Pain façon Beaucaire

Well, the broth was wonderful, but the bread was less than hoped for! I attempted the Pain façon Beaucaire from Richard Bertinet’s Dough. Using the Bacheldre Watermill Organic Stoneground Unbleached White flour again, and incorporating some old dough from the Baguettes that I made the other day.

This flour is really giving me some headaches, and I really do not know why – but once again, my dough was too fragile to handle after shaping and resting. It just deflates under the gentlest of touches – although it bounces back pretty well in the oven. However, the difficulty in handling shaped dough made Beaucaire challenging. We will say little about my inability to parse the instructions properly but the two factors combined to make some very unlovely-looking bread. It ate well, though 🙂

There are no photographs as the rolls were nothing to shout about, and we really haven’t reached full daylight today… making kitchen photography more than usually difficult.

I shall be having another go at this type of roll. I have been Googling and now have a better understanding of how the rolls should have been formed.

Tell you what – looking at other people’s attempts, maybe mine were not so very awful after all. I think they could stand shoulder to shoulder in this image search! Mine may have looked slightly more gynaecological…

I have emailed Bacheldre Watermill to ask for advice about the flour and how to treat the dough. If all else fails, I suppose I can invest in some new loaf tins and just use those.