This weekend I baked a two pairs of loaves, one white/country bread using a natural leavening (plus some supplementary yeast) and another, whole wheat loaf using just dry yeast (since I had less time.)
First the pan de campagne (French white country loaf.)
White flour: 92.5%
Whole wheat flour: 7.5%
salt: 2.5%
water: 83% (though I think really it was slightly wetter than this)
levain: mostly white levain, slightly wetter than the dough: 45%
supplemental dry yeast: about 2g
recipe source: pan de campagne from Ken Forkish’s Four Water Salt Yeast
Method: 5 hour bulk fermentation, 3 turns in first 2 hours. 13 hour overnight prove in fridge. Baked using dutch over method, 45 minute preheat, 20 mins lid on (475) 28 mins lid off (450)
Notes: the levain was very wet, so the final dough itself was quite wet, and absorbed a bit of additional flour on shaping. In any case, the loaves looked perfect and bubbly (but not over-proved) after their long rise in the fridge, and the bake didn’t disappoint either. Really good taste and results. Here’s a cross-section:
The taste was really good — soft and not gummy inside, crunchy/bittersweet on the crust, which was of very good thickness.
Next, a whole-wheat loaf:
White flour: 25%
Whole wheat flour: 75%
salt: 2.2%
water: 80% (though I think I once again made this dough a bit wetter than called for.)
dry yeast: about 1.5g
recipe source: 75% whole wheat Saturday loaf from Ken Forkish’s Four Water Salt Yeast
Method: 3 hour bulk fermentation, 3 turns in first 1.5 hours in a warn environment. I was time-constrained, so I skimped on the amount of bulk time here, which was not a great idea — the dough was both too wet and underdeveloped to really hold its structure. For one of the loaves, I had to accelerate the bake and gave the loaf only an additional hour of rising time after shaping. For the second, I let it rise overnight in the fridge and then baked the next day.
Notes: The first loaf was insufficiently proved and lacked much rise to it. The second was probably over-proved (it suffered some deflation during handling and before baking.) In both cases the resulting loaves were squat and lacked volume. The under-proved loaf had marginally better structure (slightly bigger aeration) but slightly worse taste. The over-proved loaf tasted very slightly better but was even closer than the its older sibling. They were pretty though, and we did enjoy this bread with turkey soup:
