painful pain de champagne, help needed
So I attempted to make Pain de Champagne based on a recipe from Julia Child's "Baking with Julia".
Basically: 1)Make dough from 1/2cup flour, 3tbs water, 1/2 tsp milk, let sit 2 days 2) add 1/3 cup water, 3/4 cup flour, let sit 18 hours
Now at this point I was supposed to add more flour and water and let sit again, but it was horrible. The dough after the first 2 days had risen a little and smelled like a slightly sour dough, but after that third day, it was really sour, had the consistancy of stiff yogurt, and reaked of rotten milk perhaps? Now, leaving something with milk in it at room temp for 3 days seems like a bad idea, but it is the recipe. Has anyone had any similar experience with this bread or a similar one that can suggest what I had done wrong? Thank you all so much. I have learned so much from this community. ~Erithid
Does she say anything about whether the milk should be raw or pasteurized?
The reason I ask is because my wife's family is from Poland. The milk you get from the store there is either unpasteurized or considerably less pasteurized than it is in the States, so when it sits out it goes sour (instead of rotting, as our's does).
Shortly after they moved to the States my mother-in-law left a bottle of milk out on the counter so it would sour because sour milk is an ingredient in many recipes and even consumed straight. Needless to say, when they opened the bottle two days later they were horrified with the results.
You might be able substitute buttermilk, or you may have to find raw milk at the local health food store to pull this recipe off. Or it is possible that the milk had nothing to do with it and I have no idea what I'm talking about. :)
Good info about sour milk can be found here.
Wow, I didnt know that. Thank you very much. I am pretty sure it was the milk, but I couldnt figure out why it would *not* happen. I wonder if the recipe would work without it. I will look into that raw milk though. Thanks again!
Go to the PBS web site and Cooking with Julia. There is a video transcript of how to make this bread.... It should help a bit at least.
Ryan