French bread (2)

Today, I'm having another go at bread using weaker flower. As before, I'm using

300g apf
200g water, inc half a tsp moscovado, level tsp dried yeast
pinch of salt

This time, I've mixed the dough in the food processor. It was interesting the way the dough changed during processing. At first it clumped together fairly easily into a dry dough but during the 1 minute processing, it became wetter again.

I've left it like that but pulled it out of the processor bowl to prove in a cool kitchen.

The other different thing I think I'll do is keep half of the dough in the fridge. The last lot of bread went dry very quickly so I'll just bake half at a time. That should work, huh?

Friday update



Yesterday, the wet fresh dough was fantastically stretchy and almost became a long grissino, which I twisted twice into a 4-ply cable. Much better, with this kind of dough, to work it very little, so that it has fairly sharp edges and wrinkles, which attract caramelisation.

The dough that I fridged overnight turned out much better for its chilly doze (you could call it a dozy dough).  When I took it out of the fridge it had significantly risen and was drier, so I formed it into a short baguette, a baton, if you will, and baked it on the stone with steam for 12 @ 7 then 5 @ 5, which wasn't enough really. But I'm nearly there with this kind of bread.

Lessons: trust the dough to take care of its own shape; prove overnight in fridge.