Looking Out To Sea

I was up pretty late last night, baking. I didn’t particularly enjoy getting out of bed this morning (…but when do I ever?) but the bread was totally worth it.

I made two pains de campagne. They’re mostly plain flour with a little rye for flavour and colour. They start off with a ferment, which I tend not to do for other loaves because I’m lazy and it doesn’t easily fit into my day — but I thought I would make the effort this time.

(Mostly I make up a ferment the night before and put it in the fridge until the following evening. But a chilled ferment is pretty difficult to work and the yeast is obviously sluggish. It becomes a trade-off between letting the ferment come back up to room temperature, and not leaving it too late in the day to take the loaf to completion. In future I might try putting together a ferment just before I leave the house in the morning. The temperature is probably cool enough outside the fridge anyway!)

The loaves, in the end, looked rather beautiful and smelled fantastic. I’m sorry I haven’t uploaded the photographs that I took last night. You’ll just have to take my word for it.