Been doing the Ken Forkish Saturday White Bread recipe from Flour Water Salt Yeast.
As a basic recipe its fine and everyone likes the taste & texture. Thing is the boule shape is a PITA to use in terms of sandwiches and toast.
I'm currently using a 28cm Le Creuset dutch oven. How can I make bread in a more practical shape? i.e. what oven wear is used to get the shape on the front cover of Tartine bread book (original)
Thanks
You can use a long clay baker like this: http://breadtopia.com/store/oblong-la-cloche/
Or a Romertopf: http://breadtopia.com/store/romertopf-clay-baker-99111/
Or you could use a stone and roasting lid like this:
so it is a so easy to make great bread this way.
Mike Avery has provided a helpful video on the "Herringbone" cut. I've mostly been baking pullmans, pops, and pizzas lately, so haven't tried it myself. The video offers some drama: the cart and cutting board are so wobbly I'm terrified there'll be blood shed.
I see that video and wonder what the slices look like as you get through the rest of the bread and ask myself, is it really any better than standing the loaf on edge, cutting it in half, then cutting it in quarters and slicing down to make sandwich sized slices of bread?
is any better. I have cut my boules both ways and prefer the cutting in half, then slicing each half vertically method better. I get even slices and they are easy to pack up in pairs to freeze in individual bags, which then all go into a larger ziplock bag.
To suggest a loaf pan? The original sandwich bread...
The loaf pan won't get you the crust or the bread on the cover of Tartine, though it will get you a bread that makes fine sandwiches.
I have, in the past, cooked in the lodge cast iron loaf pan, covering the bread with a second inverted loaf pan. Came out fine, though denser than a free standing loaf.
I have baked a couple of the loaves from FWSY in regular bread pans and had excellent results. For one thing, it's really easy to shape the wet dough and plonk it in a bread pan, put it in the fridge and bake it straight out of the fridge the next morning. No worries about trying to put it on to a peel (where it may pancake) or try to drop it into a hot dutch oven. For another thing, it is certainly easier to get regular sandwich-shaped slices! The crust is still nice and the crumb still moist, chewy and holey.
I've successfully made batards (a much more sandwich-conducive shape), on a stone, using a pan of lava rocks as a steam rig, and a turkey-roasting as a cover (pre-heated and quickly sprayed with water after loading the dough). It doesn't keep as much steam in as a steam-injection oven like Chad has, or as much as the dutch oven solution, but it's certainly successful.
I just slice my boules from one end. As they start to get too long for a sandwich I cut those pieces in half for both slices. That herringbone deal seems to waste a lot of bread.
I can't easily cut a slice of bread along the full diameter of my loaves. That is why I cut the loaf in half and then put it crumb side down and slice the rest of it as needed.