Home-made French Country Batard Bread ... YES!

Finally, Mom decided to attempt another method, another formula to bread-making.  The result of a home-made French classic country batard bread.  Viola!

 Day One - she used another method - the cold fermentation method, letting it rise slowly in the fridge.

 Day Two - Instead of kneading it non-stop like the conventional method, she let nature takes its course, by allowing 3 times the time for natural yeast fermentation in the fridge, which normally bakers would not do it this way.

 Day Three - After taking it out from the fridge, Mom would fold 4 times at 10 mins interval, then shaped it before letting it rest again at room temperature, allowing it to proof.

 After the 3rd proofing, the bread finally rose to it's correct tension naturally.

 As Dad ccouldn't wake up in the morning and neither do Mom too ... so she decided to bake it for dinner instead for breakfast.

 Mom didn't have special equipments for making bread.  Hence she has to shape it as best she can to shape like a Batard country bread. She also didn't have hot stone nor a bakers' steam oven; so she just pre-heat a  clay pot for putting the proofed bread, turn the oven to the highest temperature, then spray/mist the oven with super cold water, plus pouring/splashing hot water at the base of the oven floor to create steam in the oven.

 Ater spraying the oven with cold water several times at 5 minutes interval, the result was amazing ...

 Mom sat by the side of the oven, seeing it rise (in hope of) ...

 Then the aroma ... and the crispy crackling sound ... of a fbaked Batard ...

It was a success (though still needs to be improved) ... only after reading 8 Artisan Bread books, watched 17 videos on you-tube, calculating the bakers' kneading-folding-proofing-shaping-scoring-dusting ... methods ... it's tedious!

 Nonetheless - nothing beats a natural fermentation.  The flavor and the aroma of the bread is really intoxicating.  Even I, the dog can't stop sniffing!  Mom allows nature to take its course under a cold fridge environment and let time (3 days) to ferment the yeast naturally.  It's a long wait but it pays off.

 Perhaps because Mom couldn't knead the dough because of her hand, so she figure out by trippling the fermentation naturally; ie, instead of warm water + yeast, she uses cold water + yeast; instead of room temperature fermentation (only 2 hours), she uses cold fridge fermentation (3 days); instead of kneading for 1 time x 10 mins each; she kneads 4 times x 1 min each; intead of proofing the bread for 45 mins, she proofs the bread 2 hours for it to rise ... everything is opposite of what the book says ...

 I wanted to eat ... I even climbed up as best I could to smell ... but Mom & Dad didn't allow.

 They were both so engrossed in the natural sweet smell of the French Batard Country Bread that ...

 They even forgot to take any photos of the Irish Guinness Lamb Shank with rustic Irish potato, carrots, onions and celery with thyme and bay leaves, which was stewed for 4 hours (the blue Le Creuset pot at the background of the photo - left side)!

Bread became the star of the dinner ...

Irish Guinness Stewed Lamb Shank was good - very good ...

But Daddy refused to dip the bread in the stew ... he just want the ORIGINAL flavor of the bread, spreading with nothing only butter as it melts into the big and small air holes ....