Pane Francese // King Arthur Flour website

Pane Francese starts from a small piece of old dough and is gradually built up through a series of rises.

My first attempt at realizing this recipe began well -- the dough rose very fast, doubling in considerably less than 8-10 hours for the third rising period. However, once shaped, the dough was sluggish. I'm not sure whether this means that the dough was over-risen before shaping or whether I should have let the loaves stand longer.

This is a wet dough, making the loaves relatively flattish. I shaped into rounds. They ended up fairly dense.

Flavor note: The recipe says that this recipe is only slightly tangy, but my loaves were markedly sour -- no doubt the result of using old sourdough starter as the old dough/chef. I'll try again with the old dough from this recipe.