Hi to everyone on TFL! I've been lurking here for a while, trying to absorb as much information as I can. I finally feel like I have some success worth sharing.

I've been practicing baguettes for some time now and the past few weeks I've been more determined to make small tweaks and hopefully improve the results.

My most recent attempt used 50% KA AP and 50% KA bread flour. This gave me the best combination of chew and crisyness to the crust.  I've been reducing my hyrdration (I started at 78% originally) and I've more or less settled at 72%. I was worried the lower hyrdration wouldn't yield an open crumb, but that hasn't been an issue. The lower hyrdration has made the dough much easier to work with and my scoring results are improving. Though I'm waiting for a proper lame to arrive in the mail. I'm still waiting for the grigne that let's me hang the bread from my fingertip!

I start with a short bulk fermation, using cold water so the dough never really 'explodes' with gas. I just autolyse for 30 min they stretch and fold every 20min for about 2 hours.

Then it's into the fridge for ~20hs. Once I take it out of the fridge I let it warm up over 1 hours time, stretching and folding a few times. Then a pre-shaping, bench rest, final shaping and a 25min proof. I think I'll try a longer proof next time.

The baguettes are all 250 grams and just fit in the oven at 18", so they are quite thin. This time I let my oven (and stone) warm up for almost an hour, which made a huge impact on the bottom crust. It was nice and thick, but not burned.

I spray the oven with a water bottle ever few minutes during the first 10min of baking. Another trick I've been using (mentioned on TFL frequently) is to leave the bread in the oven for another 5min once they've finished baking. This helps ensure a crisp crust.

I've been lusting for a mixer, but the stretch and fold approach works so darn well I'm not sure if I can every justify the cost. The oven stone was worth it though!

Here are some pictures:

Sending this to Yeastspotting.

Click here for my blog index.

This is inspired by the ww croissant formula from "AB&P", but I used sourdough starter to make a levain, rather than the original sponge. Also adjusted the liquid ratio (as well as a lot of other things), the original formula was a bit too wet, the dough was too soft and went "faster" than the butter block when rolled out. Yolk and milk in the formula do a good job of tenderising the ww dough,croissants were beyond delicate. Gotta say the ww flavor went perfectly with the the rich buttery taste, add sourdough on top, it's my favorite croissant dough so far! "AB&P" suggests that it would go well with savoury fillings, and they are right. I used some for sandwich, also made a few ham/cheddar & spinach/feta croissants, both were heavenly.

WW Croissant with Natural Starter (adapted from "AB&P")

Note: makes 12 croissants

Note: for details and tips, please see this post

Note: for more tips on making croissants in warm weather, see here

-Levain

100% starter, 30g

water, 48g

bread flour, 89g

1. mix and let mature for 12 hours.

-Final Dough

bread flour (KAF), 309g

ww flour (KAF), 103g

milk, 187g (before adjustment, it was 195g of water)

egg yolk, 43g

sugar, 53g

salt, 7g

osmotolerant instant yeast (SAF gold), 4g, 1tsp+1/4tsp

butter, 25g, softened

levain, all

roll-in butter, 287g

1. Mix everything but the roll-in butter, knead until gluten starts to form. In my KA mixer, 3min at first speed, 5 min at 3rd speed.

2. Then following the procedure illustrated here to make normal ones. For ham/cheese, spinach cheese ones, cut dough into 5.25inchX9inch pieces, lay ham and cheese(or spinach and cheese) on top near bottom, roll along the short edge twice with seam on the bottom. Cut the roll into 3 pieces, each 3inch wide.

First batch, before adjusting liquid, the dough was a tad too soft. Crumb was still nice and open, but a little "messy", walls of the "holes" were not crisp.

After adjusting the liquid, structure was more crisp. The difference was not huge, probably just obvious to my own picky eyes.

With liquid amount adjusted, but rolled out a bit thinner than usual to get more layers. The "holes" are clean and separated, however, a bit too small, I probably won't roll the dough out so thin next time, even though some of my tasters liked this version.

Makes a GREAT sandwich, I love how this cut surface looks. It shows a different perspective on the crumb structure.

Of course the ones with filling rolled in were super yummy too, look at the leaking cheese

However you make them, I highly recommend this formula!

This past week Randy came up from Missoula, MT to help us out at the bakery.  It was a very busy week as we had plenty of special orders plus the usual wholesale and farmers' market work to do.  Fortunately we had perfect weather for both farmers' markets and we had lots of happy customers at both of them.  On Saturday we had quite the customer demand as Sharon and I quickly filled the orders and Randy worked his butt off to keep the shelves filled with bread and the display cases stocked with pastries (sound familiar Thomas?).  If you haven't experienced it yet, it's a very gratfiying feeling to have worked your hardest for the week and to have dozens of very pleased customers waiting in line to enjoy the breads and pastries you've produced.
Thanks for the hard work, Randy, and I hope you show off some of the baking skills you've learned at home for your family.

