Italian Bread (Italian Boule)

From: Artisan Bread Baking

Discussion

This is my standard Italian Bread recipe. It’s derived from a recipe in Clayton, “The Breads of France.”

This bread is made with all white bread flour, but you can substitute up to 20% whole wheat flour with no change in the recipe. I’ve modified the recipe to accommodate my style:

• I made a poolish of 200 grams each bread flour and water and 8 ml / 1/2 teaspoon yeast.
• I left the poolish on the counter overnight.
• I added an autolyse of 25 minutes after initial mix and before adding salt and doing the kneading.
• I did three fermentation periods, two of one hour separated by a fold, then another fold and a final fermentation period of 30 minutes.
• You can also do a simpler method: ferment for 2 hours, then fold and ferment for 30 minutes.
• You can choose the fermentation method that fits your schedule.
• Final rise period after shaping was 50 minutes.

Poolish

Ingredients	Ounces	Grams
Bread Flour	7	200
Water	7	200
Dry Yeast	1/2 tsp	2

This Italian bread will frequently give enough oven spring to form two very large basketballs, expecially is you use very strong bread flour.

For instruction on how to make a poolish, go here, but use the amounts above.make a poolish

Ingredients to Add to the Poolish

If you don’t have malt syrup, use sugar.

Ingredients	Ounces	Grams
Water	17	480
Bread Flour	31.5	890
Dry Yeast	1 TBS	15 ml
Salt	1 TBS	22
NF Dry Milk	1/2 cup	225 ml
Olive Oil	1 TBS	15 ml
Malt Syrup	1 TBS	15 ml

See malt discussion here.

Method

• Measure the flour and other ingredients.
• Put the poolish, water, sugar, yeast, oil, malt syrup and milk powder in the mixer bowl.
• Add half the flour and mix for two minutes.
• Switch to the dough hook, add the rest of the flour and mix for two minutes.
• Let the dough rest for 25 minutes.
• Add the salt and knead for 8 minutes.
• You can ferment this dough with one long first fermentation, 2 hours, and then fold it and do a final short final fermentation, OR you can do two 1-hour fermentations, with a fold in between, and then a fold and the short final fermentation.
• The pictures show the three-step fermentation, but either way works well.
• Shape into two 2-pound / 900 gram loaves, place on parchment paper and let rise for 50 minutes.
• Slash in a tic-tac-toe and bake in a dry oven at 425 F / 220 C for 20 minutes, turn and finish baking. The internal temperature should be 200F / 93C.
• For a deeper crust, turn off the oven and leave the bread in the cooling oven for 5 or 10 minutes.
• You can also spritz the risen loaves with water and sprinkle sesame seeds on the loaves. This will deepen the color, too.

For larger holes in the loaf, use a very gentle fold, such as the Hamelman fold in the folding section.