Pan De Cristal (100% Hydration Spanish Glass Bread) is an Airy Crunchy Dream

He was that guy who does the Dos Equis commercials, you know, very interesting man. He usually ended up a little salty. I think I'm on the salty end of the spectrum. A little bit okay, let's make some

bread

. Hello friends, I'm Martin. I'm in the studio today and we're making the first in a series of videos that will focus on

bread

and pastry skills for everyone. We are putting a lot of energy into the YouTube channel, please subscribe, like and join. us for today's video, which is Panda Kristoff, thank you, foreign style is like the ultimate expression of crusty, crumbly bread, it's like ciabatta but amplified in all the ways that are delicious, so basically what we're going to do is via The Superhero Power of Bread Flour guy.

We're going to use equal parts by weight of flour and water, so it's a super high

hydration

bread and the reason why that's good is that it allows us to have a very open structure that we couldn't do with. all-purpose flour, for example, we would need to lower the

hydration

a little bit, so through the magic of bread flour we are going to make a bread that is incredibly open, incredibly crispy and one of my favorite things comes out quite easily, OK? so I haven't measured any ingredients because I want you to see how simple it is to scale just above my scale here, so it's 500 grams of bread flour and I'm going to put it directly into the container with my water today.

If you know you want to adjust the water temperature depending on the season, there is a note in the baker's notes that will give you guidance on what water temperature to use, so 10 grams of salt if you are using volumetric or if you want to use teaspoons and cups, those amounts are also contained in the body of the formula, so check that because there is such a small amount of yeast. I'm using the volumetric measurement which may not make sense but scales can vary in accuracy with small quantities so I'm switching to this volumetric measurement, it's three quarters of a teaspoon because I really want to make sure I get it right so I have the half and then about a quarter of flower, water, salt, yeast in the bowl and I just stir to combine.

You know, this is one of those things where you start to mix it up and say oh no, I've made a mistake, could it be possible that this is something that could work? I'll just say yes through the magic of bread flour. it's going to form a cohesive dough and that's it, that's the mixture when I was looking in the kitchen for something to let this dough rise and we're not going to bake here, but this is just for the type of dough fermentation period of the dough I wanted a container that had a shape that I could pour and that was something square or slightly rectangular, we are fine and we have these ramekins in my house that were very useful if not I don't have those, you could use an eight or nine inch square as a mold for brownies or something.

I'm going to put a little bit of olive oil here, it's like 15 grams. I mean, we wrote 15 grams just to give you a measurement. a well greased plate basically this will keep the dough from sticking a little bit as we do this series of folds during the bulk fermentation so I just take the oil which is a good amount of oil and put a little bit on the sides. I don't have to be too detailed with it, just put the oil in there and spread it out and then I'll just pour the batter in and it looks crazy, but this will turn into something that will be totally manageable in the end. bulk fermentation through the powers of time and folds and this good bread flour will turn into a pretty workable dough although now it looks like you know we're going to make pancakes or something so let's let this rest. for 20 minutes and then we will do our first fold.

When I was working on this recipe, I was getting a little nervous at this stage and saying, "Oh my God, no one's going to be able to make the Stow or everyone's going to be able to make it." Hate me because I made this terrible dough, but trust me, it will arrive so covered with a 20 minute timer and then it will come back. The hardest thing about bread is understanding the ways in which precision, measurement, and targeted environmental controls are achieved. together okay, so first of all let's start with quality ingredients, precisely measured, well fermented, that's how it's done, okay, it's been 20 minutes and now we're going to make our first bowl fold, we'll call it bowl fold even though it's in This you know, a casserole dish, but the idea is the same as a bowl fold where I'm pulling from the outside and folding towards the middle, wet your hands and the dough won't stick as much and you'll see that . even though it's still very sloppy it's starting to get some structure, it's not a lot but there is a little bit so I'm working around the outside of the dough folding it towards the middle until I feel like it has some amount to it. of force and you can see at the end I can lift it up and we're going to cover it and give it another 20 minutes so it's been 20 minutes since we folded the bowl and now we're ready to do our first spiral fold.

