Bread Boule
A boule is a round artisan loaf with a golden, crackling crust and an open, tender crumb. Made from the simplest of ingredients - flour, water, salt and yeast (or a starter) - it is the baker's craft distilled, and it tastes like it.
Ingredients
Poolish
- 109 g flour
- 109 g water
- 5 g active yeast
Bread dough
- 20 g flour
- 100 g wholemeal flour
- 55 g water
- Salt
- 5 g yeast
Method
Poolish (make it the day before - 18 to 24 hours ahead of baking)
The poolish is what brings the flavour to the bread.
- Activate the 5g of yeast in 109g of lukewarm water.
- The yeast and water should foam up. Then pour the mixture over the 109g of flour in a large bowl.
- Stir until you have a thick, batter-like paste.
- Cover and leave to ferment in the fridge for a day.
Bread dough
- Add to the fermented mixture: 20g of flour, 100g of wholemeal flour, 55g of lukewarm water and 5g of yeast.
- Mix and leave to rise.
- Knead the dough by lifting the middle with your hand and folding it back over itself. Turn a quarter turn and repeat.Knead every 20 minutes over the course of an hour.
- Leave to rise for 2 hours.
- Flour your work surface and turn the dough out onto it, top side down.
- Degas it very lightly and shape it into a ball. (There are plenty of folding methods on YouTube.)
- Let it rest for 20 minutes.
- Shape it back into a ball.
- Leave it to rise for an hour somewhere cool. (You can rest your banneton in the fridge - it makes scoring with the blade much easier.)
- Preheat your oven to 260°C
- Score the top with a blade, then set the loaf on a sheet of baking paper. If you are using a banneton, tip the dough straight out onto the baking paper, score it and get it into the oven.
- I bake the bread in a Dutch oven: 30 minutes in total, with the lid on for the first 20 minutes and off after that.Spritz a little water into the oven to create steam, which you need for a properly crisp crust.
Notes
This recipe is not quite dialled in yet, but all the main steps are there.
The quantities in particular suit me, largely because the loaf fits my Dutch oven. I still need to get better at handling the dough.
I would suggest watching a few videos on YouTube before you dive in.
The quantities in particular suit me, largely because the loaf fits my Dutch oven. I still need to get better at handling the dough.
I would suggest watching a few videos on YouTube before you dive in.
