french bread redux

the finished product

This is the first time that I have repeated a bread recipe. It is also the first time that I have made a mistake. Fortunately, with my vast baking experience, I was able to recover from the potentially catastrophic consequences by "mama macgyverin'" through the crisis. [see prior post on this subject] The stakes were high, as bread baking goes--after all, I had already invested a day in the pate fermentee and the bread was expected for a family dinner in Springfield that same evening.

My mistake? In an effort to follow the directions precisely, I had taken the temperature of the water I was to add to the dough; because it was a little cool, I added hot water, thinking to myself that I would get rid of the excess. The next time I thought about it, my dough was swimming in nearly twice as much water as the recipe required. It was one of those moments where time slows down--as does sound. Noooooooooooooo. Keeping in mind that ancient peoples did not have measuring equipment to make their daily bread, I added flour and what I thought to be a proportionate amount of yeast and salt until the dough was tacky but not sticky, as the directions indicated.

Now I had way too much dough for making baguettes, as planned (constrained by the size of my oven, only two racks, and the single sheet pan that I own). Plan B: make two boules and hope that they don't merge into each other while rising.


parchment paper proofing

P.S. the bread was . . . excellent!