Failure Bread & Redemption Bread

So, sometimes things don't work out and other times things do. This week I made two breads, both of which were called french bread but were from different recipes in different books. The first was a failure bread and the second was a redemption bread. I learned just how much of a beginner I am and that following the directions is not always enough but other times that works out just fine. So, I will start with the failure and end with redemption.

    The first recipe came from Rosy Levy Beranbaum's The Bread Bible. This book has a ton of recipes of all kinds of different breads with tips from what equipment you need to buy to illustrations of various techniques. I bought this book because I had read a lot of positive reviews from various places and it seemed like this was a perfect book for a beginner. 

   

This recipe called for two starter doughs.

A pate fermentee or scrap dough 

 

and a Poolish 

   I made these two starters the day before I wanted to have the bread. I ended up putting the doughs in my bedroom for the fermentation stage because the night before I discovered that  my kitchen was much too cold, so cold that neither dough was doing what it was supposed to. The second attempt the pate fermentee rose and was left in the refrigerator over night and the poolish was left over night in my overly warm bedroom. As much as it was nice that it was conducive to yeast activity it was not so swell for sleeping. In the morning I was happy to see that everything had come out right so far. I thought I was moving in the right direction. 

I combined the two starters and made the dough for the bread. 

So I covered the dough and when it had risen I divided it and following the illustrations as best as I could, shaped it into a pre-baguette shape. Then let it rest for ten minutes.

I stumbled through shaping it into the final baguette shape. I suspect that I didn't quite do this right. 

So my baguette stretching might have been a bit gung ho, it ended up a little longer than I intended. Also as I was moving it to the baking sheet it got pretty badly degassed, meaning that it was pretty deflated when it went into the oven. It wasn't much of a surprise when this came out of the oven.

It was sort of a bummer to say the least. I really did try to baby this dough. I certainly didn't do a perfect job but I felt a tiny bit betrayed by the bread. I don't blame The Bread Bible but this recipe certainly wasn't as fool proof as I thought it was going to be. It was not a very successful night of baking to say the least.

   Now let's move on to the happy ending. This second french bread is from a book I have come to really love, Peter Reinhart's The Bread Baker's Apprentice. 

This recipe called for just one starter , a scrap dough or pate fermentee.

I  let it rise to about one and half times its original size.

The fact that this worked out was a good sign. The failure bread was starting to cause me to lose faith in my breadsmithing abilities. This tiny victory was a good omen. So I let that chill over-night in the refrigerator and made the dough for the bread the next day.

Then it had to sit and rise and it did just that. It got big and puffy and perfect.

I divided the dough and shaped it into a sort of baguette loaf hybrid. I'm not great at the whole shaping thing yet but appearances aren't everything. 

I let that proof for about 45 minutes.

Then all that was left was to pop it into the oven, get some steam action going with some ice cubes and a spray bottle, give it some time and out came a pretty appetizing something. 

It turned out delicious, the absolute opposite of a bummer. 

I have every intention of trying the first recipe again. I want to make it work. I want every bread I start to work out and for that matter I want most things to work out. Who doesn't? You put so much care into these breads. I had mine in the room with me while I slept. I practically cradled it. So when it doesn't make that jump from tasteless flour to something warm and delightful its not a good time. I had very different experiences with these two doughs, but I got my mojo back in the end. I am ready for the next challenge. 

   

Starting with a Starter

     So, to start off I thought it would make sense to begin with starter doughs or pre-ferments. I am by no means an expert about these things. I am new to this so I am in the process of educating myself about the terms and techniques, so you can learn along with me. Not every bread recipe out there calls for a starter but pre-ferments or starters give the bread a richer taste because the yeast has had longer to break down the grain. It seems daunting when you look at a recipe and it says it will take two or three days to make but it really isn’t as scary as all that. Pre-ferments take very little time to make about ten or twenty minutes. Most of the time required for them is the time you let them sit. It takes a little planning. For me it brings a bit more excitement into the whole thing. In these first days of my bread experience every time I make a starter or a dough there is a lot of anticipation. There is the anticipation like waiting the night before Christmas and anticipation like hoping a science experiment comes out right.

                There are a lot of different starters out there and different names for them but in my brief experience there seems to be three main types. There are the Biga and poolish, the old dough or pate fermentee, and sourdough starters. These starters vary in their flour to water ratio and what breads they are meant to be used in. The biga or polish is stickier and old dough has the consistency of bread dough because is very similar to bread dough in makeup. Sourdough starters are a little more complicated than the other two. The first two pre-ferments only need hours to proof or rise before they are ready to be used while a sourdough starter takes days. 

    Bread is something that takes its time. Its not the easiest thing in the world but if you start off with a good pre-ferment than you are on your way.