French baking - boule et bâtard

It was time for baking again. Although it is a Sunday and the opportunity for staying in bed longer is there I want to start early. Well not so early as a normal baker does, but 7:30 in the morning for a Sunday is already something.

Since I got all the ingredients at hand now - even this type 812 flour, which is a spelt flour, things can go.

Basically the procedure is the same as with baguettes. So the part were it comes to the kneading for twenty minutes is involved as well. I don't like to use a machine for that, so I go for it by hand - for twenty minutes. This is quite some effort - exercise while baking bread.

Again several times for raising. In fact the only thing now that is different from preparing baguettes is that I took half type 550 flour and half 812. This time I used also a tiny bit more yeast, since I had the feeling the bread was not raising properly last time. 

This time then things seemed to go well with the raising, but in the end in the oven not much more happened as to increasing in size. Someday I will figure out what goes wrong or what I have to do differently.

But back to the steps before. Obviously the shape of the bread is different. A boule is a ball and a bâtard, well, my dictionary said it is a bastard. Whatsoever! The picture rougly shows how the breads look like, although I haven't seen them in reality in a French boulangerie or supermarché before. Therefore I have no real comparison.

In the end then I'm not quite sure wheter I should be satisfied or not. Again, though, the taste is what counts in the first place. Room for improvement is always there - practice, practice, practice. Time will tell!