Like all our guests, you have been or will be discovering our homemade bread “Abeille & Cigale”.
Our bread recipe has been created with you in mind, and is prepared with passion so that every morning you can enjoy a crisp breakfast. This recipe combines a subtle hint of honey and a generous amount of Provençal herbs.
You’ll be surprised, just let yourself be carried away and find this unique recipe to try out at home.
Ingredients
- 1kg Type 65 organic flour
- 60g brown sugar
- 1 tablespoon (real…) honey
- 60cl warm water
- 2 teaspoons (8g) dried baker’s yeast (or 2 sachets or the equivalent in fresh yeast if you know how to make it)
- 3 teaspoons salt
- 2 tablespoons herbes de Provence (15g)
- 1 large bowl
Recipe
- Take a large mixing bowl, pour in most of the flour (save half a mustard glass to sprinkle over the bread before putting it in the oven) and the herbes de Provence.
- In a measuring cup, pour the dried yeast, sugar and honey over the warm water (yeast loves sugar to ‘wake up’, but hates contact with salt, so only add salt as late as possible in the dough while kneading). Mix everything together with a whisk, incorporating the spoonful of honey, until the sugar and yeast have dissolved.
- Leave the yeast mixture to rest for 10 minutes, then stir one last time and pour directly into the flour-herb mixture.
- Knead for 2 minutes then sprinkle the dough with salt.
- Leave the flour to soak in for 5-10 minutes.
- Knead again for 5-10 minutes
- Leave to rest for 1 to 2 hours in a large bowl
- fold the dough directly into the bowl with a spatula in 4 to break up the bubbles and stretch it a little, then leave to rest and rise again for 2-4 hours until you have a well risen dough (at least double the initial volume). This time can change radically if your kitchen is not very warm in winter and temperatures are high in summer. When the weather is cool, I often leave the dough to rise overnight.
- Shape your ball by flouring the dough and then using a very sharp knife, make small sharp cuts. The dough will rise and swell through the cuts, forming beautiful crispy crevices.
- Preheat your oven to 230 degrees for 40 to 60 minutes, depending on your taste and type of oven (crispiness).
Tasting
Leave to cool for 10 minutes and serve with a dab of semi-salted Breton butter and/or “Confiotte de Tante Nana aux Oranges”
