Poilane style miche bread

I am working on developing my bread making skills, as I think I mentioned in a previous post. My sourdough starter, the barm, is now ready to use and I have been having great fun with it. I made my first sourdough bread the other day, and yesterday I made the bread on the cover of the book I'm using, The Bread Baker's Apprentice. If you read the introduction of this book, the author tells the story of having this bread for the first time, then taking it to a friend's house in Paris, and the friend gets mad for "ruining" him for other bread. I had to make it.

Breads like this take two days to make. I'm nowhere near ready to explain how and why all this works, as I'm a newbie, and I'm just working on my skill and technique. The firm starter takes a day, then the dough is made, kneaded, proofed, reshaped, proofed again and then baked.

This particular loaf is massive. When it was done & baked it ended up being five pounds. When I was kneading the dough, I kneaded by hand for 15 minutes (the book recommends 12-15), and then I was tired. Toni suggested letting the dough rest, though she kneaded it for a bit as well.  She suggested we get the Skipper to give it a knead as well (he is much stronger than we), but he was out at the time. I gave it another ten minutes of kneading and decided that I can live with it not getting to the "windowpane stage" of elasticity.

When it was time to bake the bread, I put the pizza stone in the oven. Toni and the Skipper have a pizza peel, so I covered that in corn meal before putting my Poilane on it. The oven temperature was at 500 degrees when I started, and there was a pan of water in with the bread. I slipped the bread from the peel to the stone. When the bread went in, I reduced the temperature to 450.

The book says to turn it after 25 minutes, but it was baking so evenly in the oven that it wasn't necessary to turn. It was, however, starting to get too dark, so the book says to lay a sheet of foil over the loaf to protect it. I did that. Gave it another 30 minutes, now at 425.

Here is how it came out:

 This is the bottom. It's is so beautiful!

Toni and the Skipper tried it last night, after it had cooled for two hours. They said it was really good. I had some for breakfast this morning. This is the best bread I have ever tasted and it was worth all the effort. So I really do need to buy this book. With this loaf weighing in at 5 pounds, it should last 5-7 days, just like the book said.

The Bread Maker's Apprentice

This is a book I need to own. It's been on my amazon wish list for quite a while (ahem) and someday I will own it because it's awesome. Toni and the Skipper have it here at Backyard Feast and I have decided that I am going to work my way through it and learn how to make bread. It's a fascinating subject and I love how making bread is both art and science, and I consider myself both an artist and a scientist.

Yesterday I started what is called a seed culture. Basically it's flour and water that hang out four four days, getting added to every day, until it becomes a barm. After a week or two, if I remember correctly, this barm is what is also known in common parlance as the sourdough starter.

When Dan and I were living in East Sooke, I was using the bread machine at least every other day. Without getting too deep into the hows and whys of breadmaking, I somehow managed to create a sourdough starter back then that was not too bad, but I don't remember going at it with the scientific precision I am this time around.

This time around, I have time on my hands. I mix up some stuff and then set the timer on my phone to let me know when I have to do the next thing. So today was day 2 of adding to the seed culture. Tomorrow I'll be at WordCamp, so Toni will attend to the seed culture for me.

Seed culture, day 1

Meanwhile, I am reading my way slowly through the lengthy introduction of The Bread Maker's Apprentice to get a better scientific understanding of flour and gluten and temperature and humidity and all those things that combine to create the magic that is bread. And, not wanting to wait until my sourdough starter is ready, I baked my first loaf from this book, a light wheat bread.

Light Wheat Bread beginning of second proofing

Light Wheat Bread end of second proofing

Light Wheat Bread just out of the oven!