Pain de Campagne (BBA Challenge)

Before I proceed with my post about this week's Bread Baker's Apprentice Challenge, I feel the need to shout out to my fellow challenge participants and pause here for a public service announcement. The sour dough recipes requiring a starter are for the most part lumped together in the book, and we won't get to those until later in the fall/winter, so until this past week, I was in no rush to cultivate a starter. However, in leafing ahead through the recipes, I noticed that the panettone recipe also requires a starter. On my bread baking calendar, that recipe stands to be executed two weeks from now, so I went ahead and gave birth to Biddy, my sourdough starter. (Don't look at me like that. I know, I know.. it's weird, but traditionally bakers give their starters a name, so who am I to challenge tradition?) Biddy is my mom's name. No. Really. Her given name is Beatrice, but she's been called Biddy all of her life. She neither is a biddy nor acts like one, but she'll retain that moniker until the end of time. So in her honor, I present Biddy... my starter.

I chose to develop my starter differently than the way Mr. Reinhart suggests. I'm following a technique recommended by fellow bread baking apprentice Paul, from Yumarama. This starter uses (wastes) much less flour over the length of time it takes to mature than does a traditional starter. I just hate wasting flour, don't you?

Anyway, there's your heads up guys. You're going to need that starter a lot sooner than you thought you would!

Back to the recipe at hand. This week I tackled the Pain de Campagne recipe. I'll admit, after last week's fiasco with the Pain a l'Ancienne, I was feeling intimidated. I needn't have worried. This bread came together like a charm. The dough was easy to work with and aside from my usual forming and slashing struggles, this challenge came off without a hitch.

I opted to use pumpernickel flour over the whole wheat and it really added a nice touch of "grain" flavor to the finished bread. I made half of the dough into dinner rolls and then because every whipstitch I think I'm artistic, I tried my hand at the decorative scissor snipping Mr. Reinhart suggests. Though they didn't turn out hideously awful, I don't think the fine folks at Panera are going to be beating down my door any time soon requesting me to work for them.

I shaped the other half of the dough into a baguette and then again brought out the scissors and attempted to snip it into some semblance of an epi (sheaf of wheat.) Not too terrible for a first timer, but improvement will come with experience.

And the flavor you ask? Lovely! Crusty and chewy, and full of flavor, this is definitely a recipe worthy of serving to your dinner guests. I picture these rolls served along side a big bowl of soup for a wonderful and filling lunch. (And that's just what I did!)

As always, thanks to Nicole at Pinch My Salt for keeping us in line and for heading up this challenge. Next week's bread is Pane Siciliano. More forming and shaping fun!