trevorjames' Reviews
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Peter Reinhart's Artisan Breads Every Day
By Peter Reinhart
Ten Speed Press - 2009
San Francisco Sourdough Bread : page 64
I'm going to do this review in 2 parts - the first part is of the process and part 2 will be of taste and results since I need to wait until tomorrow morning to cut open these delicious looking sourdough boules so they have proper resting time.
I used Peter's mother starter as the wild yeast starter for this and pretty much followed his recipe as close as possible. I made the "purist" version without adding any instant yeast. So I had the starter resting on Saturday and then made the dough last night. Following Peter's recipe I let the dough refrigerate overnight to retard it. Also in the dough stage I used my KitchenAid Artisan mixer to do the kneading/mixing (mostly on low speed but for the times Peter indicates).
The interesting characteristic of this sourdough is that the resting dough (in fridge and when you remove it to ferment the day of baking) looks a bit lax - it doesn't rise much and it seems like it won't produce. I also used white bread flour for this (Gold Medal) and so the dough is very white and kind of plain/pale looking. However if you follow the directions for baking and make sure to steam the oven the result is amazing - it totally transforms into beautiful loaves. I made 2 boules - both came out rich caramel and crispy exterior. Bottoms are crispy and hard too - I removed the baking parchment paper about 5-8 min before I took them out of the oven. I also steamed the oven by putting hot water in a pan on the bottom rack throughout the entire bake. I baked for 12 min and then another 25-30 per Peter's directions.
The scores I made using a simple razor blade (brand new so it's sharp) and it resulted in beautiful scores - as you can see in the attached images.
I'll post my review of the taste when we eat this tomorrow. If you follow Peter's instructions as close as possible you'll end up with wonderful loaves.
-Trevor James
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