French Bread Today & Pizza Tonight from the Same Dough

Girl_on_Grill

I've been working through the book Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish & promised @henapple & @caliking I'd share photos. This weekend, I decided to try something new to me: a rustic french bread made from 80% Biga (a pre-ferment). The book said this is also a great dough for pizza, so I used half the recipe for the boule and we're making pizza with the rest of the dough tonight.  True to the title, every recipe in the book is made with just flour, water, salt and yeast. Nothing more. There isn't a lot of special equipment needed and all the recipes are mixed by hand. Here's the basic process I used:

Started the Biga last night (6:30 pm) by dissolving 3/16 tsp Instant Dried Yeast into 544g 80 degree water. Mixed that (by hand) into 800g 00 Caputo Flour (all-purpose flour works, too. Avoid bread flour - too much protien). I covered the container (I use a rubbermaid cake saver because I already had it, but a 12 quart Cambro tub would be ideal) and let it rest in a 70 degree room for 14 hours until it was a gooey, bubbly, pungent mess. I'm sorry I didn't take pics of the biga - it was so funky I was almost sure this was going to flop & I would have to scrap the whole thing.

8:30 am today: Mixed 200g flour with 22g fine sea salt, 1/2 tsp yeast & 206g 105 degree water. Added that to the biga and mixed by hand then folded the dough. I covered it again and let it ferment in a 70 degree room. I folded the dough every 30 minutes for the first 1.5 hours (3 times). It took about 3 hours to triple in size.

11:30 am: I divided the dough into 2 equal portions, shaped 1 into a large ball for the french bread and further divided the rest of the dough into 3 smaller balls for the pizza. The boule went into a shallow pasta bowl that I lined with a floured cotton kitchen towel. I covered the dough with another towel. The pizza doughs went into oiled pasta bowls. I covered those with plastic wrap sprayed with oil.

I proofed the pizza dough for 30 minutes at 70 degrees before moving it to the refrigerator. 

CenTex played the part of my grill monkey today. He started bringing the egg up to temp as soon as I shaped the dough. We preheated the dutch oven (4 quart is best - mine is 5 quarts, so my boules are a little wider and less tall) in the egg to 475 degrees. The boule proofed earlier than I expected and was ready to go on in less than an hour. I was worried it had over-proofed because the finger dents I made were just barely springing back

Then, another fumble when I tried to transfer the dough to the dutch oven and realized that I hadn't prepped the towel with enough flour (this dough is much stickier than those I've made in the past). I lost a few precious bubbles when the dough stuck to the towel:

At this point, I figured my over-proofed, degassed loaf was most likely going to collapse into something resembling the mystery ceramic pieces of "art" my kids used to bring home. I hoped to get lucky and I'd already done the work, so I decided to throw it on anyway. I covered it with the preheated lid and let it bake for 30 min. I had no idea what I would find when it was time to take the lid off:

Not too shabby! This bread making stuff isn't so hard after all & I thought the tear in the dough made the finished loaf look more interesting. At this stage, I left the lid off and let it cook another 20 min to intensify the wood-fired flavor. 

I'll post photos of the pizza later tonight

The Cen-Tex Smoker

Grill Monkey??????? :(|)

I guess I resemble that remark. My 2nd stint as grill monkey this week. Cooked on a friends gasser last night for a get together. 

The bread was AWESOME! so much fun to have this in the tool kit now. 

caliking

Bookmarked! Fan-farking-tabulous! That's the kind of bread I dream of. 

Question: what about letting the dough proof in the DO itself,so you don't have to worry about transferring it? Or is it an absolute must to preheat the DO?

Thanks for the pics and recipe. 

ChokeOnSmoke

Great looking bread!!  Been getting into pizza dough lately, think bread will be my next venture next weekend...thanks for posting.

