Loaf 36 – French Epis and Boules

Posted on Apr 1, 2012 in loaves

My Mom’s birthday was coming up and I wanted to show up with bread in hand for her and my sister. I hadn’t made Reinhart’s French bread since Loaves 11 and 14. I had a few minor issues with those, but I’ve learned so much since then that it seemed pretty easy now (and it was). To try something new I decided to make Epis, which begins as a baguette and is then snipped to form a wheat stalk shape; plus two boules as gifts.

I’ve spent so much time calculating ingredients that I made a spreadsheet to help. I can put in the formula for the recipe (in percentages) and the total weight that I want to make and it spits out the amounts. Fun!

There are a number of pleasures in baking bread, and seeing the dough develop is high on the list. After the ingredients were mixed into a shaggy mass the dough rested for five minutes; three minutes of kneading helped it become smooth and barely tacky.

The dough spent the night in the fridge the raised about 3x. The next morning I shaped two boules that went into bannetons and two more as baguettes. After proofing for about two hours I snipped the baguettes to make Epis. They didn’t come out as glorious as I had expected, so next time I will snip them at a greater angle and spread the pieces apart more – that should help them not rise back into a single piece like they did this time.

Apart from the shape of the Epis, the flavor was wonderful, and between a midnight snack and breakfast we managed to eat both of the epi loaves.

Oh, and the boules made a great little gifts.