How to make fougasse

As I promised yesterday, here is my recipe for fougasse.  Actually this comes from Richard Bertinet’s excellent book Dough: Simple Contemporary Breads.  It’s easy and quick and very satisfying.

First the ingredients:

1.5 teaspoons of active dry yeast (or one .25 oz envelope)

18 oz of all purpose white or white bread flour.

2 teaspoons of salt

12.5 oz of water.

It’s important to measure the ingredients by weight to get the proportions correct.  If you don’t have a kitchen scale then use 2.5 cups of flour, but don’t pack the measuring cup full, just scoop it out of the container and sweep the excess off the top.

Mix the ingredients together in a bowl until they are well mixed and then turn out on an unfloured counter and stretch and fold the dough for about five minutes, or just until it starts to become stringy and the gluten strands begin to develop.  It’s important NOT to add extra flour.  You want a wet dough and a light dough to avoid baking bricks.  You also don’t want to knead the dough or it will get too tough.

Richard Bertinet’s stretching and folding technique is excellent.  Watch this video carefully to see him in action.  It develops the gluten and traps a lot of air in the dough.  You can watch him do it in this video, where he is working with a sweet dough, but uses the same technique.

Rest the dough for an hour in a bowl, just as he does in the video.  As the dough is resting pre-heat the oven to 475.  If you have a pizza stone or baking tiles, be sure they are in the oven so they can get hot.  If you don’t, you can use a baking sheet.  Take a little pan of water and put it in your oven so that it can steam while you bake.  This will give the bread a nice crunchy crust.

After an hour, turn the dough out on to your counter, as he does in the video and carefully shape it into a rectangle.  Using a dough scraper or a spatula or a sharp kinfe, cut the rectangle in half, and then cut each half into thirds.  If you cut them into triangles, you can make a nice leaf shaped fougasse.  If you cut them into rectangles, you can make a nice squareish ladder bread.

Next take the pieces like this woman does (start the video at the 4:30 mark), place them on your baking sheet or (a peel if you are using a stone), sprinkle some flour over them  and cut holes in them.  Make them as fancy as you like, just dont cut through to the edges.  Gently stretch the dough so the holes open up. and place the dough in the oven.  Bake it on high heat (at least 475) for 12 minutes.  The breads are done when they are golden brown and starting to get dark in places.  Let them cool on a wire rack and eat!

Happy Bread Day!