Pain de Campagne

Last year I posted about baking a Pain Rustique (a rustic bread from France): a delicious farmer style bread that I bake very often. But last week I found a recipe on the net (the blog owned by Levine: Uit de keuken van Levine), which is called Pain de Campagne, which recipe is only slightly different. In the poolish there is also rye flour used and some honey is added to the final dough. In this recipe a little less water is used (60% hydration instead of 65%) and the poolish makes only 30% of the final dough, compared to almost 50% in Pain Rustique.
The result: the 'Campagne' has a softer crust and the the crumb is finer than the 'Rustiqe'. But they both taste great!

Poolish:
- 130 g flour
- 15 g full wheat flour
- 15 g rye flour
- 160 g water
- a teaspoon sourdough

The evening before baking the bread the poolish is made: mix the ingredients well and let it develop during the night in a mixing bowl, covered with plastic, at room temperature.
The next morning the final dough can be made.

Dough:
- the poolish 
- 325 g flour
- 130 g water
- 9 g salt
- 2 g dry yeast
- a teaspoon honey

Dissolve the honey in the hand warm water and mix the flour with the salt and the dry yeast. Add the water and the poolish to the flour and mix until the flour has absorbed all the fluid. Now take the 'dough to be' out the mixing bowl and put in on the working place for kneading. I use the Bertinet-method, only using my fingertips. I explained this technique in one of my previous posts: Sourdough Bread with Spelt. When the dough is ready (the kneading takes about 15 minutes), form a ball and transfer it to the mixing bowl for the first proofing. I use a plastic pedal bin liner for covering. Let it proof for about half an hour in a warm place (e.g. on a rack on the warming plate of the Aga). Take the dough out and do a full stretch-and-fold: check this instruction video on YouTube for this technique. Put the dough back in the mixing bowl for further proofing. After half an hour the dough should be doubled in size. If not, leave it to develop some more. Take the dough out, put in your working surface and flatten it to get the air out. Form a nice boule or batard, depending on the form of your proofing basket. I use a wicker proofing basket for this, as you can see on the photo. Put the dough upside down in the basket, with the 'ugly' side up.

Cover and let it proof for another hour, until doubled in size.

 Bake the bread (after scoring it with a razor blade) on a baking stone on the floor of the roasting oven, with a tin filled with hot water to create steam. After 2 or 3 minutes open the oven and spray water over the bread. Close the oven again quickly.
After about 25 minutes transfer the bread to the baking oven for about 15 minutes. Take it out and let it cool on a rack.
A detailled despcription about baking bread in an Aga, including the forming of a boule or a batard and scoring the dough you can find on my post about making Spelt Bread.