Recipe: Pain de Campagne
Visit almost any modern American sourdough bakery and you’ll find something called a “Country Loaf” or “Table Bread,” or perhaps “House Sourdough.” It’s a delicious bread in it’s own right—light, airy, subtly sour from natural leavening—though it’s typically comprised of strong white flour and a small amount of whole grain. As with most foods, I’m more drawn to its roots: France’s Pain De Campagne, or “Country Bread.”
Most often made with boulted wheat flour and a touch of rye, these loaves were baked all across France before the Industrial Revolution, each family’s recipe and scoring a bit different, so as to differentiate them after they came out of the communal brick oven. Often baked as big loaves that would last a family a week, called Miche, this dough was wet and tacky to maximize shelf life. The inclusion of rye is due to the fact that rye was often grown as a cover crop in the field; all the grain from a field went into a mill, and the rye would comprise usually around 5 to 15 percent of the final flour mix. I love the subtle tang and spiciness that the rye provides here, in addition to boosting fermentation.
This loaf saw its downfall in France as urban bakers developed the baguette. Technically precise, airy, white and malty, the esteemed baguette presented a more elegant option for Paris’ elite, and quickly became the grain mix (white flour) and creamy flavor profile that came to define much of the bread baked today. The recipe below, made from high-extraction flour, whole rye, and a slightly stiff sourdough levain, provides a glimpse into an older form of bread: a bit more sour, more grain-forward, and ultimately more nutritious.
To find high-extraction flour, look to your local miller. Something around an 85 or 75 percent extraction rate is what you are looking for: it contains much of the flavor and nutrition of whole grain, but has the coarser bits sifted out.
Pain de Campagne
Makes: 1 740g loaf
Ingredients:
High Extraction Flour: 360g
Rye Flour: 40g
Water: 320g
Salt: 8g
Sourdough culture: 10g
Mix together the wheat and rye flours. To build your levain, or the base for your dough, combine 40g of this mixture with 30g of the (warm) water and the 10g of sourdough culture in a small bowl. Mix by hand or with a wooden spoon, cover the bowl with a lid or wet towel and let sit about 8 hours or overnight, until nearly doubled in size, and significantly domed on top.
An hour or two before your levain is ready, mix the remaining flour and water together in a large bowl and cover. Sprinkle the salt on top.
To make your final dough, use a hand or a mixer to incorporate the levain and the salt into the wheat and water mixture. Mix together until no visible pieces of the levain remain, and the salt has dissolved into the dough.
Let sit for 30 minutes and perform a fold: using a wet hand, stretch the sides of the dough up and across the top of the dough, so that they overlap. With this stretching you are developing gluten. Do this twice around the bowl in a circle. I usually think of the dough as having four sides that you stretch, so twice around the bowl would equate to 8 total motions.
Let sit for another 30 minutes and repeat this process. Let sit for an hour and repeat again, going around the bowl just once this time (4 motions total), and then let sit for an hour and fold once around the bowl one final time. Let sit for an additional hour until active, light, and airy.
Turn the dough onto a floured surface and perform on light fold, so that you are stretching the sides of the dough to the top and they are overlapping there. Invert this dough so that the seams are facing the table and the smooth side is facing upward. Let sit for 30 minutes. This is your pre-shape.
Repeat this process, first inverting the dough so the smooth side is facing the floured table, and you are overlapping the dough that you are stretching on the upward-facing side. When you have a taut ball of dough, with the seams still facing upward, place into a floured banneton or a small circular basket with a towel in it. Make sure to dust the smooth side of the loaf with flour so that it does not stick.
Proof overnight in a refrigerator for about 10-12 hours. The next day, bake at 500 degrees for the first 15 minutes (if baking in a home oven, preheat a dutch oven and bake your bread inside with the lid on), then for 25-30 more minutes (with the lid off) at 450 degrees. The crust should be browned and caramelized, and the loaf should sound hollow when thumped.
