Pistolet is a crusty bread roll common in Belgium and the Netherlands and sometimes shaped as a bâtard. When I was working on this recipe, I was aiming for a hard and crusty bread that would be soft in the middle. I was making bread for a pulled brisket sandwich and I didn’t want bread that would go soggy from the barbecue sauce. I wasn’t sure what to call it, it wasn’t a baguette even though I scored it in baguette fashion, then Hendrie took a bite and declared that it is a ‘’pistolet’’. From my recent trip back to the Netherlands, I agree!
Breads with pre-ferments have better flavour and dough quality. You can just mix it and cover with cling film on your way to bed. So, if you go to bed at 10pm, your preferment will be good till 4pm and it can be refrigerated for up to three days if for you can’t bake as planned.
If you like baguettes and Kaiser rolls, this is a bread for you!
Ingredients
- 200g flour
- 160g water
- ¼ tsp sugar
- ⅛ tsp instant yeast
- 300g flour
- 190g water
- 10g salt
- 20g honey
- 20g unsalted butter (at room temperature)
- 6g yeast
Instructions
- Mix the ingredients for the pre-dough, cover and allow to sit at room temperature for 12-18 hours. You should observe loads of air bubbles and an unmistakably aroma of fermentation.
- Add all the ingredients of the final dough into a mixer bowl and combine with the pre-dough. Mix with a stand mixer on low speed till all ingredients are incorporated. Increase speed one level up and mix till dough is smooth and elastic. Use the dough hook. If kneading by hand, mix dough in bowl till thick stiff and tacky, transfer to a well-floured surface and knead till dough is elastic and smooth.
- Lightly oil a bowl, shape dough in a ball, and set into the oiled bowl. Cover and let rise for about 1 – 1½ hours, the warmer your home, the faster the dough will rise. The dough should be doubled in size. Half way through rising, uncover bowl and knock all the air out of the dough and let it rise again covered. This is called folding and helps to improve the structure of the bread.
- Preheat oven to 200˚C and set a pan of water at the bottom to create steam (in the likely event that your home oven does not have a steam injector)
- Turn dough out to well-floured surface and divide into 4 portions of about 220g each to make the long sandwich bread shape, alternatively, bread can be shaped into smaller round balls.
- Let the dough rise again for about 30 minutes.
- Score loaves with a sharp razor blade or serrated knife just before placing in the oven. (Scoring is basically slashing the loaves strategically to control how the dough expands in the oven).
- Bake with steam for about 15 minutes (for 4 loaves) and remove steam (remove the pan of water) and bake a further 10 minutes or until bread is nicely browned. Baking with steam creates a nice golden crust, if you choose not you use steam its not the end of the world.
- Transfer immediately to a cooling rack. This crusty sandwich bread pairs very well with my barbecue pulled brisket and the recipe is coming to you soonest.
Notes
Prep time covers the pre-fermentation of the starter, the bulk fermentation of the dough and the final rise
