Roasted Garlic Levain: Mellow Bakers (January)

I finally got around to making the Roasted Garlic Levain from Hamelman's book Bread, this week.  The recipe, which is on page 183 of the book, was on the January list of Mellow Bakers breads to make.  I'd gotten a bit distracted and was having so much fun making cookies from KAF's website and spice bars from The Modern Baker, that time got away from me, and I forgot to get back to bread making.  I was planning some baked mostaccioli for dinner on Wednesday, and I thought this would be the perfect meal to serve the Roasted Garlic Levain with.

First off, I prepared my stiff levain the night before baking, by combining bread flour, water, and ~ 2T of stiff sourdough culture.  My sourdough culture was at 100% hydration, which I thought was correct for a stiff culture, but last night as I was flipping thru the back of Hamelman's book, I discovered that a stiff levain is 60% hydration.  Oops, I guess 100 % was close enough, though.  I will file that in my memory banks for next time.  Stiff = ~60% hydration.

I let my stiff levain build ripen on the counter for 12 hours, while roasting my garlic cloves near the end of that time.  I wanted by garlic cloves to cool off a bit, before mixing up the final dough.   I peeled off the top layer of papery skin from my 4 extra large cloves, cut off the woody end of each clove, drizzled them with olive oil, then baked in my 325° oven for ~ 20 minutes.  I poked them with a knife and it went right into them, so bingo, they were done!

Here are my culture and garlic all ready to get thrown into the final dough.  I mashed up the garlic really good with a fork before adding it in,

Since everone else had shaped their dough as rolls or loaves so far, I decided I'd shape mine as fougasse, since JH said this bread makes excellent fougasse.  Besides, when I asked hubby whether I should shape it as a boule or as fougasse, as he was heading out the door for work, he confidently responded 'fougasse', so fougasse it became.

I always like trying something different, so when I saw shaping directions for a leaf-shaped fougasse in Baking With Julia, I decided to give that a try.  The Leaf-Shaped Fougasse shaping directions are on page 146 of Baking With Julia, and a picture of it is shown on the inside front cover.  It's a little hard to see in the picture of my finished fougasse, but what was new to me in the shaping of this fougasse were the 3 slanted cuts on either side (edge) of the teardrop shape.  I made these with a razor blade, and only cutting into the dough about half the length of the blade.  

I baked my fougasse for 20 minutes at 450°  At first I thought it was too done when I took it out at 20 minutes, and was kicking myself for not checking on it earlier, but when eating it, it tasted just right to us.

This recipe made quite a large fougasse, which just barely fit onto my stone.  

Oh, we were in heaven as we tore into our chunks of sourdough garlic fougasse.  It tasted kind of like pizza dough and the garlic flavor is subtle in this bread, but you can definitely tell it is there!  I had also sprinkled Italian Seasoning into my dough when I was mixing it up to give it even more flavor.  Also, before I slid the fougasse into the oven, and onto the stone, I brushed the dough w/ EVOO and sprinkled on a bit of kosher salt.

We both love the chewy interior and slightly crunchy exterior of fougasse, so I'm sure this garlic bread will be on the menu again in our house.  This one's a keeper!

Herbed Fougasse Without Olives (Mellow Bakers: November)

After being away for four days, all I could think of when I got home was how much I wanted to bake something.   So since I'd only completed one of the Mellow Bakers November breads so far, I decided to whip up the Pate Fermentee for the Fougasse on page 278 of Hamelman's book, Bread, late on Saturday night.  I guess I had too much pent up energy after not cooking, doing dishes, or even laundry for 3 1/2 straight days!  It was wonderful, and I had such a good time seeing my cousins (and their kids) and my aunts and uncles which I hadn't seen for 2 years.  I think we had ~42 people at our Thanksgiving get-together.

The original recipe for this Fougasse calls for olives to be mixed in w/ the dough at the end, but since I didn't have any olives in the house and since I love herbs, I decided to use Cathy's idea and add Herbes de Provence to the dough.  It seemed quite fitting to add this particular herb mix, since fougasse is a regional specialty of  Provence in France.  I only made half the recipe for this bread, so I only made one round fougasse and added 1 1/2 tsp of Herbes de Provence to my dough.  I also incorporated Cathy's change to increase the salt in the recipe since I omitted the olives.  For the half recipe I made, I added an extra half teaspoon of salt to the salt already called for.

This bread is so simple to put together and looks quite impressive when its finished baking.  I had already made a fougasse earlier using the traditional 'leaf' like scoring so I wanted to do something different this time.  I noticed the round shaped fougasse in one of the color photo plates in the middle of Hamelman's book and thought it looked pretty.

