This bread was a little involved but fun to make and tasted amazing. We had a plate of it as toast the next day and it was even better – so much so that none survived to confirm the theory often expressed by rye fans that it helps the bread keep longer.
Richard Bertinet’s Pain de Campagne
ferment:
200g bread flour
50g wholemeal rye flour
5g dried yeast
10g salt
175g water
Mix the dry ingredients together, add the water, mix them together until the dough comes together, then knead briefly until it goes silky and put into a plastic bag to put in the fridge to mature over night.
The next day it will look like the picture I posted the other day.
Dough
the ferment, brought back to room temperature
500g bread flour
100g wholemeal rye flour
3g dried yeast
15g salt
400g water
Remove the ferment from the bag and upt it at the bottom of your bowl. This would probably be easier if you remembered the oil the bag the night before. I never do. Add the rest of the ingredients. Bring them all together and knead until the dough is smooth and doesn;t feel sticky. Make it into a ball and leave it to rest covered for an hour.
After an hour, fold it and make it into a ball again.
Then fold and reform it again but only leave for 30 minutes.
Divide it into 2 pieces (if you feel fussy weigh them to make sure they weigh the same – this does make it easier to bake them together)
Shape them into balls and the turn into 2 lightly floured proving baskets (I’ve actually bought some recently and this was the first use of them. I liked the results.)
Cover with a tea towel and leave 75 minutes or until they have doubled in size.
Turn out onto a peel and slash the top. The book has you do a circle but this didn’t work out well for me, so the one I took pictures of was the one I did with a square cutting pattern.
Put into a 250 C pre heated oven and mist with some water before closing the door. Bake for 5 minutes and then turn the temperature down to 220 C and cook for approx 25 minutes until they are dark. Take out of the oven, place on a rack and leave to cool. Ideally without sampling.
The crumb looked good – I liked the big holes.
We ate plenty the day we made this, but the rest got used up as part of the Vegan Feast we put on for 18saughtonmains‘s Dad and Stepmum when they were returning eldest to us. 18saughtonmains did most of the cooking and has promised me he’ll write it up, so I’ll just post a pic today.
Bread, cucumbers, griddled courgettes, tomato and red onion salad, hummus, 2 types of mushrooms in garlic and grated carrot. Good food for a Sunday afternoon.
I’ll leave you with a shot of the toast this bread turned into:
Submitted to Yeastspotting
