The Laurel's Kitchen Bread Book_ A Guide to Whole-Grain Breadmaking - Laurel Robertson [33]
ROLLS
You can make them small, for dinner rolls, or larger, for lunches. The traditional shapes are like a batard loaf, only smaller, or round like a tiny hearth loaf. Make six to twelve from half the dough, and treat as you would the loaves except that the smaller the bread, the crustier it will be, and the shorter the time it will take to bake.
About Grease & Cornmeal
When French or other lean breads are to be baked as hearth loaves on a baking sheet, the sheet can be dusted generously with cornmeal and not greased: the loaf will not stick. Note that a really thick layer of cornmeal, say an eighth of an inch, can provide such effective insulation that the oven heat won’t reach the bread and its bottom will not bake. A too-thin layer, with much of the pan showing through, of course, can’t keep the bread from sticking.
If the bread will touch the sides of the utensil, then that part at least will have to be greased because the cornmeal won’t protect it. When grease is used, a dusting of cornmeal is optional, but it does add a nice touch to the finished loaf, and has the virtue of absorbing excess grease in the places the dough doesn’t cover, which saves you from having to scrub off burnt grease.
If you don’t have cornmeal, other low-protein flours or meals can be used, but corn is best.
Proofing
SIMPLE PROOFING
Whatever the shape, the bread will be ready to bake after about an hour at 70°F. Leave your loaves exposed to the air, but protected from drafts. If necessary, cover them loosely with a big cardboard box, but don’t seal the loaves off in a plastic bag. French is the one bread that does not want humidity when it is proofing! Be sure that you preheat the oven thoroughly well in advance of the baking so it is plenty hot by the time the bread is ready to go in. When it is ready for the oven, the dough will be spongy and saggy, with a delicate crusty surface.
FANCY PROOFING FOR BAKING ON OVEN TILES
A professional baker gives his loaves their final rise, or proof, upside down in a cool nonhumid place. Later, when the bread is ready for the oven, it is placed gently on a long-handled wooden paddle, or peel, and at that time each loaf is turned over to sit on the firm crust that the air has put on its top-now-bottom. The baker slashes the loaf, and then with a deft push-pull it is made to fly off the peel precisely into its place on the floor of the hot brick oven.
This sounds tricky, but it isn’t difficult and home bakers can easily adapt the technique for baking their own French bread on oven tiles or a baking stone. The big advantage is that the top of the loaf (the bottom while it was rising upside down) stays soft, and so continues to rise nicely in the oven.
To proof the loaves upside down, shape them and invert them on a baking sheet or tray lined with heavy cloth and dusted with flour. When the time comes to put them in the hot oven, you will need a rough equivalent of a baker’s peel, of a size and shape to suit your loaves and oven. To improvise a peel, try a piece of eight-inch masonite (like a clipboard) or heavy cardboard covered with contact paper, or quarter-inch finished plywood sanded down on one edge. (For round loaves, a thick magazine would work, for that matter.) Your peel should be a little bigger than one loaf and stiff enough to support the loaf if you hold the peel with one hand.
Slashing French Breads
Slash the loaves just before putting them into the oven so that they will have the characteristic open-leaf pattern on their crusty surface. We find that we have the best results of all using our bread-slicing knife for slashing: a long, thin, sharp, wavy-edged blade. For tiny rolls, it is easier to use a very small, extremely sharp, thin-bladed paring knife, or you can snip them with wet scissors—easy and pretty,