9/19/2010 - Pugliese

This bread is a good reminder of how thankful I am for PR's brief excerpts that preface his formulas in this book. The cultural and historical background he provides and the descriptions of how the bread should perform throughout the baking process are invaluable. I was immediately intimidated as I read through it the day before baking this one, because this is a rustic bread with a very wet dough, something I am inexperienced and not very comfortable with. When he likened it to ciabatta, I was a bit concerned but also somewhat excited at this opportunity to correct my mistakes.

This is another bread that starts as a biga which is cold fermented in the fridge overnight. This dough calls for fancy durum flour, which I do not have, but PR notes that you can substitute a smaller amount of semolina flour and make up the difference with bread flour, so I opted to go that direction. This dough also can include an optional 1/4 cup of mashed potatoes, and I went ahead and added that to make the bread more tender. The dough I ended up with was extremely wet, but I was heartened by the note in the formula that the wetter the dough, the better the bread will be, and I plunged ahead. This dough is too wet to be kneaded; instead, it is turned out onto a bed of flour, generously dusted with more flour on top, stretched and folded, allowed to rest, and stretched and folded again. This was the point at which I knew my ciabatta dough was too stiff, but this time around it seemed to fit perfectly with the descriptions and pictures in BBA. After the first rise, gently shaping, and proofing, I attempted to score the loaves, this time with an exacto knife with a fresh blade. It worked better than my previous attempts, but I need to work on it. I baked my loaves on the pan they proofed on to avoid all the transfer from countertop to stone. I'm not sure that it makes much difference if the bread is baked on the stone or not; I've been happy with it both ways. I'm sure it makes more difference with some breads than with others.

We really liked this bread. It was very tender and the flavor was excellent. And I have to say that I kind of liked working with the wetter, rustic dough. This is one I would like to make again.