Dogue De Bordeaux Recipes

ROUGE DE BORDEAUX SOURDOUGH BREADS

Steps:

• Tips on building an overnight levain in summertime are in the blog post above.
• Combine all the ingredients in a medium size bowl and mix until well incorporated. (If you're making both formulas, use two different bowls.)
• Cover the bowl or transfer the dough to a straight-walled bucket and let the dough rest for about 30 minutes. Then do four rounds of gluten development with half-hour rests in between.
• Let the dough continue to rise until it's about 40% larger than its original size. Depending on the room temperature and your starter strength, the dough may need a total of about 4-8 hours for this bulk fermentation.
• My dough fermented three hours in my kitchen at ~79F, followed by 2 hours in the refrigerator to cool down.
• Scrape your dough out onto a floured countertop and shape it into a boule, batard, or oblong loaf, depending on your proofing basket and baking vessel shape. I pre-shaped and bench-rested the dough to let it warm up a little from the refrigerator, but if your dough is warm or tending toward over fermentation, you might skip the bench rest altogether.
• Transfer the dough to a well-floured proofing basket and cover it.
• Let the dough proof 30-60 minutes at room temperature (possibly longer in a cold kitchen) and then refrigerate it for several hours to overnight. Or do the entire final proof at room temperature for 1-2 hours, again depending on your kitchen temperature and the dough's appearance. See the photo gallery above for target dough expansion in the basket.
• Preheat your oven and baking vessel for 30 minutes at 500°F.
• Flip your dough out of the proofing basket onto parchment paper and score it.
• Transfer the dough to your baking vessel, cover, and bake for:
• 20 minutes at 500F with the lid on
• 15-20 minutes at 450F with the lid off
• When the bread is done, the internal temperature should be over 205°F and the bread should sound hollow when you knock on the bottom of the loaf with your fist.
• Let the bread cool at least 2 hours before slicing.