Sunday morning began, to use a bread term, rather crumbly.
This week’s Tuesday with Dorie/Baking with Julia recipe, Semolina Bread. Ohhhhh, it’s so yummy.
Up early, as usual, to watch the 14th stage of the Tour de France. Sadly, the 150-some racers met Trouble. Towards the end of the race and just before the brutally steep Mur de Péguère summit, some idiot tossed tacks onto the road. Bicycle tires don’t play well with upholstery tacks. That appalling act of sabotage resulted in at least 30 riders suffering 48 punctures and one sustaining a suspected broken collar bone in a crash.
Defending champion Cadel Evans suffered three different punctures which stopped him cold and would have put him out of the competition. However, Tour leader Bradley Wiggins, a Brit now wearing the yellow jersey, drew approval and accolades for sitting tall on his bike, slowing the pace, and waiting for the defending champ and others to regroup and join the peloton. Score One for the Good Guys.
Watch Magic Happen: Start with a Sponge. Mix Warm Water, Yeast, All-Purpose Flour and Give It 2 Hours to Rise.
Following that drama it was on to this week’s Tuesday with Dorie/Baking with Julia. This week it’s a quickly and easily mixed Semolina Bread. As I walked into the kitchen, the tour over, I decided if Bradley could rise to the occasion,I could rise to the occasion, making bread that would, uh, rise.
Two hours later, the Sponge plus flours, salt and olive oil make this cute little ball of goodness. Don’t you love making bread?
Famed baker Nick Malgieri showed Julia how to make this deliciously nutty-tasting bread. If you’re thinking Semolina loaves are more Italian than French, you’re right. This flour is milled from durum wheat, the flour used to make pasta.
It takes ten minutes to whisk together the sponge and two hours to let it double in size. Once mixed together with flour, olive oil and salt, it turns into a lovely dough that needs another two hours rising time. Then you form the dough into a loaf, transfer it on to a parchment paper-lined baking sheet lightly covered with corn meal, and for the next two hours let that baby rise again.
Here, I admit to a little error . When I shaped and prepared the dough for the second rising, I “slashed” prematurely. Should have waited until after the rising. Whoops.
Slash and bake.
This is a tasty but unassuming and rather plain loaf of artisan bread. It’s color, a wonderfully warm golden brown, is what separates it from the crowd. Enjoy.
If you’d like to make this bread, I encourage you to jump to this site. To read what other Dorie/Julia fans baked this week, go here.
I love Semolina Bread. Thanks, Nick!
Mary, that looks lovely and so delicious! Nice job, my friend.
Looks like a pro!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!Good job, GF
Mary, your Semolina Bread looks absolutely perfect and delicious and just right! And I am glad that I am not the only Dorista that is glued to the TV screen once the Tour de France is on…that is probably also why I got so distracted while baking (my not so professional looking) loaf of bread!
That´s a handsome loaf of bread! I´m amazed people can still do that kind of things in a great event like the tour de france. I know they believe they have a reason, but man, you can end up killing someone!
Beautiful Bread! I love it! I needed that picture when I got to the slashing part..I totally blew it:)
Score one for the good guys AND for Mary 🙂
Lovely loaf.
Great first line and beautiful bread! You are becoming a baking pro! xo
I do like your slashes! This bread was fun–I’ll make it again.
This definitely was one big bread lovefest! Great loaf!
Absolutely deplorable to throw tacks on the road! I just don’t understand some people.
Your loaf turned out great even with slashing too early. Let me know how your next loaf turns out with using the food processor. I always want to but am hesitant. Thank you for your kind comments and looking forward to seeing your creations over at WW.
Brad Wiggins is a true star. Your bread looks fab -0 I think the slashes look fine, and the yellow colour is more what I expected than my pale loaf.
I too have been keeping an eye on the Tour, although not as closely as you have. I have read some recipes that have you slash after shaping, before proofing, so you just made a variation to the recipe. Your loaf looks happy with that!
Mary, Your bread looks absolutely perfect!! Being in the midst of a heat wave…I could not bare to turn my oven on to bake bread! I do plan on catching up with this one, at some point! Have a great day!!
I think your bread looks like it rose very well, regardless of when the slashing occurred. I would totally agree that this recipe was a complete lovefest – easy to put together with great results. Three cheers for Dorie, Julia, Nick, & all of us! Did they catch the person who did the tack thing?? I just don’t get it – that’s really dangerous and mean. Why would someone even think to do that?
And rise it did!! Beautiful loaf…and I like the more pronounced slashing, myself 🙂
Beautiful loaf. Like you said, semolina makes all the difference. I was shocked when I watched the whole tack incident unfolded. There have already been plenty of crashes and to knowingly increase the risk of accidents for these athletes is horrible.
I hope the success of this loaf of bread will encourage you to bake more bread! It’s really quite magical. Though I can see the difficulty of even turning on the oven at summer time in Nevada. Yikes!
LOL…so I didn’t mess up after all? Wow, I think you’re right. I think I need to start focusing on what the heck I’m doing!
What a horrible thing to do to such great atheletes. Hope they catch that one!!
Your bread is beautiful. If mine had just risen a little!!!
Your bread came out beautifully – you got such a great rise! I didn’t follow the Tour de France, but thanks for sharing the story. I really respect Wiggins for what he did.