Baking Bouchon - Recipe 76: Whole Wheat-Pecan Demi-Baguettes

I'm so glad that we're past all the bread that tastes exactly the same.  Pain Palladin, Pain Rustique, Pain de Campagne... they all taste the same to me. (Typically here is where I'd make some joke related to "pain" but I won't subject you to that.)

Thankfully this bread has a few different things going for it.

There's a little bit of whole wheat flour which adds a little texture and bite to the bread.

There is a touch of brown sugar in there which doesn't really add any sweetness to the bread, but is supposed to counteract the bitterness from the whole wheat flour.

Obviously, there are a bunch of pecans in the bread as well which adds some great earthy flavors.

However, my favorite thing in this bread is the brown butter.  Brown butter is butter that has been cooked until it takes on a slightly brown color - cooking the butter gives it a really nutty, earthy flavor.

I was a little bit surprised that the pecans in the bread aren't toasted but Thomas Keller says that they leave them raw for a sweeter, cleaner flavor.  I don't know about that - it tasted like pecans to me.

I'm not sure why but this bread did not proof at all.  It was supposed to double in size and get all fluffy before it went in the oven but it just didn't.  It was supposed to proof for 2 hours and I left it out for 3 but it didn't puff up at all.  If I understood science, I could figure out why.

Regardless, it still puffed up in the oven when I baked it.  The little guys got nice and crusty on the outside and soft on the inside. 

For some reason, they also split down the side a little bit which is weird.  I think it might have to do with the fact that they didn't proof much and the dough wasn't soft enough to expand in the oven so it split.  Again, science.

The cookbook says that they use this bread for turkey sandwiches.  I personally loved it with a little bit of the leftover browned butter spread on it.  It was nutty and warm and awfully tasty.

Hopefully the rest of the breads in this book are this interesting because there are 8 more.  Seriously?  That's a ton of bread and I don't have much time.  It's going to be a carb fest around here.

Enjoy!
Julie