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Chatham, New Jersey, held its Bicentennial in early September, 2006. Part of the festivities was a baking contest. There were over a hundred entries in several categories: bread, pies, cakes, cookies.
I entered six breads and took a second with the Brotform French and a third with the Italian.
I made all these breads with some sort of preferment, whether a biga, a poolish or a pate fermentee. The first day was for making the preferments to use the second day. The work on the second day utilized the preferments from the first day to make doughs that fermented in the refrigerator overnight and created the preferments to use on the third day. The third day was for baking the doughs from the second day and for making and baking the other breads.
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Here's the schedule for the three days. You'll have to enlarge it in your viewer, but you can see that things were planned to move along without much contention and with a minimum of slack time. On Saturday, 9-9-06, green is mixing time, yellow is rising time, blue is shaping time and pink is baking time. Notice the gap in baking times between the third and fourth breads; this proved to be serendipitous, as I fell behind a bit in the early stages of the day's work. |
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Here are the ingredients for the first preferment, a rye sponge for the raisin pumpernickel; it uses pumpernickel rye flour, also called rye meal. |
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Here is the rye sponge all mixed up and ready to ferment for a day |
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Here's the second part of the raisin pumpernickel pair of preferments, a raisin sponge. This also uses rye meal. It doesn't have any yeast in it; its purpose is to get the raisins softened up and the flavors developing. As an aside, this process can (and did for me) cause problems later in the process, because the raisins have moisture of their own. Because the dough is made up the day before baking, and there isn't much of a chance to correct the hydration on bake day, gauging the hydration can be tricky. |
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Here it is, ready to ferment overnight. |
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The third and final preferment on day one is a pate fermentee. This is a traditional baker's name for complete dough, typically pain ordinaire (traditional French bread), that is either saved from a previous bake or made up ahead of time, allowed to ferment and then added to the final dough. It adds flavor and complexity to the resulting bread. Here are the ingredients, L-R: Flour, salt, yeast and water. Note the two rye sponges in the rear and the bench knife. |
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I made this dough using the fountain method. Pour the flour onto the counter, make a well in the center and slowly add the liquid. Mix the thing up and don't let the liquid breech the edge. I had the salt and yeast in the water, so there wasn't any problem with the ingredients not mixing properly. |
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Here's the fountain after adding all the ingredients. This is still very sticky, as you can see from the dough sticking to the knife. |
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But everything turns out well in the end. Here's the finished pain ordinaire, ready to ferment. |
 | Here are all three of the day one preferments ready to go. The numbers on the sides of the bowls are the weights of the bowls in ounces. This is useful when you are weighing something and the scale cuts off in the middle of things. |
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And here they are after sitting on the counter for an hour. Notice how the pain ordinaire has really expanded. The two rye sponges stayed on the counter overnight. The pate fermentee (pain ordinaire) went into the refrigerator. |
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First up is making the raisin pumpernickel dough. This uses the rye sponge, some of the pate fermentee, and some other things, such as flour, salt, yeast, oil, sugar, and molasses. |
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Here's the dough after completing the first stage of mixing. This is a pretty wet dough. |
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Here are the dough and the raisin sponge. |
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The first thing to do is flatten the dough. |
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Put the raisin sponge on top of the flattened dough. Note that this is a really wet mix. |
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Using a knife, turn and fold and knead the dough and the raisins so the raisins get incorporated uniformly into the dough. This is a messy proposition. |
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The process finishes. |
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Finished, close up. |
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This is the first few moments in creating a poolish. A poolish is a mixture of equal parts flour and water and a small amount of yeast. It is used as a preferment. |
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After a bit of stirring, here's a finished poolish, ready to ferment. |
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This is a biga in the mixer. A biga is a somewhat drier preferment. In this case, the ratio is 10 ounces of flour to 6 ounces of water, with a small amount of yeast added. In bigas and poolishes, one uses less yeast as the length of time they will ferment on their own before being used goes up. In other words, a preferment meant to be used fairly quickly will have more yeast than one which is destined to sit for several hours or overnight. Neither a poolish nor a biga have salt in them. |
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Here are the finished biga and the raisin pumpernickel dough ready to go. |
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Raisin pumpernickel after an hour of fermenting. |
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Now to make the Pane Siciliano. Here are the ingredients. |
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Just after getting all the ingredients into the mixer and getting started. |
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Dough finished, clearing sides, looking good. |