Girl_on_Grill

You have to preheat the DO, unfortunately. Using the towel usually makes the transfer pretty easy. I just need to be especially careful about putting on enough flour next time. I'm especially excited about the pizza dough. It looks really promising - full of bubbly deliciousness. 

shtgunal3

Looks good from here.

travisstrick

Looks like a candidate for French toast.

henapple

working my way through the book just haven't had time to tackle the cook.... can't wait.

Girl_on_Grill

ChokeOnSmoke said:

Great looking bread!!  Been getting into pizza dough lately, think bread will be my next venture next weekend...thanks for posting.

If you really want to get into bread or pizza, Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish is a great primer. I made "The Saturday Loaf" first, and my son told me it was a work of art (this is coming from someone who eats CenTex's brisket on a regular basis - high praise).  

The Cen-Tex Smoker

caliking said:

Bookmarked! Fan-farking-tabulous! That's the kind of bread I dream of. 

Question: what about letting the dough proof in the DO itself,so you don't have to worry about transferring it? Or is it an absolute must to preheat the DO?

Thanks for the pics and recipe. 

It tasted as good as it looked. 

ChokeOnSmoke

Girl_on_Grill said:

ChokeOnSmoke said:

Great looking bread!!  Been getting into pizza dough lately, think bread will be my next venture next weekend...thanks for posting.

If you really want to get into bread or pizza, Flour Water Salt Yeast by Ken Forkish is a great primer. I made "The Saturday Loaf" first, and my son told me it was a work of art (this is coming from someone who eats CenTex's brisket on a regular basis - high praise).  

Thanks, just looked up the book, it gets great reviews and looks really interesting...

Girl_on_Grill

henapple said:

working my way through the book just haven't had time to tackle the cook.... can't wait.

It took me awhile to try one of the recipes. He's so detailed, it made me think there are 1,000 things that could go wrong. It's actually pretty simple. I've had the best results when my temps were dead on (temperature of ingredients and room temp). I also prefer to use Caputo 00 flour instead of all purpose.

henapple

The Cen-Tex Smoker said:

caliking said:

Bookmarked! Fan-farking-tabulous! That's the kind of bread I dream of. 

Question: what about letting the dough proof in the DO itself,so you don't have to worry about transferring it? Or is it an absolute must to preheat the DO?

Thanks for the pics and recipe. 

It tasted as good as it looked. 

I thought we covered this Cen-Tex

Girl_on_Grill

I typically use the cooks illustrated (America's Test Kitchen) recipe for pizza crust, but the family agrees, this one beats it! Here are a few photos:

Bubbles!

Even loaded with toppings, the thinnest part of the crust stayed crisp, not soggy & the flavor was amazing!

Skiddymarker

"The family agrees"..... those are magic words. Great looking cook. Have "browsed" this book but always put it down, will give it a second look, thanks for sharing. 

My son's Italian MIL steps away from her ethnic cooking when making pizza dough, firstly if she makes a thin crust, she never uses olive oil, claims it to flavour the dough and it is a waste of good oil, canola it is. For bread style crusts, her usual is a variation of your cook, no oil in the dough at all. The texture looks very much like your photos. 

Griffin

I should so not have opened this thread. I want bread now. And pizza. Dammit!! Looks great.

henapple

do you really care if Cen-Tex agrees...? lol

CigarSmokinEgger

Awesome looking bread!  I love cooking bread as you did as well as French baguettes.  I follow the recipes outlined in Tartine but will have to check out the book you mentioned, thanks!

Mr Holloway

Great looking bread and pizza

 Looks like a great dough recipe

 

 Shane

tazcrash

Man that looks good. 

I haven't seen bread like that since I moved. Needs some prosciutto, or soppresatta, fresh mozzerella, and a Basil leaf with a little balsamic drizzle. 

Girl_on_Grill

CigarSmokinEgger said:

Awesome looking bread!  I love cooking bread as you did as well as French baguettes.  I follow the recipes outlined in Tartine but will have to check out the book you mentioned, thanks!

