"Local Breads" - Whole Wheat Genzano Country Bread

Karniecoops's picture
Karniecoops

Just when you thought you'd seen it all from the Genzano region of Italy, here is the last bread in that chapter of Daniel Leader's Local Breads - Pane lariano.

This is a version of the Pane casareccio di Genzano that is traditionally made with a lighter WM flour than we are generally used to, so Mr Leader has used a combination of WM and AP to get the same result.  Since this again a salck dough, the loaves aren't shaped but gently formed into filones (squat rectangles), handling them as little as possible.

As per the previous loaf, you can use whatever type of starter you like - liquid, stiff or rye - according to my notes I refreshed 28g of my "nasty looking" stiff starter with 140g water and 200g bread flour and let it do its thing for about 10 hours.  Maybe I hadn't used my stiff starter for a while, coz it does start to look a bit grungy, but always comes to life once fed!

The dough consists of all of your starter (so make extra if you want to keep some over), 410g tepid water, 250g bread flour, 250g WM flour, 8g yeast and 20g salt.  I then kneaded for 10 minutes at speed 6 on Mr P (KA mixer), rested 20 minutes, the kneaded another 10 mins and speed 6.  The recipe says to do 8-10mins on med/high, then 8-10mins on full blast, but since my mixer "walked" off the bench while I was stupidly not watching it, it doesn't seem to go any faster above about #6.  I guess I'm just lucky the blimmin thing still works at all!  I do have a nice hunk out of my wooden floor where it hit the deck!

Leave your dough to ferment in a covered oiled bowl for about 1.5hrs at RT. Deflate by pressing down in the centre and pulling up on the sides (this is clearly a slack dough fold), then recover and let ferment for another 1.5hrs.

Once fermenting is done, turn your dough out onto a floured bench, cut it into 2 equal pieces. Cover your peel with baking paper and coat it with bran.  With floured hands, fold the 2 long sides of one pice of dough towards the centre and flip it over onto one side of the bran coated bakers peel.  Try and square off the sides and ends with your hands, but don't over handle.  It only needs to be a rough rectangle. Do the same with the 2nd piece of dough and place on the peel about 4cm away from the first loaf.  Lightl coat eac loaf with bran and cover with a plastic bag or wrap.

Shaped loaves:

Let the loaves proof at RT until they are billowy and about doubled in size (mine took an hour).

As always, you will have pre-heated your oven (450F / 230C) about 1hr prior to baking.  Once proofing is finished, slide your loaves into the oven, and in your preferred steaming method (mine is about 5 ice cubes to tray at bottom of oven) and bake for 20mins then turn the oven down to 400F/200C (and my loaves around) and bake another 15-20mins more until very dark.  Mine didnt get very dark, but they were certainly cooked sufficiently.

Baked loaves:

You then have to wait a couple of hours after baking until you try the merchandise.  I didn't write any tasting notes in my book (very slack), but I believe they were very pleasant and like the original had a nice moist crumb, but quite a thin crust.  Not on the top of my list, but nice enough.

Crumb:

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