The Baby Boule, Batard and Pizza Dough

Sounds like a couple of guys I went to school with!

Basically, these two breads are the same in execution, though different in size. The Baby Boule is 1/4 of my Artisan Bread recipe, so you can make 4 of these bad boys from that one recipe. A Batard, though it sounds like a bad word, is in fact a large loaf using 1/2 the Artisan Bread recipe and more "skill" getting that bad boy on the pizza stone. More to come on that.

Lightly dust your work surface with flour. Using a rubber spatula, gently remove your dough from the bowl onto your work surface. Dust the dough, covering all surfaces, just until the dough is no longer sticky to the touch. Working the dough as little as possible, cut the dough into appropriate sizes as follows, once again covering the newly cut sticky parts parts with a light dusting of flour.

Baby Boule - cut into 4 even pieces
Batard - cut in two even pieces
Pizza - I usually cut into 4 pieces for 4 nice thin crust, medium sized pizzas

Baby Boule
**********

If you are going to bake on your Green Egg, get it stabilized at 450 degrees, plate setter in with legs down and the pizza stone on top of the plate setter.

Sprinkle cornmeal on a baking sheet or pizza peel. It is very important to have good coverage. Even though you just dusted your dough to the point is no longer sticky, once it rises it will obviously expand which creates possible sticky spots that will make it difficult to get your loaf off the baking sheet/pizza peel and onto the hot pizza stone. The cornmeal simply helps the dough to slide off easily.

Take your now nicely dusted 1/4 recipe of dough, formed into a tight ball and place on the prepared baking sheet or pizza peel. You'll find once you get the hang of it, you can do two boules on the same peel, saving cooking time. Be careful to leave them room to rise and not get stuck together on the peel.

Cover the boule(s) with a clean tea towel and let rise for 40 minutes. Meanwhile, heat the oven, with the pizza stone on the middle rack and the base of a broiling pan on the rack below, to 450. This will take about 30 minutes to get the pizza stone nice and hot! Green Egg, see above. Because the Egg produces a hot, moist heat, there is no need for the boiling water mentioned below.

With about 5 minutes of rising left, boil 2 cups of water in the kettle.

Once your dough has risen and your oven/Egg is ready, slice the boule using either a serated knife or a dough knife, side to side....three slashes across the dough should do it, about 1/2" deep. This allows the steam to escape as the bread cooks so you dont end up with a soccer ball of bread. Slide the boule off of the baking sheet or peel onto the hot pizza stone using a quick "jetk" of the peel or baking sheet. Green Egg cooking? You're done....oven cookers, one more step. Carefully pour the boiled water into the broiling pan underneath the pizza stone and quickly close oven door. Keep that steam in. Bake for about 25 minutes.....internal bread temp should be 190 degrees.


Batard
******
All is the same as above except you will form 1/2 of the dough recipe into a "tight" loaf shape instead of a round ball. Don't forget to slash the Batard, there is room to cross-hatch this loaf....do that about 5 times to get that nice look to the top of your loaf. Go about 1/2" deep on your slashes.







Pizza
*****

The only tricky part with pizza is working the dough as little as possible. Form your 1/4 dough into a round ball and roll out to the thickness you like. Transfer the pizza to your cornmeal covered peel and cover and let rise for for 40 minutes. Dress that 'za up and slide onto the pizza stone. I "eyeball" my pizza while it is cooking so I really don't have a definitive time for you. When your cheese starts to brown, take it off! The pizza that is.

If you own a Green Egg, you'll never order out for pizza again!