I'm working my way to the Tartine method. In this book, he calls making breads with starters the  Levain Method. Do you keep your starter alive and make bread every week? Between the boys, CenTex, the dog, the lizard and the houseplants, I'm not sure I'm ready for another mouth to feed. 

Girl_on_Grill

tazcrash said:

Man that looks good. 

I haven't seen bread like that since I moved. Needs some prosciutto, or soppresatta, fresh mozzerella, and a Basil leaf with a little balsamic drizzle. 

The Cen-Tex Smoker  would just make some prosciutto....

Girl_on_Grill

henapple said:

do you really care if Cen-Tex agrees...? lol

Depends on the topic 

CigarSmokinEgger

Girl_on_Grill said:

CigarSmokinEgger said:

Awesome looking bread!  I love cooking bread as you did as well as French baguettes.  I follow the recipes outlined in Tartine but will have to check out the book you mentioned, thanks!

I'm working my way to the Tartine method. In this book, he calls making breads with starters the  Levain Method. Do you keep your starter alive and make bread every week? Between the boys, CenTex, the dog, the lizard and the houseplants, I'm not sure I'm ready for another mouth to feed. 

I do keep my starters alive and feed weekly.  I make bread about every two weeks or so.  I have two starters, one done the traditional way and fed as stated in Tartine and another that I feed with straight AP flour which I keep a little more sour and use for pizza dough.  It's not too tough to feed weekly, I usually do it on Sunday and just takes a few minutes; makes some awesome bread!

Black_Badger

Hello All, 

Thanks a ton for sharing this. I've been looking for a good way to get the Mrs interested in using the egg, and she's the baker in the family. This just might do it. 

Both the bread and the pizza look amazing! Seriously, I am astounded. 

Fantastic stuff guys. 

Cheers -

B_B

The Cen-Tex Smoker

Girl_on_Grill said:

CigarSmokinEgger said:

Awesome looking bread!  I love cooking bread as you did as well as French baguettes.  I follow the recipes outlined in Tartine but will have to check out the book you mentioned, thanks!

I'm working my way to the Tartine method. In this book, he calls making breads with starters the  Levain Method. Do you keep your starter alive and make bread every week? Between the boys, CenTex, the dog, the lizard and the houseplants, I'm not sure I'm ready for another mouth to feed. 

greetings from 30,000 feet above the American West . If you are going to leave one mouth out, make it the lizard's. Thing creeps me out.

Girl_on_Grill

@CigarSmokinEgger: You've sold me. Do you bake on the egg or like the results better in the oven? I want to try baguettes in the egg this weekend. Any suggestions?

caliking

The pizza looks brilliant!

CigarSmokinEgger

Girl_on_Grill said:

@CigarSmokinEgger: You've sold me. Do you bake on the egg or like the results better in the oven? I want to try baguettes in the egg this weekend. Any suggestions?

Haven't really noted a difference to be honest, except for the lack of electrical use and heating up the kitchen

I only have a medium egg so I haven't been able to do baguettes on the egg, hell I even had to cut the handles off my lodge pan so they'd fit!  I layer 3 soaking wet towels onto a sheet pan and place them in the oven 20 minutes prior to the bake for the baguettes so they have a good steam bath during the first portion of the bake.

CigarSmokinEgger

Forgot to add that I use baguette pans which I got from Williams Sonoma I think, could have been KA; they kinda gold in color and perforated.  I hate the way the holes look in my loaves, I know, vain, so I line the pans with parchment paper and get great looking bread.

I also use a 17"x17" soapstone in my oven during the bake, put the pan(s) right on the stone.  You can bake the loaves directly on the stone but I find the shape is held better in the pans.  Hope this helps!

Mark

Girl_on_Grill

Thanks! I've made baguettes in the oven, but have never done bread in the egg without using a DO. There are several interesting solutions for steam on another thread. It will be an interesting experiment for me!