Bread Baking Babes dive in

This month our lovely Babe Elle ("Feeding my enthusiasms") found us a very intriging recipe, that I never heard of. Putting the bread dough under water for its first rise. What?! Yes that's what I thought. But what fun to try this out! And it works, it really does. The end result is a superdelicious bread, like a brioche, fluffy and just how our kids love their bread. So it's a real treat for them.

I made a few changes in the original recipe, that are included in the recipe below. Less yeast, less salt and I kneaded all ingredients together from the start in my stand mixer. Wonderful soft and brioche-like bread. Yesterday we had the last as Pain Perdu (French toast), delicious.

This is a great technic to try out, thanks Elle for introducing this recipe to us. I think it's just a different way to take the dough through its first rise, it would most likely rise in the usual way as well. But so fun to try this out.

Wanna bake along and plunge your dough into water? Bake, post and send your details to Elle and become a Bread Baking Buddy!! Deadline 29th of this month. Have fun!

Don't forget to have a look at the other babes for ideas and inspiration. (links in the side bar)

Water-Proofed Bread

(makes 2 loaves)

 

(PRINT recipe)

1,5 tsp dry yeast

118 g warm water (± 39ºC)
50 g granulated sugar
118 ml warm milk
115 g butter
1 teaspoon salt
3 eggs
± 490 g all-purpose flour
More flour for the tea towel

The eggs from our chickens, that eat a lot of
grass, give this extra bright yellow colour.

Rinse a large mixing bowl with warm water. Dry thoroughly. Put in the yeast, the 1/2 cup warm water, and the teaspoon of sugar, and stir until the yeast dissolves. Allow to proof for 5 minutes. Heat the milk with the butter and 1/4 cup sugar until lukewarm, then add to the yeast mixture. Add the salt and stir to blend well.

Add the eggs, one at a time, and again blend thoroughly. Then stir in 3 cups of flour, 1 cup at a time, to make what will probably be a very wet and sticky dough. Stir quite vigorously. Spread out the dough on a working surface - a table, a piece of marble, or a board - sprinkled with the additional 1/2 cup flour. Use a baker's scraper or large spatula to work in this last portion of flour and make the dough firmer. Scrape under the flour and the dough, lifting and folding inward. Repeat until the flour is well incorporated. Add more flour if needed to make a dough that you can handle. When the dough is easy to handle, begin kneading by hand. Continue until the dough can be shaped. (or just knead all the ingredients in your stand mixer with the dough hook, until the dough is smooth and soft)

Lift the dough, pat with flour, and place on a clean kitchen towel also sprinkled with flour. Wrap it and tie it in the towel, just as you would a package, but very loosely.

Submerge this packet in a large bowl  filled with warm water (about 100 - 115 degrees F, approximately). It will sink.

Let sit for about 35 to 40 minutes, or until it rises sufficiently to float on top of the water.

Lift the dough from the water and let the excess water drip off. Un-wrap and turn out on a lightly floured surface. Again it will be quite sticky, so scrape off any dough that adheres to the towel. Knead and shape into tow loaves, using both dough scraper and your hands.

Thoroughly butter two 8 x 4" loaf pans and place one loaf in each pan. Cover, put in a warm, draft-free place, and let the dough rise slightly above the tops of the pans, or until almost doubled in bulk.

Meanwhile preheat the oven to 190ºC. Brush the dough with cold water, and, if you like, make a slash in each loaf with a sharp knife. Place on the middle rack of the oven and bake for about 30 - 35 minutes, or until the loaves sound hollow when tapped with the knuckles, top and bottom. When done, place the loaves directly on the oven rack, without their pans, to brown the bottom a little more and crisp the crusts. Cool on racks. 

(source: "Beard on Bread" 1973)