leavin. Watching a few videos on the subject, this Preferment might be called a Bigga if baking in Italy. I say that because it was very dry. Even after resting all night it still looked like a mess the next morning.

In the end this turned out to be fairly easy. The recipe’s in that book are amazing and leave nothing to the imagination. Once the dough was fully mixed it was very wet so I gained some experience handling a high hydration. I also learned how to shape baguette’s although I did not need the canvas cloth for proofing.

Conclusion

Good. Packed with goodness and very dense, but we sliced it thin and devoured a plate in no time. Not sure that I’d make it again, though. It was a lot of work with all the inclusions and as designed, it was very dense. I’d like to find a way to spice it up for the holidays, such as with cinnamon and nutmeg. I believe there are variants online, one of which I might try this December.