-Mark
http://TheBackHomeBakery.com

PS If you missed Thomas' account of his most recent experience at the bakery, you can see it here.

Randy paying his dues the Back Home Bakery way

Me watching in wonder as Randy tackles 18 loaves worth of stretch and fold

Happy Randy as he boules up 27 pounds of dough after a stretch-and-fold

As I blogged a few days ago, the first trial with T55 didn’t turn out as I had planned.

So this time, to make sure the end-product was really going to be ‘baguette,’ definitely not another weird new hybrid like a ciabaguetta, I decided I’d try with lower hydration of 65%.  I could’ve employed double-hydration method as David (dmsnyder) kindly suggested to bring up the overall hydration to 70% in the end, but at this early stage of experiments, I just wanted to find out this flour's natural characteristic using my usual method (more or less) that I was familiar with. So, I decided to go with simple  65% hydration  to see how this flour behave with lower hydration. Besides, by the time I posted about the first trial, I’d already done this second trial the day before and, since I don’t’ have an easy access to a time-machine at the moment to go back and re-do it, that is what you’re going to see today. So there! :p

Apart from lowering of hydration, all the formula/procedure were exactly the same as the previous trial;  ie. 1) Replacing strong flour to T55 in poolish, 2) Replacing all the flours in main dough to T55…….

Well, that was my intention when I started making this batch.  Probably many of you have already noticed how careless and forgetful I could be, and this time it happened again…. I miscalculated the time I needed for cold retardation, and it was only when I put the mixed dough in the fridge, I realized I’d only have 16 hrs, instead of my usual 21 hrs, to retard to get my (hopefully-)baguette ready for the dinner next day.  Oh well…… So I comforted myself (with some difficulty) by convincing myself (with more difficulty) that a part of the reason why my first trial went so badly could be because low protein level of the flour couldn’t stand the long fermentation combined by 7-hr poolish, and decided I’d wait for the fate, with my fingers and everything else I could cross crossed.

 After 16 hrs (Grrrrrrrrr!!), the dough looked very much like my regular poolish baguette dough with improvised UK flour mix usually look like; sufficient growth in volume with a few large bubbles on top, wobbling very promisingly. ::GRIN::    So I proceeded with the rest of the procedure, as usual. Both shaping and scoring was just a piece of cake bread (the same old pun recycled) thanks to lower hydration = the moment I really understood the importance of an advice in many baguette books in Japan; Stick to 65% hydration until you get a hang of shaping and scoring. Must admit I’ve never followed that advice myself, though..….

Anyway….everything went blissfully without any hitch to entertain you push me into another trouble, the dough loaded into the oven safely, steamed and baked as planned…..or that’s what I thought……..

 This is the result.

Closer looks

Must admit I was rather chuffed with the result……….………..until………………………………………

……………....................................................Gaaaaaaagh!!!

The crumb is not even as open as my usual UK flour baguettes!!!!!

The crumb shot for the other one

(Excuse for the weird colour. It was taken under a recently-repaired conservatory glass roof which has a tint of…..blue)

 ::big sigh::

To be perfectly honest, I’d had a bit of trepidation even before I cut it open that I might find this kind of crumb inside, because the baguettes came out slimmer than my usual ones.  But I think I know why….  Excuse Reason 1)  Lower hydration than usual,  2) Additional strokes for each S&F to ensure sufficient gluten build....which was obviously too much,  3) Shorter cold retard,  4) Under-proofed due to other cooking schedule I had to fit in (= another dish was waiting to go in after the baguettes for dinner),  5) In the excitement of shaping+scoring went so well, I didn’t do the ALL IMPORTANT finger-poke test, only judging the ripeness by a quick look, WRONGLY-assuming nothing’s gonna go wrong with the perfect (Not!) dough like that! ….. How silly can I be, please somebody tell me…..

And the flavour and aroma?......I think they also suffered from the shorter retardation. It was good, but not as good or strong as the first trial. The paler crumb colour was more than likely caused by that, too, as well as the extra-strokes of S&Fs.  But that interesting phenomena of saltiness standing out was still there, though it wasn’t as strong or predominant as the last one.  It was never excessively salty, though. Just that the saltiness is the first taste you noticed when you bit into the crust and chewed the crumb, before other flavours joined in and make the lovely harmony. Very nice.  In that sense at least, it was still properly French...-ish.

The NEVER-accident-free journey of T55 trials still continues.....

lumos