Just hearing the name of this bread made me excited to bake it. Pugliese (pronounced "poul yay zay") is an bread with Italian heritage, made using a bigga (a hunk of wetter-than-usual dough started the night before) and incorporates 50% durum flour in the final dough. The recipe calls for extra fancy durum and although I'm pretty sure my pasta-making durum isn't the same, I'm confident it will taste just as good. Similar to
pain a l’ancienne, the dough is pretty wet and sticky and treated gently during shaping and proofing. Even though working with wet dough can be a challenge, I really enjoyed making these loaves because they look truly artisanal and--in my ever so humble opinion--rival anything you can find at a farmer's market.
If you want more information about how Pugliese is made, try this link from
Joe Pastry. Just seeing his brick oven triggers oven-envy. I sooooo want one of those.
--
Posted By David to
The Saturday Night Baker at 7/11/2010 08:49:00 PM
