TV spot on Pittsburgh’s CBS affiliate, making “Pain du Football” for Super Bowl Sunday (and eating raw bread dough with host Jon Burnett!)

on-kdka-pittsburgh.jpgIn 2009 I was in Pittsburgh just before SuperBowl (go Steelers!) and mixed up a batch of Master Recipe dough with host Jon Burnett on KDKA-TV Channel 2 (the CBS affiliate).  Pittsburgh was awash in Steelers mania, and I couldn’t resist cutting a loaf of Pain d’Epi (wheat stalk bread) but calling it Pain du Football (page 75 in the book).  I’m bringing this bread to a Super Bowl party because each individual roll is shaped like a football– well, something like a football.  Perfect for dipping into chili in front of the game.  Jon was disappointed that my baked bread was a bit stale (I’d had to bake it in Minneapolis and it was two days stale!) so he insisted on eating the RAW bread dough instead.  Click here or on the video screen above to view the TV segment, this was great fun.

Have a look at this post on Pain d’Epi (wheat stalk bread) for some nice shots of the cutting technique.  Remember to cut at a very shallow angle with long-bladed shears, almost all the way through the baguette you form.

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12 thoughts to “TV spot on Pittsburgh’s CBS affiliate, making “Pain du Football” for Super Bowl Sunday (and eating raw bread dough with host Jon Burnett!)”

  1. Thanks Lu!

    Mia: Without saying so, I did a “letter-fold” technique, which makes for the most even baguette. Zoe’s post (above) goes into that in more detail. You can skip it but then your baguettes will have knobby ends. I used to always do them that way. But for the ‘Epi, it’s nicer to get them uniform.

    And yeah, never use hot water. Lukewarm at most.

  2. cool! that actually helped a lot since I just tried making a baguette out of my third batch of dough. The first two weren’t so great because I was using water that was too hot – but number 3 has great promise! So then I go online while it’s “resting” and look what I see!

    I see that I don’t have to be quite so afraid to “handle” the dough just a little bit to get it into a shape. Tomorrow I shall try again 🙂

  3. Jeff,really enjoyed watching the video. I’ve never seen anyone eat your bread dough raw before.Maybe a subject for you’re third book- Ways to enjoy the raw dough in 5 minutes a day!

  4. OH my gosh.. just had to come back and tell ya I just took loaves out of the oven – my third try.

    they SANG!!!! I didn’t even know bread would do such a thing and when I read that description, I thought “huh”? But they DID! I’m telling everyone I know about this book 🙂

  5. Nice vid – I was glad to see how you cut the epi *and* I realize that maybe I’m being unneccesarily a little too gentle with my dough. Maybe it comes with confidence. Love this book and all the bread I’ve made from it. I tell everyone about it!

  6. Karen: Yeah, we give slightly problematic advice (“be gentle, but not TOO gentle!”). You get away with a little more because baguettes and pains d’epis are skinny… there’s not much weighing them down if you over-compress them a litte.

  7. hi you know how when you bake a pain d’epi you get that lovely wide crust.i’d like to get that with my normal loaves and baguettes. is there a technique i could use with kitchen shears? thanks

  8. how about if i snipped off small chunks would that work? how do they get those wide patches of crust on baguettes is it different to the diagonal slashes?

  9. I probably wouldn’t snip off chunks. My guess is that you can get that spreading by using bread flour (or adding vital wheat gluten), which gives you more “dough strength” and therefore a stonger gluten cloak. Which will spread out more impressively.

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