Saturday, April 13, 2013

French Boule

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I really have pretty much lost my sense of smell, which is one of the reasons for making bread it seems to me, and white bread is totally inconsistent with my good low-carb intentions. So what gives? Well, making bread is kind of relaxing (I've heard some people say the same thing about ironing clothes, which is incomprehensible to me, but it takes all kinds, doesn't it?) and Heitor absolutely loves it, so what the hell. It is my newest obsession.

A few weeks ago we bought a food processor, and I've used it a few times to experiment with various bread  recipes. But these are my best loaves so far, and I made them the old-fashioned way, by hand. All the recipes I found for boule involve letting the dough rise for long periods, like 24 hours in this case, but the flip side benefit is that you can keep the dough in the refrigerator for up to two weeks and make a loaf whenever you feel like it.

I have a recipe for boule that uses a mixture of whole wheat and white flour, for the next time, so I can feel better about slathering the butter onto a hot slice fresh out of the oven.

6 comments:

Rosemary said...

Just looking at that photo, I can imagine the smell of warm, freshly baked bread. Wish I was there to enjoy it with you & Heitor. I know I'd slather lots of butter onto a slice or two or three. The loaves are beautiful. I'm impressed!

Diane Betts said...

Does the bread rise equally well after the dough has been chilled? I ended up baking whole wheat pizza crusts for about 10 minutes without adding any topping, wrapping them, and freezing them for use later on. Then we could pull them out to use as "convenience food" if we added the sauce and toppings. I just couldn't get the dough to rise well if I chilled it and tried to bake it later on.

Gerald Martin said...

Diane, I really haven't made any bread yet that I've been satisfied with. But I don't even eat much bread, and I'm doing this mostly for Heitor, who loves it. I have yet to make that really light loaf that I'm trying for.

I'm not sure yet about the refrigerated dough. The two in the picture were made without having been chilled. I have since made one loaf after having chilled the dough for a few days and it seemed about the same as the others.

So...to summarize, the refrigerated dough seems to rise and make about the same loaf as otherwise, but I'm not really satisfied yet with either.

I just wanted to post a good picture.

Diane Betts said...

If your bread tastes as good as it looks in the picture, you have done well. Your partner is lucky to have someone like you who takes so much time to make good things to eat.

Have you ever made pizza dough with a yam in the mixture? I have a good recipe for that, and it packs in extra Vitamin A for good health. The only down side is you have to bake the crust further away from the oven element. Otherwise, it burns easily.

Gerald Martin said...

I've never made pizza dough, and we don't have a very good stove/oven at the moment, yam it.

Anything that requires special attention in the oven might not turn out so well. One of these days we'll get a good stove for baking.

Bob Peterson said...

Did you say you have lost your sense of smell? Does that influence your taste as well?

Also, we are not supposed to have hobbies that are useful. Find one that isn't to balance things out.