BBA #28: Pugliese
More croutons, dammit.
I don’ t know what the deal is lately, but I just can’t seem to fire up a decent loaf of bread. In this latest challenge, Pugliese, I was hoping to wind up with something good after last weeks bad Potato Rosemary Bread (which also wound up as croutons) experience.
No luck.
Oddly enough, I did get a bunch of good pictures of this bread (artificially staged with some cherries to get a nice color contrast).
It’s alright, I guess. I have the stuff I need to make salads tomorrow, now I have the croutons.
(Posts from fellow BBAers, such as Jim, are here)
I’m not even going to write out the typical post I usually do here, because I was very disappointed in this bread, and I have no clear idea where things went wrong. Instead, I’ll just mention what did go wrong and then mention some issues I had along the way. I’ll then put up a few more pictures, since they did actually come out well.
The Problem:
What was the problem? Well, the bread tasted like ass – that was the main problem (can it get worse?). Really – it just didn’t taste very good. In addition, the bread was very dense. Which is surprising, given how hydrated this dough was. It also didn’t rise very much at all. So it tasted bad, it had the absolutely wrong texture, and it failed to rise. I did say that it photographed well, right?
What Went Wrong?
I’m not sure.
First off, I did goof on the biga. I made it at 9pm, and the instructions are to leave it out for 2 hours, and then to refrigerate it. I fell asleep. What can I say? I have two little kids. By 10pm I’m half on the way to being in a coma. Anyway, this resulted in the biga being left out all night. Whether this was part of the problem I wound up with, I can’t say. My typical go-to recipe from Carol Field has you make an overnight biga that is left out all night, so clearly this process is used. It just wasn’t the process for this bread. Was that the problem? I’m sure it made a difference, but I can’t imagine it led the bread to be as bad as it came out.
Second, I didn’t add the optional mashed potatoes. Was that it? I can’t imagine it would be.
I can’t think of what else could have been responsible. Everything else went just fine. That said, it did seem to me that the bread never really rose that much in the proofing stages. It rose, but not like a normal dough tends to rise. I let the dough rise exactly the time it was supposed to, in each stage.
Basically, nothing seemed to go right here. Why? Your guess is as good as mine.
Some More Good Pics
Why did I pick cherries? No reason, other than that the colors offset the bread.
and this one
August 13th, 2011 at 7:59 am
Chris the only way to know what what wrong would be to make it again. Did you use semolina as part of the flour? I also did not use the potato, the dough rose about 1&1/2 it’s original volume, as well in the final proof there was not a double only 1&1/2 volume rise as stated in the recipe. The final bread rose minamilly in the oven for me also, I believe that is the nature of this recipe. It did have a good semolina bread flavor for me, and yes it was more dense then a usual Italian loaf.
my post..
http://ovenminded.blogspot.com/2011/07/bba-28-pugliese-bread.html
August 13th, 2011 at 8:10 am
Jim –
I’m stumped. I used the durum flour, and follow all the directions straight through. I just really wasn’t very good. It’s not often that we don’t eat it all – and I think my wife and I had one slice each, and that was it. I threw the rest of it out. It reminded me of the totally foul loaves I made when I first started baking!
Yours looks really good. I like your crumb shot!
By the way, I didn’t realize how long it look to prepare the seed culture for the next breads. I just started mine, so it will be days before I get my next bread post up!
August 24th, 2011 at 12:41 pm
Finally managed to get hold of some durum semolina flour, so will bake this tomorrow. I don’t think it’s the ‘fancy’ semolina that Reinhart talks about, but better than the very coarse semolina that is ubiquitous in these parts.
Chris – I have baked some semolina breads in the past (including ones from The Italian Baker) and they are denser than those made with normal bread flour. I don’t think I’ve ever made a 100% semolina bread, so I would expect this recipe to be even denser. I can only guess that the bread in the photo was made with some bread flour, say 50/50 as he suggests. Maybe using ‘fancy’ semolina also makes a difference. The flavour of semolina also seems very different to me, somewhere between nutty and bitter! Maybe just not to your taste?
August 26th, 2011 at 6:06 am
Having said all of the above, my loves turned out much lighter than I was expecting! I made my biga with 50/50 semolina/white flour, then made one loaf with all semolina flour and the other with 50/50 semolina/white. I also included the mashed potato. I made the dough for the all semolina one slightly wetter, and either this or the absence of white flour, meant it turned out slightly flatter.
They don’t taste very different to each other, but quite different to bread made with regular wheat flour. Scrap the nutty/bitter description, these were slightly sweet if anything, almost buttery, but slightly unusual… beyond that my descriptive powers fail me.
September 2nd, 2011 at 12:24 pm
Well, this turned out to be so popular with everyone that I had to bake it again this week. My Dad and my partner Tess seemed to thing it was among the best breads I’d ever baked. I can’t say I’m that wild about it myself, I prefer ciabatta, but I’m not going to argue with such positive feedback! This week I did a truly 100% semolina version, with semolina used for the biga as well as the final dough. It resulted in a much chewier bread, which I liked, and a yellower crumb.
October 9th, 2011 at 10:14 pm
Another catch-up post, 2+ months after baking it: http://nlbarber.blogspot.com/2011/10/bba-29-pugliese.html
I couldn’t find durum flour and the semolina was coarse, so I went with bread flour. The flavor was good, but my handling of the high-hydration doughs still needs work to get the really open texture.
October 29th, 2011 at 8:59 am
Are still doing this challenge??
November 30th, 2011 at 7:52 pm
I’m still working on it over at my blog, though erratically. I’ve got 7 breads to go, and with my vacation next week and the holidays upon me I don’t expect to finish until sometime in January. I’m also not going in order anymore, as I didn’t want to bake rye bread after rye bread, etc. However, if Chris has quit, feel free to comment and post links to your breads on my blog:
http://nlbarber.blogspot.com/
Here’s where I am:
http://nlbarber.blogspot.com/2011/01/bba-challenge-bread-list.html
I’ll probably do the Vienna bread next, when I’m back from vacation.
December 31st, 2011 at 1:05 pm
Here is #24panettone,that we skipped during the summer
http://ovenminded.blogspot.com/2011/12/bba24-panettone.html
here is #30 basic sour dough bread
http://ovenminded.blogspot.com/2011/08/bba-29-basic-sour-dough-bread.html
and # 31 Ny deli rye..
http://ovenminded.blogspot.com/2011/08/bba-30-ny-deli-rye.html