It is possible that I am the cruellest woman in the world. At the very least, I’m definitely the cruellest woman in our house, admittedly this is an easy crown to claim as I’m the only woman in our house. Still, at least this new title gies me the opportunity to wear my wedding tiara again!

Let me explain…

Last week, Dave had a tooth extracted—all offers of tea and sympathy will be gratefully accepted, I’m sure—and one of the strict instructions that his dentist gave him was to not eat any hard or sharp foods for several days.

Guess who made lots of deliciously crunchy bread? Oops.

While Dave was being tortured with a pair of pliers (or whatever they use these days) Lucas and I went shopping. In the back of a discount bookshop I discovered two books that I’d had in my Amazon Wishlist for a while: Dough by Richard Bertinet and Gorgeous Cakes by Annie Bell. Both for about 33% of their RRP! I hugged them to my chest and squeaked with glee while Lucas made his “Mummy’s gone mad face.”

The USP (Unique Selling Point) of Dough is the bread-making DVD enclosed with each copy, which in the space of 20 minutes can take you from a complete novice to… well… slightly less of a novice baker. The best thing about the DVD is that it demonstrates Bertinet’s method of “working the dough”.

Bertinet doesn’t knead dough, or indeed, knock it back. He favours a gentler method and also adds minimal flour to the dough when working it. His rationale is that the role of the flour in the recipe is to absorb the water, which it will do if given enough time. Adding extra flour makes for easy, non-sticky kneading, but inevitably results in a heavy loaf with a tight crumb. It’s hard to describe in words how he handles the dough, but there is lots of folding to trap air, along with some gentle stretching of the dough to develop the gluten.

My curiosity was piqued by the description and video of this method, so bright and early the next morning I started making dough. (I’ll also admit to being seduced by the gorgeous fougasse on the cover of the book. The photography throughout the book is just as beautiful, which is another good reason to pick up a copy.)

My dough was very wet and porridgy, so I was sceptical that the dough would ever firm up and stop sticking to me, my cuffs—don’t wear a long-sleeved top!–and the worktop, but miraculously it did. The stretch-slap-fold thing is a bit weird initially, but after a few minutes I fell into a rhythm. I didn’t manage to get the dough to a completely un-sticky stage, but the dough was pulling away from the worktop and felt smooth and bubbly, so I figured it was time to let it rise.

Just before I set the dough to rise, I worked in some roasted onions. (Couple of onions sliced paper thin, salt, pepper, dried thyme, touch of olive oil and roasted in a hot oven for about 10 minutes until browned and soft. Makes a nice crunchy snack, too.)

The fougasse were fantastic! Despite having a much shorter fermenting time than the recipes that I’m used to, they developed a great flavour, helped along loads by the roasted onion strips I suspect. The open shape of the bread ensured maximum crunch per bite and the crumb was light with nice even holes. The roasted onions added extra bursts of flavour and crunch where they’d peeked out from the dough during baking and gone Extra Crispy. Yum.

Our junior foodie gave the onion fougasse a big thumbs up. He’s happily chewing away on a strip of it just now, with the occasional dip into the gravy from his lunch. Excuse the messy face—it’s the sign of a great lunch, I’m told. He’s also just had his first taste of Norwegian Brown Cheese which he seemed to approve of. He’s developing expensive tastes, I’m afraid!

I think I might have to make some more fougasse for our Boxing Day Extravaganza. (In recent years we’ve taken to cooking up a feast for ourselves and a couple of friends on Boxing Day as I love doing the whole Christmas Dinner thing, but we traditionally spend Christmas Day with Dave’s family so I get the day off from the kitchen. The—somewhat gluttonous—solution was to have two Christmas meals.) Bertinet notes that you can part-bake then freeze the breads, which is perfect for the lazy cook who wants to do as much as possible in advance.

Basic White Dough, from Dough

500g strong bread flour
10g fresh yeast (I used 7g fast-acting yeast)
10g salt
350g room-temperature water

Rub the fresh yeast into the flour–it should crumble into tiny pieces if it is fresh enough. If using instant or fast-acting yeast, then just stir it into the flour.

Stir in the salt and add 2/3 of the water (in case you don’t need it all). With a dough scraper or something similar–I used a silicone spatula) start mixing the dough, adding in dribbles of water as necessary. You should end up with a fairly wet dough.

Scrape this out onto a clean work surface and prepare to get sticky.

“Slide your fingers under it, like a pair of forks, with the thumbs on top; swing the mixture (which is sticky enough to be cohesive, just) upwards and then slap it back down, away from you on to the work surface. Stretch the front of the dough towards you, then lift it back over itself in an arc (to trap the air), still stretching it forwards then sideways and tucking it in around the edges. Keep repeating this sequence.”

If you’re flavouring the dough with anything, work flavourings in once the dough is clearing the work surface nicely.

Once you reach this stage, flour the surface lightly and shape the dough into a tight ball. Put in a lightly floured bowl, cover and leave to rise for about an hour until doubled in size.

Preheat oven to 250C (or as high as it will go) and place a baking stone or upside down baking sheet on the middle shelf. I also place a heavy roasting tin on the floor of the oven and fill it with hot water to create a steamy oven.

Shaping the fougasse

Heavily flour the work surface and a peel or baking sheet. Ease the dough out of the bowl using a dough scraper or spatula to help it along and avoid deflating it.

Let the dough flatten out into a rectangular shape. Dust top of dough with plenty of flour. Cut into six equal triangles using the scraper.

Working with one piece at a time, cut down the middle of the dough with the scraper, ensuring that you don’t separate it completely at either end! There should be about a 1cm bit at each end keeping it all attatched. On either side of this long cut, make three short cuts.

Carefully open out the cuts with your fingers. Be bold and give it a good pull so that the cuts don’t swell together and close in the oven. Transfer to baking sheet. Repeat until baking sheet is filled.

Working quickly, shake the dough off the baking sheet and onto the searingly hot sheet (or stone) in the oven. Turn oven down to 230C after 2 minutes. Bake for about 12 minutes overall, until risen, golden brown and hollow when tapped.

Cool on a rack.

If there is still more dough to be baked then don’t forget to turn the oven back up to full!