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Sourdough Pain de Campagne
Pain de campagne (French: “country bread”) is a traditional French sourdough bread loaf made with a mix of refined flour, and whole grain wheat and rye flours. The inclusion of rye flour in this bread has its origin in the fact that a small amount of rye was often grown among other wheat in France, and then both were harvested and milled together (Wikipedia).
In this recipe, fresh-milled whole grain rye makes up 5% of the flour. Rye flour boosts fermentation of the dough, adds a hint of earthy flavor, and also helps the bread stay fresh. You can read more about rye’s resistance to staling here.
For the whole grain wheat portion of this recipe, I chose organic red fife at 20% of the total flour weight. Red fife has a beautiful aroma and helps ensure this bread will wow you with flavor. If you want to try recipes with a greater percentage of whole grain red fife flour (40% and 100%), click here.
Rye and Red Fife
This is a relatively high hydration dough and in order to make it more manageable, you’ll be developing the gluten in the dough during the first part of the bulk fermentation. A strong gluten network and good fermentation (not over-fermenting) will make the dough shapeable, but you may want to drop the water amount by 40 grams the first time you try the recipe, especially if you’re using different flour.
You can see the Pain de Campagne dough consistency in this video of a second round of gluten development. This is a hybrid or mixed gluten development technique that you can substitute for the lamination; it’s especially useful if you don’t have a lot of clean counter space. Videos of how to laminate and coil fold are below the recipe.
Sourdough Pain de Campagne
Enjoy this traditional French country sourdough loaf with a lovely blend of red fife, rye and bread flours. The recipe is easy to follow, employs best practices from some of our bread experiments here at Breadtopia, and the hydration is manageable, helping even beginners shape the dough with ease and achieve a nice crumb.
Ingredients
Instructions
Autolyse
Adding Starter and Salt
Gluten Development and Bulk Fermentation
Preshape, Bench Rest and Shaping
Final Proof
Baking
Notes
Autolyse Length
You can read Breadtopia's research into autolyse length here, though it is important to note that particular experiment was on an all whole-grain wheat dough.
Gluten Development
Here is the lamination experiment blog that demonstrates why early lamination likely yields better oven spring and crumb.
Baker's Percentages
75% bread flour
20% whole grain red fife flour
5% whole grain rye flour
78% water (80% if the starter is parsed into the flour and water amounts)
20% starter
2% salt
Here are two videos demonstrating the gluten development techniques of coil folding and laminating suggested in the recipe.
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Sourdough Pain de Campagne