I also made some dipping oil to accompany our Herbed Fougasse.   I just used a heaping teaspoon of Herbs de Provence, adding in some red pepper flakes, fine sea salt, garlic, fresh pepper, and dried oregano and then some extra-virgin olive oil. Then it sat for awhile so the flavors could mingle a bit before we had dinner.

Hubby complained that the fougasse didn't quite go with the salmon patties I had on the menu for that evening's dinner, but it turned out to be a fabulous fougasse and it didn't matter what else was on the table.  The next night we finished off the fougasse w/ some Cream of Wild Rice Soup and we were in heaven with our bellies full of fougasse and steaming hot soup:)

I hope everyone else had a wonderful Thanksgiving!!  I was thinking about my online baking friends all during my Thanksgiving break, grateful for their kindness and willingness to share baking experiences and also wondering what they were cooking up in their kitchens for the holidays.

Hamelman's Olive Levain as Fougasse (Mellow Baker's: July)

Usually after a day of baking our sandwich bread, I'm breaded out for a couple days and don't feel like baking the next day, but this week I found a little extra energy Wednesday night to mix up my liquid levain for the olive bread.  I wasn't so sure we'd like this bread because of all the olives, but I was excited to try shaping the bread as fougasse.  I figured I would be thrilled if I could accomplish that, and wouldn't be upset if I didn't like the taste of the olives.

After looking everywhere, I finally found a jar of the nicoise olives at a store here in town that carries alot of gourmet type specialty items.  I looked at the itsy bitsy olives in the jar and knew they probably contained pits, but I thought no problem, I'll just squeeze them one by one and the pit will just pop right out.  Wrong!!  I waited until the morning to open the jar of olives and pulled out the first one.  Well, I squeezed and squeezed and managed to squirt juice on myself, but no pit popped out.  So, at 7 am in the morning, I'm sitting in my PJ's at the kitchen table, using a small paring knife to carve the olive flesh away from the pits of these olives.  After pitting all the olives I dumped them into my bowl to weigh them and found I only had 2 1/2 oz and I needed 4.  Aaaargh!  So after some debate, I trudged off to the grocery store and scooped 8-10  olives out of the Mediterranean mix at the olive bar there.  I went home and pitted these and dumped them into my bowl and had exactly 4 oz.

I was really nervous about just using Lucky, my starter, to leaven this bread.  This was another reason I was anxious to try this bread.  I've not had much success using my sourdough starter in breads containing no commercial yeast.  I resisted the urge to add just a pinch of instant yeast, and hoped Lucky would work its magic. 

I let my liquid levain sit on the counter almost a full 16 hours, and during the bulk fermentation of 2 1/2 hours I folded the dough once.  It didn't rise a huge amount during the fermentation, but there was definitely alot of gas bubbles in the dough when I folded and shaped it.  After bulk fermentation, I shaped the dough into a rough round and covered it for 15 minutes.  Then, using the rolling pin, I flattened the round into an oblong shape.  I brushed it with a little olive oil, and covered it again for an hour. 

After the hour was up, I stretched the dough, shaped it into a triangle and used my pizza wheel to cut the slits into the dough.  (I put a piece of cardboard under the parchment while I was cutting my slits so as not to slit my mat or peel.)

To open up the slits, I stretched the dough from the sides a bit, and then stuck my fingers right into each slit and opened them up nice and big, so that when it baked the holes wouldn't close back up.

I slid the fougasse onto the baking stone and baked with steam at 450° for 20 minutes and took it out to cool.  I was so happy with the way it looked coming out of the oven.  I even thought for a moment about just hanging it on the wall in the kitchen as a decoration instead of eating it. 

Hubby and I were both a little apprehensive about this bread, not knowing what to expect flavor wise.  We've grown up on those squishy, kind of tasteless really, California black olives from the cans and not really experienced the taste of a good olive.  We have however tasted one other type of olive quite a bit and thats the kalamata, which we both rather detest, especially me.  Its just so bitter that I can't stand eating them on salads, etc. 

Surprisingly, the bread was good.  There were a lot of olives and you definitely did get a taste of them in every bite.  The olives were slightly bitter, but with a little butter smeared on, it was quite tasty.  It was chewy like sourdough, had good sourdough flavor and the crumb was way better than any of my past sourdough attempts.  I think this qualified as a sourdough success.  Yea :)

I've been reading everything I can stumble upon regarding fougasse lately, to get an idea of the different recipes out there.  I've seen some different slit patterns and I think I'd like to try one of the recipes with no olives, but with cheese and lots of herbs.  That seems to be a popular way to do fougasse, besides the olive and anchovie option.

I feel bad that this bread didn't turn out so well for some of the others, but maybe it's worth another try, and if you're not an olive fan, just substitute some dried herbs and sprinkle on your favorite cheese and definitely try shaping it into the classical 'leafy' looking fougasse.