Baking Bouchon - Recipe 73: Pain Rustique

Did I mention that I'm moving?  No?  Well, I am.  CA and I are moving to South Korea in a couple of months which is super exciting for the whole adventure, changing it up, new life experience thing.  It is also very exciting for the whole blogging thing because I fully intend to go to the Korean market and pick up the weirdest thing I can find, figure out what it is, making something delicious with it and tell you all about it.  However, it has caused me to have only 2 blogging goals from now until the movers come and pack up all my pots, pans, mixers, utensils and other excessive kitchen implements.

Goal #1 - Finish baking every recipe in the Bouchon Bakery cookbook.  I definitely think this is doable considering I only a 2-3 recipes left in each section (except the stupid bread section with at least 5 more recipes... why is it so LONG?).  CA and my coworkers may hate us by the time we leave because they're going to be chunky.

Goal #2 - Clean out my pantry/freezer.  This means you're going to get all sort of recipes using up the random stuff that has accumulated in my pantry over the past few years... pepper jelly, fig jam, cocoa nibs, frozen cake scraps, frozen fruit puree, frozen bread, diastastic malt powder...  OK, so I doubt I'll be able to use everything but I'm going to try to use as much as possible because I don't know anyone else who needs a partially used bag of food grade lye.

Step 1 towards Goal 1 is to make more bread.  This bread is plain and boring and exactly like the last bread I made.  Thomas Keller says it's not but I say it is.  Something about less levain or more yeast or less fermenting time or more proofing time is supposed to make this different but it's the same.

Even the pictures look the same.

I even managed to make the two loaves touch in the oven so they baked together just like the last one.

This recipe made two loaves of bread, one got eaten and the other got frozen.  The problem with freezing bread is that it inhibits the completion of Goal #2.

Enjoy!
Julie