I just joined the Mellow Bakers.

Mellow Bakers is a group of bread baking enthusiasts who look to bake a particular bread or breads together each month. Specific breads will be announced on the site every month and members can choose to make these breads as a group then post and share their results. For the next many months, we'll be working our way through Jeffrey Hamelman's book Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes.

I love bread with a dark crust, so I my first bread I bake for the Mellow Bakers group is the Rustic Bread.

The evening before I mixed all the ingredients for the pre-ferment. To weight the small quantities of fresh yeast and salt I used my new Spoon Scales. The preferment I let stand overnight at 18 C room temperature. Jeffrey recommends 21 C room temperature, even I let the pre-ferment proof colder it risen quite well.

The next day I added all the ingredients to the mixing bowl except the pre-ferment and mixed for about 3 minutes. As the dough came together I added the pre-ferment in chunks and finish mixing until the dough was supple and moderately loose. The dough was quite active so I let it rise 15 minutes less than recommended, in total 2 hours 15 minutes. Of course I folded it twice during this fermentation.

Adding the pre-ferment in chunks I don't like so much, because I always end up with a spotted crumb, as you can see on picture below. Normally I dissolve the pre-ferment with some of the water, so I have less spots in the crumb.

As I made just half of the dough, I shaped just one round and placed it into a banneton, seam side up. Final fermentation was about 1 1/2 hours still at 18 C. I think this was a bit too short. Unfortunately the crust burst too much. Also the crumb could be a bit more open, like the crumb of Paul's Rustic Bread. Anyway it looks very rustic this way, and we love its taste.

And you know what, I just noticed that I baked Hamelman's Rustic Bread before. Back then with a non-burst perfect crust.

In addition this is my submission to Susan's YeastSpotting, the weekly showcase of yeasted baked goods and dishes.

More entries and recipes in English.

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