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!