The spiral fold is good because it really allows the dough to elongate and wrap around itself so let me show you what I mean by that and when I do this you will see how the dough starts. To develop how we're gaining some strength and elasticity, it's pretty amazing again thanks to the power of bread flour, so I'm going around the sides, like on the waist of the dough, and I'm just going to lift it up, stretch it and fold. I put it down and I'll lift it up and stretch it and you can see the strength that comes together with that, that's my first roll and you can see that we have a dough that's manageable, it doesn't stick to my hand, uh. and that is only 40 minutes of fermentation and that is a dough of 100 hydration, equal parts by weight of flour and water, if that is not incredible, I don't know, for me it is like one of the seven wonders of baking, how that happens, it's amazing, okay, so it's 20 minutes.

This is our second spiral fold, so a little bit of water on my hands and you can see how we're starting to see some fermentation activity. Here I'm starting to get some bubbles the dough is shiny it seems soft to me um and so I'm going to the center here and I'm going to pull it up and you can see how beautiful it looks great so pull it up stretch it and just roll it up forward. I'll do one more, just roll it forward, that's silky. Honestly, one of the best things about making this bread, beyond eating it, is how beautiful it is and how nice and luxurious it is to touch, okay, another 20.

So the females had three hours of bulk fermentation, we've been folding. We know it is strong by looking at it in the container. I can see that it is active. I see some little bubbles on the surface, so now we're ready to divide. I start by blooming the top surface. I like this extra step where I'm going to help this come out of the bowl because I'm going to throw it in, but if I flour the top surface and then see if I can loosen the dough out of the bowl a little bit, it will come out easier when I throw it in, okay, let's set it aside for just a second and I'm going to throw it on a very well floured surface so I'm going to throw it in and it should come out pretty easily and then I'm going to generously flour the top surface.

I'm going to achieve almost complete coverage and a lot of this flour will be absorbed into the dough or just disappear if it feels a little heavy. don't worry about that now I'm going to basically divide the dough into four pieces, it's going to be something like this, so just with my table knife at this point, when I'm manipulating the dough, I'm trying not to be a little harsh with this, I'm trying to be very gentle because I have this gaseous structure that's developing and I don't want to deflate it, so at this point I'm being very gentle with the dough and when they bake.

They will have a little better contrast and that's it. Now they will rise for about two hours. At the end of that rise, what I am looking for is to see that there are some large bubbles on the surface. They're starting to form, that's going to be my kind of visual cue that tells me they're ready to go in the oven. I don't cover them for proofing and that is never the case with dough. I always want to protect the dough. they dry out, but with this dough that has so much moisture it tends to work well, it's okay if it has a little bit of skin on top, it actually helps provide some structure to the dough, so I don't cover them, I mean, maybe.

In the middle of winter, if I really feel it scabbing, I might put a piece of parchment on top because parchment just doesn't weigh anything and will only decrease the amount of airflow moving across the surface and drying it out. outside, but I just leave them uncovered at room temperature, it's like there's no problem, um and it works, so, uncovered, at room temperature, we just stay out there, come on bada bing bada boom, we can take a nap now or eat , eat and then nap, that's what I want. that order, yeah, eat and then nap, okay, okay, it's been a couple of hours and they're starting to look good, they look almost puffed up, which is good.

I see some larger bubbles forming on the surface. You want to wait until you see them when you look at those, you know the inside of the bread is starting to fill with air and open up a lot, so they look good, they're healthy, they're ready to go overseas. This is a good tool. It's like one of my favorite baking tools. just a frying pan, but look, it doesn't have a rim so I can put a piece of parchment in there, it's great for carrying, it's like a scream and no, I don't use a ton of tools, um, but that's one I always use that thing when I'm carrying bread here.

The outside of Cristal is out of the oven and one of the first things you'll notice is how light it is, it literally weighs nothing and that's because the inside is packed. of air is just pockets of air it's this wildly open crumb held by this thin crispy eggshell crust so we want to have this kind of really open variable structure all of this magic is provided by this good bread flour it has enough strength to hold equal parts of water and flour it is a highly hydrating bread it is delicious salt and bake a little Pond de Cristal