Pain Au Levain

Pain Au Levain translates, perhaps unsurprisingly as 'Sourdough Bread'. But when said in french it becomes somehow, much sexier sounding. This is the second of the breads in 'Wild Sourdough' and yes it does look much the same as the last one- with one quite discernible difference. It has a french name.

Seriously though the main difference is that while the last dough was mainly white flour with a little semolina, this one has the addition of rye flour to give it a slightly denser crumb. The other major difference is the process- this has two stages of rising involved and therefore takes a bit longer to complete.

Rye starter: When mixed and the morning after.

So as with all the sourdough breads with this book the starter is mixed the night before and left overnight to react with all the goodness in the flour. This is a 100% Rye starter and this is the rye component of the bread as mentioned before.

As I began to mix this dough I began to get worried that it was going to be too dry- there seemed to be too much flour compared to water despite carefully measuring everything out. This is however a lesson I had learnt a long time ago. You really can't judge how wet or dry a dough is until it is completely mixed together, and often not even until some kneading has been done. By adding extra water or flour too early, you'll end up overcompensating- in this case had I added more water I would have found my dough to be far too wet. I persisted with mixing however and everything came together nicely to form a sticky lump of dough that was in no way too dry.

I've also found that mixing by hand is so much easier. I tend to start with a wooden spoon, but after a bit it always becomes obvious that it's not really cutting it when it comes to  actually mixing the ingredients together. So I just plunge my hands in and give it a good old squidge* around. Yeah, so I end up with pretty sticky hands but it's far more effective at bringing everything together.

* possibly not a real word.

I do not believe you can have too much flour  |  The sticky (not dry) dough

As mentioned in my previous post the next stage (after a rest) is to knead the dough. Any form of kneading is fine, so long as you're stretching the gluten strands in the dough, which is what gives the bread it's internal structure. The book suggested this air kneading form that is supposedly easier because this is a fairly wet dough. I tend to mix it up a little as my hands get pretty sticky anyway regardless of how I knead it! I've included a picture of how I do the air kneading. I'm not sure if I'm doing it quite how they describe in the book but it seems to work!

Air kneading (well, my form of...)

After another rest you're meant to check it all for correct consistency, but I didn't have the time so I just left it for the first of the two rises. As I said this bread took a long time, so here's a quick run down of the rest of the process...

10:10am Dough left for first rise
4:30pm Shaped dough into cane banneton
4:45pm Left for second rise
8:30pm Transferred dough from banneton to wooden paddle and then into oven

Rather than stick religiously to the times in the book I let myself be the judge of how long the rising took. This always depends on the days temperature and can change quite significantly.

To try and increase the longevity of the crust's crustiness*, I decided to bake directly on to the tile I have in my oven. This tile sits on three bricks on the base of the oven to increase thermal mass (and basically counteract the fact that my oven is not and never will be a 120 year old wood fired scotch oven). It also should hopefully give a thicker crust.
* possibly not good grammar.

Dough tipped out of the banneton  |  Dough slashed  |  Bread out of the oven

I have to say I was very happy with how this bread looked when it came out of the oven. The slashes that I had cut in the top opened up brilliantly when baking and gave a very nice rustic look to the bread. I do also think that baking directly on the tile/bricks on the base of the oven did help to crisp up the crust- although that could also be the differences in the recipe and until I retry the previous recipe direct on the tile I won't be 100% sure.

This bread was nice, but I did prefer the Semolina Sourdough Loaf I made last time. Perhaps it was simply because that was a lighter loaf and made with more white flour. Perhaps not though, as I do like a good wholemeal loaf too. Either way I wasn't disappointed and enjoyed it immensely.