Oh well...
After reading so much about people's love of the Thom Leonard country French bread, I decided to try it, following the steps in mountaindog's post. Here's the breakdown:
Funny how the rye discussions have popped up in the last couple of days. I'd been planning to make the New York Deli Rye from the BBA this weekend. I couldn't find white rye flour locally, and had to mail order some. The bread turned out very different from those I've made with dark rye. Looks great for sandwiches. The book calls for sauteed onions in the starter (which I'd probably like), but I chose to omit them to see what the straight bread is like.
I just finished baking the Cinnamon Raisin bread from BBA. It had no oven spring at all. The only changes I made to the recipe...oops, formula, were to omit the walnuts and use whole wheat flour for 25% of the flour.
I've been wanting to make this recipe for a couple of weeks, and finally made time for it tonight. The recipe is at:
Hello there, flour-heads,
This weekend I made my usual sourdough, but added the extra step of retarding it in the fridge after 4 stretch & fold cycles. It was in there for 19 hours. Then I let it warm up for 2.5 hours, shaped it, rested it for 30 minutes, slashed and baked. It's a two sponge recipe that I began on Friday morning and finished baking about midday Sunday. It has the best tang of any I've made so far -- wouldn't really call it sour, but a nice lingering aftertaste.
Last night I baked this bread for the first time. I started the biga on Thursday after dinner and made the final dough Friday around 5 p.m., finishing the bake around 9:15. The biga spent the night in the fridge (in a bowl covered with plastic wrap), and developed a skin. The skin seemed to get incorporated into the final dough alright, but next time, I'll wrap the biga in oiled plastic and zip it into a bag as well before refrigerating.
