Bread Experience

Shaping Pain À L’Ancienne Baguettes

The next bread in the BBA Challenge is Pain À l’Ancienne Baguettes.  These loaves utilize the delayed fermentation method.  You have the option of making baguettes, pizza or Foccacia using this dough. I’ve been making lot’s of pizza recently so I decided to try my hand at the baguettes.
 

“The unique delayed-fermentation method, which depends on ice-cold water, releases flavors trapped in flour in a way different from the more traditional twelve-stage method.  The final product has a natural sweetness and nutlike character that is distinct from breads made with exactly the same ingredients but fermented by the standard method, even with large percentages of pre-ferment.”

— Peter Reinhart, The Bread Baker’s Apprentice: Mastering the Art of Extraordinary Bread

Nancy Baggett utilizes a similar method in her book Kneadlessly Simple. In fact, she mentions that she got the idea from Peter Reinhart. I’ve made several breads using the delayed fermentation method from Kneadlessly Simple and Artisan Bread in Five Minutes. I really like this method although I’m still getting the hang of working with the wet dough.

 

Here is a photo tutorial of how to shape Pain À L’Ancienne Baguettes:

 
 
 
Let the loaves cool on a wire rack before enjoying them.
 
 

These baguettes are not the prettiest loaves I’ve made, but the flavor was really good.  They have nice holes and taste great!  They are chewy just like I like them.

Thanks for joining me this week in the Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge.

The next bread in Bread Baker’s Apprentice Challenge, is Pain de Campagne.  I love this country-style French bread!   I’m looking forward to making it. 

 

You might also enjoy some of these other Artisan Breads.

 

Happy Baking!
Cathy

Comments

5 responses to “Shaping Pain À L’Ancienne Baguettes”

  1. Kathryn Trappey

    What is a “steam pan”?

    Reply
  2. Cathy (breadexperience)

    Hi Kathryn, a steam pan is a pan that you put on the lower shelf of your oven while it’s preheating. I use an old pie pan. You pour hot water into it right after placing the loaves on the preheated baking stone. It provides steam to help the loaves rise and make them crusty on the outside.

    Reply
    1. L’Etange

      Toute excellente…!!

      Reply
  3. Dienie

    I am looking for something that looks like a breadstick but it is not. You can make it with caramelized onions or lots of cheese or garlic and then of course seeds. It is definitely a type of sourdough – looks like ciabata but one can see it was rolled to make it look like a swiss roll if I can put it that way, only much smaller. It is approximately the size when you would put your middle finger and thumb together to form an “O” just add about 3 cm and I would say 25cm long and bake in the oven. It does not seem to rise a lot. Can anybody give me some advice please?

    Reply
    1. Cathy

      Hi Dienie, I’m not familiar with this type of bread, but it sounds delicious.

      Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *