The twenty-second Bread Baker's Apprentice challenge (from the book by the same name authored by Peter Reinhart) is Pain de Campagne, and is found on pages 195-197.
This
is
a two-day bread, one day for the pate fermentee and then one day for
the making, shaping, and baking. Shaping, oh yeah, that was the
interesting part. The bread dough came together easily and was a very
nice dough to work with. There were various shapes shown in the book,
but at first sight I fell in love with the epi (like a stalk of wheat)
and was hoping I could achieve at least something epi-ish.
The first
go was a fail...not very epi-ish and a little discouraging. Then Nancy gave me a link to a site that showed how to do it with the cuts in the
bread and the pulling this way and that and armed with this new
knowledge, I tried again. Better this time. Not perfect, but then the
people making these for the photos have probably made hundreds of these
loaves and have it down to an exact method...when I get to my 100th
loaf, I'm sure it will look as perfect as theirs. That's the hope
anyway. Until then, here is my second try at forming an epi and I have
a long way to go, but at least I tried it!