Pugliese, revisited

The heart of most of Reinhart's breads are the starters. Like this biga he requires for the Pugliese. I used Gold Medal "all-purpose" flour to make the biga because it is the best of the cheap flours I can find in this area. At about $3 a five pound bag I've found it to be as reliable and flavorful as some of the $5 a five pound bag of "bread" flours!

I mixed up the biga and gave it 4 hours at room temperature before placing it in the fridge for the night. I gave it two hours on a counter this morning to get it back up to temperature. Next time I make a biga for this recipe I'll try to leave it cooling its heels in the fridge for at least 48 hours to more fully develop its flavor.

Once the biga is mixed into the rest of the ingredients (the rest of the flour was a 50/50 mix of GM "all-purpose" and King Arthur durum flour) a 30 minute rest is required to allow the flour to absorb the water. Half the mixing seems to be done at the same time! I do run the electric mixer at one third power for 5 minutes before turning the dough onto a well floured counter. Folding, oiling and dusting with flour every 30 minutes for an hour and a half produces a lively dough that fogs up the glass bowl and tries to squeeze out from under it!

When I scraped the dough loose from the counter I forgot to turn it over so the smooth side was up. Working with wet dough can be a challenge if you forget to keep chilling your hands and scrapers with ice cold water! This ball of dough was smooth and well rounded after a 2 hour rise at 76F.

After shaping the loaves and giving them 90 minutes to rise, I ended up with this bubbly beauty! It and the parchment paper it rose on slid onto a baking stone in a 500F oven. There was a cake pan with hot water simmering on the rack below the stone. I sprayed warm water into the oven every 30 seconds for a minute and a half before turning the heat down to 450F. The bread baked for 15 minutes. Then I removed the parchment paper from between the loaf and stone and gave the bread another 10 minutes.

Not bad. Not bad at all. The fragrance was a mouth watering as ever!

The Bulgarian stopped by to snatch the loaf on the right. She would have begun eating the bread where she found it except I happen to mention I'd just finished grinding a pig shoulder into a breakfast sausage. She pulled the bowl of raw meat from the fridge and started eating gobs of it. (gag) "Not bad." she says. "Nice blend of herbs and spices."

Eating raw pork? Sheesh! Making East European style sausages at her house next month should be interesting! I wonder if she'll eat the raw dough when I start teaching her to build breads after we've made several yards of sausage?