Buckets of Bread

Holy crap did we make a lot of bread today. Seriously, holy crap load of carbs. As before, it is a little bit tough to explain everything that we did today because there was just so much but I will do my best.

We started my making a sponge for two types of bread, a Nicois Olive and what's called a Fougasse. A sponge is just a mixture of water, yeast and flour that is left to ferment alone before it is mixed with the rest of the flour and other ingredients. Also called a Poolish, the pre-ferment makes for a much softer, spongier, and wetter dough because there is a lot more moisture in the dough. After our sponges were made, we got to work on the dough that we had left to pre-ferment over night in the fridge. It had gotten very sticky and very heavy over night and was really hard to work with but we all managed. We shaped the overnight dough into long logs and let them proof in the proof box while we got ready the ingredients (or the mise en place) for the Olive and Fougasse breads. With the Olive, we had to chop rosemary and olives and the Fougasse required fried bacon and herbs de provence to be steeped in hot water like you would do with tea. As soon as we finished the mise en place the bread in the proof box was ready for the oven and since it was very, very, very sticky, I needed a valium after trying to get the dough from the floured linen towels (called couches and pronounced cu-shez)to the cornmeal covered boards to put them in the oven. They stuck to me, to the towels, to each other -- it was bad. After the French bread was in the oven, we started getting our Olive breads and Fougasses mixed, kneaded and proofed. Whew, are you getting tired? It's work just recounting it but we are almost done... Once the French bread was done, we prepared the Olive and Fougasse for the oven and once they were in, we all fed our babies or the sourdough starters. Then finally, we broke bread and boy did it taste good. I really liked the olive bread but the Fougasse was a little bland for me. It kind of looked like a mal-formed pretzel and so it was a touch crusty too but not bad. The French bread got over-baked (our chef was taking care of that and forgot...opps) but they will likely be good for a strata or bread puddin' -- look for that as a possible blog topic this weekend.

In other news, the flood damage has been fixed and I've decided to call Blog 2.0 Flavor Picnic (Flavor has to be spelt the American way because I will be sending this to American magazines in the hope of getting hired...). Please stay tuned for more details and for wonderful New York weekend updates!


This is the lovely Shannon's bread not mine. It is called American Black Bread. I could have made that instead of the Olive bread but it had far too much molasses for my taste. It sure looked pretty under the oven lights though.


Fougasse (pronounced fu-gas by our chef from New York...that might not be the right way to say it but I wasn't going to mess with him about pronunciation) or as I like to call Ugly Bread.


Olive Bread