Pugliese

     My Pugliese was almost the bread that wasn't.  The recipe came from my favorite bread book, The Bread Baker's Apprentice."   It was a two day rustic Italian bread that starts with a biga.  In the grace notes in the margin Peter Reinhart said you can use your sourdough starter to make a firm starter in place of the biga.  That worked out well since I had just fed my starter the day before.  I read over the recipe a couple of times because it is a wet dough, and I have not had much experience with really wet doughs.  I  had to re-familiarized myself with stretch and fold.  I was once again looking forward to using that beautiful golden fancy durum from King Arthur Flour (you think it's hard finding rye flour in the middle of no where, try finding durum).  On baking day I was off to a great start.  I pulled my firm starter out of the fridge before our 6:00 a.m. walk to get the chill off the "dough."  I wanted to get an early start because of the many steps and the times for the rises.  I mixed the dough, stretched and folded and let the dough rest, stretched and folded again and let the dough rest, did my final stretch and fold, and put it in the bowl to rise.  Set my timer and set about doing other things.  Well, the weather alarm went off, and the wind started blowing - there was lightning - there was thunder - there were flying branches and pine cones - there was no rain.  All of this and no much needed rain.  Harumph! Well, about 20 minutes later the electricity went out.  My timer went out.  Oh no, my dough!  What should I do?  Okay, don't get thrown off, just put it in the fridge, and finish it tomorrow.  About an hour later the power came back on.  About an hour later it was still on.  Good deal, I can finish my bread today.  Of course, the power goes out again.  UGH!!!  Luckily it came back on in just a couple of minutes and remained on.  I  was able to shape my boules and complete the final rise, pop them in the oven, and ta-da - pugliese.
     I would have liked some larger holes, but I was delighted that the bread was not a disaster.  It was filled with lots of small holes.  The pugliese is a very tender bread, and again it has that beautiful golden color from the durum.  The bread had a good stretch to it before it would tear.  The crust had a perfect chew; it was just crunchy enough.  I read that it is a great dipping bread, so I made a little dipping oil with some extra virgin olive oil, some fresh garlic, and some dried Italian herbs.  And yes, it is a wonderful bread for dipping.
     If I had this experience early on, I would not have known how to handle it.  Refrigerating the dough was easy enough.  It was the timing of the dough that would have been hard.  I would have been totally dependent on timers.  The more bread I make, the more I learn about how the dough should look and feel at different stages.  I guess the three best experiences I've had so far in my bread exploration have been: baking my first loaf, making my wild yeast sour dough starter, and baking a successful pugliese despite the power outages.