Bread Making Learning Applied

I am at #9 today, my ninth home made boule loaf made with flour, salt, water & yeast! Poolish was the key to making it exceptional, along with some pomegranate juice! Let me explain!

I make poolish way ahead of actually baking the bread, 4-24 hours ahead of time. To make it, you mix 3/4 cup of flour with 2/3 cup water & a pinch of yeast ~1 gram or less, in a bowl, then use a fork to mix it up. I added a tablespoon of freshly pressed pomegranate juice to act as a dough strengthener via organic acids in the juice. #9 today contains lemon juice for a similar reason.

Cover the poolish mix for 4+ hours in a warm zone around 80 F if possible. At colder room temperature you can leave it for 16-24 hours or more. During this time the pinch of yeast that you added will have doubled its population repeatedly, thus fermenting your wet poolish mix, causing it to rise in the bowl.

Add 3/4 cup more flour to this mix & 1/4 tsp salt, then blend into a shaggy dough. Cover the shaggy dough & let it rise for 1 hour. 

After an hour your shaggy dough should have risen & its time to due the French stretch & fold method at least 2x to each edge. This helps to tangle the gluten so that your loaf can bake up a more vertical boule.

Place your dough onto a lightly floured piece of parchment paper that will allow you to drop it into the hot dutch oven. Let the dough rise for another 30-60 minutes on that parchment paper. 

Preheat the oven to 480 F or 270 C and place your dutch oven with lid into the oven for 20+ minute to get everything up to full temperature.

Using heat resistant gloves, remove the fully hot dutch oven & set it on a heat resistant surface. Remove the lid being careful because it's also fully hot & set it down. 

With gloves off, take the dough that's risen on the parchment paper & carefully lower it into the dutch oven. Then put your heat protective gloves back on & restore the hot lid to the dutch oven & then load the loaded dutch oven into the oven for 30 minutes of baking. If you want a darker crust, leave the dutch oven in the oven & only remove the lid, then lower the oven temperature 25-50 deg F, and let the bread bake for another 10-20 min, watching with the oven light on to determine when it reaches the correct level or darkness you are aiming for. This crust darkening will crisp the crust more & generate more interesting flavors in the crust.

You can remove it after 30 minutes & let the entire assembly cool for 10 more minutes. Take the lid off & you're ready to extract the load for further cooling on a wood cutting board or wire rack, it's going to be hotter than boiling water at this point. 

After 30 min of cooling the temp should have decline to 140 F or 60 C, and during the cooling time moisture in the center of the real bread will have migrated to the crust, evening out the water level. At this time it a good time to slice the bread with a serrated knife & enjoy with olive oil & balsamic vinegar, jam, butter or whatever you like to spread on bread for enjoyment :) peanut butter & honey one of personal favorites :) I like Nutella too! Bread & butter are excellent, as are dipping bread into a mix of olive oil & balsamic vinegar.