Comments on: Pain à l’Ancienne

By: Allie

Allie — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 19:06:22 +0000

No problem at all. Reinhart recipes always make fantastially large amounts of dough, but I’ve yet to try one of his recipes that didn’t perform perfectly when the dough was frozen after the first rise. The best part of it is that I just make a full batch of dough once, and I have loads of dough to bake as I need it. It lasts for a while in the freezer. Minimum of 3 months. Serious time saver.

By: richard

richard — Wed, 08 Apr 2009 17:40:05 +0000

Thanks for the tip about bagging part of the dough. I had to toss one of my baguettes right before lunch a few days ago. (That’s just bad timing.)

foodhoe – I’m no baker, and it really is that easy.

By: foodhoe

foodhoe — Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:16:19 +0000

wow, that bread looks amazing and you make it all sound so easy…

By: Matt

Matt — Tue, 10 Feb 2009 02:14:22 +0000

I’ve actually done similar things with bread in the past. It’s actually somewhat easier for me just to use the baker’s percentages. Somewhere around a 500 g loaf is about the right size for the two of us. It also incidentally happens to be the normal size of a french batard.

By: Allie

Allie — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 17:06:05 +0000

Er, excuse me. I put each loaf in a separate bag. Not all in one bag. I just realised I typed that out funny.

By: Allie

Allie — Mon, 09 Feb 2009 17:05:01 +0000

I love the Peter Reinhart recipes too, but you’re right – they make so many loaves of bread! How I’ve been dealing w/ this lately is this (hopefully it will work for you too!):

After the first rise, before shaping, I portion out 8 ounce loaves (usually; sometimes larger). I shape the loaf I want to bake and set it out for second rise. The remaining loaves I put inside a freezer bag that’s been sprayed w/ non-stick spray. Then I freeze them. To bake, take it out of the freezer and put in the fridge the night before you want to use it. Set it in a bowl on the counter (out of the freezer bag) to let it come up to room temperature the next day (this takes a couple hours), then shape, do second rise and bake.

I’ve found this method works with all of his recipes I’ve tried it w/. Alternately, you can store dough for 4-5 days in the fridge, just shaping and baking what you need each day.

And if you already know all this stuff, just ignore me! It just works better w/ my student schedule to have dough ready in the freezer for when I want bread.