The Golden Bread of Long Island City! AKA Tom Cat's Filone

Before mixing the yeast water/poolish, I had to confirm I had the requisite amount of semolina. My last bake of 2020 will bleed into 2021. Happy New year!  

 The first bake of 2021- Quick temperature reduction experiment, to extend cold proofing.

At approximately eleven hours of age, the liquid Levain is a very bubbly New Years' baby!

After weighing out the final dough flours last night I forgot all about autolyzing the durum first. Probably just an over-complication anyway. 

 At 58% hydration, the mostly durum shaggy mass is evidence of how slowly durum wheat absorbs liquid. 

 The active liquid Levain is inoculated (there is that word) with a minuscule .78 grams of instant dry yeast

After a two minute spin, the first addition of liquid Levein. 

The salt is scaled before the second addition of liquid Levain.

The dough ball is looking nice after the first levain addition. 

I decided to add a 5-minute rest before the last Levein is mixed in. The hydration is getting up there. 

The dough ball is looking really nice. The development is so good in fact, I will forgo any stretching and folding. 

I am going to shoot for a baguette like, 25% volume increase. This is very subjective and just a very rough estimate. I feel going to only 25% leaves a lot of leeways. 

A drop of water on the silicone mat works a treat to keep my wooden kneading/shaping board in place.

Ready for the shaping proofing. I would be already preheating the oven to really heat up the steel. However, I don't want to overheat the kitchen before the bench rest. Sometimes you have to choose. 

After 80 minutes, I am calling the bulk fermentation.

The dough ball drops out of the bucket clean. The high hydration dough lost a great deal of weight. I wonder if this is normal? 

With just a small amount of bench flour, the dough ball is quite easy to pre-shape.

Bench rest for 30 minutes. Note: All the mechanical development was done on gentle, Bosch speed #1

Looks very relaxed to me.

Into the banneton, she goes.

The oven is up to temperature and steaming. Twenty minutes into the proof, she still need a touch more CO2. Ten more minutes. 

The end game. I neglected to spray the Filone with water. Oh well, next time.

Chalk up a third bread for my semolina bread display case! I now have, The Golden Bread of Altamura, The Ancient Bread of Matira, and the: Cool Cat Bread of Long Island City! 

I am sad and very disappointed. The cheap ass parchment paper started burning almost immediately, I severely burned the bottom of the great Filone. I attributed the smell to a few sesame seeds. Oh well, easy fix I bake bread on my pizza screen not directly on the steel. Alternatively, a sheet pan would work a treat too.