what recipe do you like to use for epi?

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buns of steel on

I'm after some rustic, non bland epi...  anyone have a preferred recipe that is tops for epi?

 

That picture near the back of BBA always gets me of the epi from the wood fired bakery. :)

 

Also if anyone has a suggestion of a % hydration, to still get well-defined epi, but not be just like a typical modern straight dough baguette.

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qahtan on Fri, 02/22/2008 - 08:29

 

 The hard part is cutting it...... ;-(((( qahtan

Paddyscake on Sat, 02/23/2008 - 19:48

I loved the video...cool to watch someone slash with abandon and do such a great job. Loved the squirrel at the end..bet he thought he hit the motherlode..I could even stand the Rap..see what good bread stuff will do for you ;  ) Thanks for sharing

You want something with lots of pre-ferment so that it develops plenty of flavor, because if you proof the epi too long you can't handle it anymore--not to mention that if it is really sticky your cuts will just close up and glue themselves together again.  Pain a l'Ancienne from BBA would be a good choice, but it definitely needs to be on the firmer side--much more so than for baguette.  I have had pretty good results with 65-70%, but the trade-off is tricky--the firmer the dough the easier you can shape it into the epi, but the less open the crumb.  Maybe you can give it a longer fermentation to develop the flavor more and short it just a bit on the proof so that the loaves are not too hard to handle.  And give it plenty of steam to try to reduce the tendency to rupture.

I am always surprised that everybody wants baguette dough to be so slack, because from what I have read, a classic parisian baguette is 60%.  That would make for some very easy and forgiving handling if you could get the crumb to open to your satisfaction.