Pain Paillasse

[Frances]

Has anyone heard of this bread?

Pain Paillasse | The Fresh Loaf

It is without doubt one of the best breads I have ever tasted, and something I've been trying to immitate ever since I built the oven - with tasty but limited success.

The closest I have got so far is with Hamelmans ciabatta recipe (more or less), using my sourdough starter and 70% hydration, and then twisting the bread while shaping - I don't know why it should, but the twisting does do something to the taste and certainly to the texture.

And here's the latest effort, all 8kg of it - nice and crusty, moist on the inside, very delicious... but still not quite like the real thing . Next time maybe I'll try an even longer process, say 48 hours instead of 36.

[brickie in oz]

Yummo...it looks great...

[heliman]

Fantastic ... makes me want to try baking some myself. Sounds quite complicated though!

Rossco

[egalecki]

Wow. That looks great. What exactly needs to be different for them to be "authentic"?

I am planning on trying my hand at bagels later this week. Although I will not be baking them in my wfo. It's been so cold here that I just don't want to go out there and bake. I probably should go out and get a fire going though- I know I'll want to use it sooner or later and I bet it needs a drying out, in spite of how dry it's been with all this cold....

[Dino_Pizza]

Francis, was that "25gr Liquid levaine" your sour-dough starter? If so, I did something similar last month and had really good success. It does seem that adding 20% older starter to the poolish and dough makes an interesting difference in standard ciabatta.
Here's the link to what I did with pics:
http://www.fornobravo.com/forum/11/h...ta-5276-6.html (Hamelman's Poolish Ciabatta)

I've done the Hamelmans 'just cut and proof the loaves-no folding'
Done the Reinharts 'fold into little slippers' for final proof
And now I'll try this 'twisting into baguettes' to see what happens. Yours looks great. I always admire people who can retard that long .

Happy New Year!, Dino

[Frances]

Hehe, well we'll see if I can retard even longer...
Let me know how the twisting works for you.

The problem is (one of them) that I can't put 8 kg of dough in the fridge. There's just not enough room. Maybe less starter and leave it in the cellar overnight, that might work. And I see they mix the dough with ice water - I'll try that, too.

The difference to the real thing... hmmm. While my bread is very crusty and moist and delicious - I wouldn't want to change the taste at all - the Pian Paillasse has a lot more larger holes and somehow the crum has a creamier texture and the crust is even crisper. Perhaps if I proof longer after shaping?

At least its fun trying!