BBA #23 - Pane Sicliano

The 23rd bread in the BBA challenge and I still have a while to go!  This bread was a lesson in reading comprehension for me.  I'm going to blame it on The Husband finally being home and messing with my schedule.  I had several reading comprehension issues, but the bread survived it!

The first reading comprehension came Saturday as I mixed up the pate fermente.  As I was mixing, I read the formula again only to find that this is a three day bread, not a two day bread.  Ooops.  Fortunately, I only work afternoons on Monday and the bread could be baked before going into work.  I'm not sure what I did to the pate fermente, but it came out a lot wetter than usual!

Onto day two.  I took the pate out to lose its chill.  It's supposed to sit out for an hour - well, we went to run some errands, and The Husband multiplied "some" into "many," and it was over two hours before I got back to the bread, which had a distinctly yeasty smell.  In a hurry, I mis en placed everything, looked over the formula again....  Ooops.  Seminola flour?  How did I miss that?!  I had no seminola flour.  So I dug through my cupboards and ended up using oat flour instead.  I proceeded to knead the dough.  It rose quite swiftly and was ready for shaping.

The shaping part was totally fun.  This qualifies as one of my favorite shapes, along with the epi and fougasse.  Simply put, the dough was formed into baguettes, then spiraled in from each end simultaneously to create the traditional "S" shape - though my boss asked if it was supposed to be a treble clef, which gives me an idea to try next time I am experimenting!

This morning, I set up the oven for hearth baking, explained to The Husband about the steam pans, and popped the bread in.  Halfway through I rotated the pan 180 degrees as always.  Five minutes away from my timer going off, I said to myself "Self, when doing hearth baking, don't you usually reduce the heat after the first minute or two?"  "Why yes, self, usually I do.  I wonder why this formula didn't?  Let's see."  After rereading the formula:  "Oh.  It did say to.  Ooops."  And I swooped to pull out the bread.

Despite all that this poor bread suffered, it actually came out quite tasty, something both The Husband and the coworkers agree upon!  I shall have to try it again when I actually have seminola flour, though!