Infinite Critique

The first bread machine I received walked one night right off the counter and in the morning I was greeted with a sticky mess on the floor. Apart of such incidents, making your own bread since the invention of bread machines has become really simple. Add ingredients to the machine at night and wake up in the morning to a delicious smell. But one thing these machines won’t get is to give your bread a tasty and crunchy crust. However good the bread might taste and convenient for sandwich breads - oven baked bread is unbeatable.

The following recipe, which I found on the internet and modified since, does not require much handy work, only patience to let the tastes to develop.

Pain Paillasse

Serves: 8

Ingredients:

1/4 pound (500 gram) flour
1 cup (300 milliliter) water, ice cold
2 1/2 tsp (1 package) yeast, dried
1 1/4 tsp salt

Directions:

1. Mix all ingredients, by hand or machine until elastic. If mixed by machine, you will see the dough to begin climbing up the dough hook. If done in the bread machine, let it go through the whole kneading cycle.
2. Lightly flour a large baking dish or casserole and put the dough, rolled into a ball, into it, cover with a clean cloth and put into the fridge for about 10 to 12 hours. During this time you can remove the dough once or twice and punch down and put it back into the fridge.
3. Remove dough from fridge and put onto flowered surface, roll (don’t knead) to an oblong shape, drape a cloth (or some plastic) over it and let it warm to room temperature for about an hour.
4. Preheat the over to 450 degree Fahrenheit (240 degree Celsius).
5. Cut the dough with a knife or scraper into a couple long pieces. Take each piece into your hands, stretch the dough lightly and then counter-rotate each end to each other to get a double-twist in the bread.
6. Lay the twisted dough onto a baking sheet (prepared with either some baking paper or dusted with flower).
7. Reduce heat after 15 minutes to about 350 degrees. Bake for about 30 minutes total. Remove from oven when browned as desired. Cool on wire rack.

Notes:

You can mix the types of flour to achieve a tastier bread. A good combination is 70% white flour, 15% whole wheat and 15% rye flour. You will need to adjust the water as wheat and rye will require more.

Origins:

The Pain Paillasse is a signature bread in Switzerland and not every bakery can make it.

If you would like to see somebody demonstrate how to make (another) bread, watch this short video on how to make bread. A good article on the relation of water and holes in bread you can find at the ArtisanBakers.

Enjoy!