The Bread Bible and I

I have moved from making biscuits to trying my hand as some yeast leavened breads.  I am starting off with the basic, the baguette.  I just got my Baguette Pan from Amazon and am now in the process of making the sponge.

The recipe for baguettes requires one to make a Pate Fermetee and a Poolish.  These take a while to mature, so I suggest you wait until I publish Part II to start making your baguettes!

Pate Fermentee

Ingredients:

1. 1/4 cup 80*F water
2. 1/8 teaspoon yeast
3. 1/4 cup + 2 1/2 tablespoon flour
4. 3/16 teaspoon salt

Instructions:

1. Combine water and yeast
2. Combine salt and flour
3. Add 2 tablespoons + 2 teaspoons of yeast water to flour combination (Save the rest of yeast water for poolish)
4. Let ferment for 3 hours at room temperature and refriderate

Poolish

Ingredients:

1. 1/2 cup + 1/2 teaspoon flour
2. 1/2 tablespoon yeast water
3. 1/4 cup + 1 1/2 tablespoon of 80*F water

Instructions:

1. Combine flour, yeast water and fresh water and mix well.
2. Let sit for 14 hours to ferment.

I love the fact that bread takes forever.  You can go to the store and buy your $2.50 baguette or you can slave over some yeast for 16 hours to get the same result.  Buy for some reason, bread you bake always tastes better!  Come back for Part II of making baguettes!

The Bread Bible is layed out well. It starts off with a bunch of easy recipes that do not need fermenting. I choose for my first recipe Butter Biscuits. I LOVE biscuits! So I thought it was fitting. To the right is what my biscuits looked like. I think I drank too many McSorley’s Black and Tans! Or I didn’t have any biscuit cutters…

BUTTER BISCUITS

Ingredients:

1. 6 Tablespoons Butter
2. 2 Cups (290 grams) Self-Rising Flour
3. 3 Tablespoons Sugar
4. 2 Large, Hard-boiled Yolks
5. 3/4 cup Heavy Cream

Instructions:

1. Cut butter into small cubes and chill in freezer
2. Preheat oven to 400 degrees F and place pizza stone on middle rack
3. Sift together flour and sugar together into large bowl
4. Add chilled butter cubes to flour/sugar mixture and blend with hands until mixture resembles course cornmeal
5. Add cream and work with hands to form dough
6. Knead dough just until combined and roll out to inch thick
7. Cut biscuits
8. Place biscuits onto pizza stone and cook for 5 minutes
9. Lower oven temperature to 375 degrees F and bake until golden brown

Once cooled enough to touch I cracked one open (they were dryer than I was expecting) and slathered it with butter. They are amazing! I love warm biscuits; I just wish the recipe didn’t require so much work that they are not a feasible morning batter.

I recommend these biscuit cutters!