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The Pane Siciliano dough has risen for about two hours. Now it is ready to divide and shape. |
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Dough divided into three parts and scaled so the parts weigh the same. I use scissors and small bowls to get them equal. |
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Here are two doughs shaped and a third ready to be curled into shape. This shape honors Santa Lucia, the parton saint of eyesight, and is called Occhi di Santa Lucia. |
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All three shaped and ready to go into the refrigerator. |
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I'm not sure where to put this picture, but here are all the doughs and preferments from day two after one hour of development. |
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Here's the center of the action. Hotpoint oven, red tiles on the rack and a pan under the rack for the water. |
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The biga comes out of the refrigerator. Note how it expanded and how well the seal on the bag held. Good design. |
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Making the ciabatta dough. Our old friend the fountain method. I really like this way of making dough. Note the array of drywall knives in the background. I really like these, too. |
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Here's the ciabatta dough after adding a portion of the poolish. |
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Finished ciabatta dough. This is a wet dough, but not so wet that you can't handle it by hand. |
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Into the 8-quart pot to ferment. |
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Ciabatta finished fermentation and ready to scale and shape. |
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Shaped according to the instructions in the Bread Baker's Apprentice by Peter Reinhart, a great book. The side that is up here will be on the bottom when the loaves are baked. The fully-risen doughs are gently lifted by hand and placed on parchment paper and then into the oven. It sounds as if the loaves will deflate, but they don't. This same method is described by Carol Field in The Italian Baker, another great book. |
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Here are the three ciabattas ready to bake. Note the four balls of resting French bread dough in the background. |
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And here they are. |
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Another view |
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Making French bread, using a preferment, on the left. This is the first batch, the one that will be shaped into baguettes. |
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Everything in the mixer and looking good. This is one of two 56-ounce batches. I'll show making only one of the dough batches. |
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And here is the finished dough. I was shooting for 3 pounds 8 ounces and got 3 pounds 9+ ounces. Not bad, considering the accuracy of my scale. Note on the scale. I removed the name tape to allow me to blow flour off the contacts under the switch, that's why there's tape holding down the name tape. |
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Again, into an 8-quart pot ferment. |
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A while later, Finished fermentation and ready to shape. |
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Here they are scaled, rounded and resting. There is a shot of these in the ciabatta series. |
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Shaped and en couche. I have a series on shaping a baguette that I shot a few weeks later in another section of the site. |
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Into the oven. This is the half-way point of baking. I am getting ready to turn them a bit to even out the baking. I puzzled over how to get the risen loaves from the couche to the oven, and then decided to use the ciabatta method and just lift them and do it. It worked. I did, however, have to separate the loaves after a few minutes of baking. |
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All finished. You can see the corner of the brotform in the top left. |
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Here are the two breads of the second French batch, two baguettes and boule shaped in a brotform, taken at the half-way point, when I was turning them. I used bread pans for these two loaves because I needed to have them at a specific position in the oven to accommodate the brotform. |
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The finished second batch of French with the two Pane Italiano loaves rising. |
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The finished French bread made in the brotform. |
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Starting to make the Pane Italiano. This will be a moderately wet dough. |
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All finished and ready to ferment. |
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Finished fermenting. This is a wonderfully alive, active dough. It's also a bit of a mess to work by hand. That's an 8-quart pot. |
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Finally shaped and ready to rise. |
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Finished rising, scored and in the oven. This is a dry oven. |
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Half way baked. |
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Finished. Note the second batch French and the raisin pumpernickel dough. |
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Raisin pumpernickel dough, warmed up and ready to shape. |
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Shaped and baked. This dough was too wet. It didn't form a stand up loaf, but rather spread out, almost like a focaccia. |
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The three Pane Siciliano go into the oven. These were formed the night before and rose over night in the fridge. |
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All finished. |
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Here's the whole group, all together. Clockwise from top left: Italian, French Baguettes, ciabattas, raisin pumpernickel on top of the brotform French and Siciliano. |