Go Back
Pain de campagne
Print Pin
4.67 from 6 votes

Pain de Campagne Recipe

My pain de campagne recipe offers a guideline for timings, but you can easily adapt this to fit around your schedule. In terms of dough hydration for this pain de champagne recipe, I'm working with 71.5% but feel free to adjust this slightly based on the flour you are using or personal preference.

Ingredients

Sourdough Ingredients

  • 100 g rye sourdough starter (I'm using a pretty firm and mature starter at roughly 100% hydration for this recipe. If you are new to sourdough baking and have used my how-to-guide to making a rye sourdough starter, make sure you add some extra flour so it's not too wet. I would recommend to use 67g instead of just 50g wholemeal rye flour and slightly less water, 144g instead of 160g.)
  • 100 g strong white flour
  • 50 g wholemeal wheat flour
  • 50 g wholemeal rye flour
  • 160 g water, lukewarm

Main Dough Ingredients

  • 250 g strong white flour
  • 100 g wholemeal wheat flour
  • 50 g wholemeal rye flour
  • 7 g salt
  • 255 g water, lukewarm
  • 300 g sourdough ferment (From the previous day. The rest goes back into the fridge for your next bake.)

Instructions

How to make pain de campagne

    Day 1 (7am) - Refresh your sourdough starter

    • In a medium bowl, combine all sourdough ingredients, cover with a lid and keep at room temperature until the next day.

    Day 2 (7am) - Prepare the main dough

    • Combine all main dough ingredients and knead for about 10 mins.
    • The dough should be quite soft, it should still slightly stick to hands and worktop, so carefully add a little more water in case the consistency is too tight and firm. Equally, if the dough is too wet to be workable, carefully add a little bit more flour. In general, for pain de campagne, wetter dough is better dough but it should be easy to work with and definitely not runny.
    • Shape the dough into a pile on your worktop and cover with a plastic bowl. Moisten the rim of the bowl before placing it there. The dough is going to expand and flatten and will stick to the bowl otherwise.
    • Leave the dough for about an hour.
    • Use your dough scrapers to stretch and fold the dough a few times to tighten its structure.
    • Prepare a plate with wholemeal flour, then pick up the dough and dip it into the flour, turn it over to ensure it's completely covered.
    • Transfer the dough to a liberally floured round proving basket, seam-side up.
    • Cover the proving basket with a polythene bag and put it into the fridge. Make sure you don't put the bag on too tightly, the dough shouldn't stick to the plastic bag once risen.

    Day 2 (7pm) - Final prep and bake!

    • Take the proving basket out of the fridge and leave the dough to warm back up at room temperature for about two hours or so.
    • Preheat the oven to 220°C.
    • Line a baking tray with baking paper or preheat your La Cloche baking dome if you have one.
    • Swiftly but carefully move (flip over) the loaf from basket to the tray or bottom of your baking dome.
    • Cut some slashes into the top to give it a nice pattern.
    • Bake at 220°C for 10 mins, and at 200°C for a further 40 mins.
    • Leave to cool on a wire rack.