Baby Steps … to Bread

About this Bake

Well, I had recently baked a unique sourdough recipe called a Couronne containing the same ingredients as this bake. It was very dense and after the first night my wife and I were looking for something lighter. I decided to bake a Batard containing the same ingredients. I limited the inclusions to 200 grams which turned out just right.

Base Recipe

As with most of my sourdough bakes, all the credit goes to Elaine Boddy of foodbodsourdough.com. A good friend pointed me her way when first getting started. I’ve more or less stuck to her baseline Master Recipe and Cold Bake techniques.

Ingredients

• 500g Bread Flour
• 350g Bottled Water
• 50g Active Starter
• 7-10g Salt

Cold Bake

This is a somewhat controversial topic, but I’ve had good results using Elaine’s method of baking from a cold oven and a cold bread-pot. I simply place my bread pot on the middle rack with a pizza stone on the bottom rack. I baked at 450 degrees for 55 minutes with the lid on. There was no need to further brown the bread with the lid off; it was perfect as is. On this bake I used a silicone bread sling, but no more. I’ll line my pot with parchment in the future. Maybe the addition of ice cubes caused things to stick, but peeling the bread and silicone sling apart was not fun.

Process

Typical. Autolyse for two hours…one hour just flour and water…the second hour with starter and salt added. Four stretch & folds with incorporation of the inclusions on the second stretch & fold. I think this might go astray of Elaine’s method as she might do hers during Lamination after Bulk Ferment, but don’t quote me. I’d have to look it up. Either way, adding inclusions during S&F worked just fine. My kitchen was approaching 80 degrees on this day so Bulk Ferment was about six hours. I followed with shaping and placement in a Banneton for Cold Proof until the next day. In this bake I timed everything perfectly it seems. The next morning the dough had risen a couple of inches above the Banneton. It seemed right on the edge of over-proofing, but not quite. The benefits of cooking in my “Kook” Bread Pot was similar to a loaf pan; everything was contained and the bread was baked evenly against the Pot.

Conclusion

Altogether a good bake. We ended up with a Batard full of healthy inclusions (Pecans, Raisins, Cranberries, Sunflower Seeds). I like Batard’s as they’re easy to cut, they fit in my cake dish for display, and they seem to last at least four days while we nibble away at the loaf.