A boule is one of the classic French and Italian bread shapes. It can be formed from just about any dough, but seems to work best with dough under 67% hydration. If the hydration gets above 67%, the dough has a tendency to spread out and form a flatter loaf. I think a properly shaped boule should be close to a sphere.
This bread was made at the same time as the bread in the folding and Brotform series. It’s a 60% French dough, made with a two-day old biga taken straight from the refrigerator without warm-up. I used 2 teaspoons / 10 ml yeast to make a 60 ounce / 1.7 KG dough. There were three folds and a total of 80 minutes fermentation, followed by 1 hour rising.
Here we go:
So far, I’ve posted only the full-sized pictures here.
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| Two pieces of dough, each about 2 pounds / 900 grams. |
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| Round the dough a bit in your hands. |
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| Bring the sides of the dough to the bottom, rounding the dough as you do so. |
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| Squeeze and pinch the seam closed very tightly. |
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| Another shot of the sealing method. |
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| Still more pulling dough to the bottom. This builds surface tension. |
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| After several iterations, the dough is rounded and shaped as a boule. |
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| Rising — it’s the one on the right, although the brotform dough on the left was shaped the same way. |
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| Finished rise. |
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| Slashed. |
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| Into the oven. |
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| Done. |
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| Another shot. The surface tension that we built into the dough helped keep it upright and gave it ability to form a nice round basketball. |