Best Way to Bake Numerous Baguettes at Once
Hello everyone!
I am trying to start a farmers market stand next summer selling mostly candies but I have made some pretty good baguettes (not perfect, mind you) and want to sell them as my town has no bakeries that sell baguettes (minus the supermarket and their baguettes are essentially wonder bread with a crispy-ish crust). It's sadly not a feasible plan if I can only bake four baguettes at once. I would be up for two days straight baking enough baguettes lol
The issue is that I only have a home oven, which can fit about four smaller baguettes on one level. I'm wondering if it's possible to bake three rows of four baguettes successfully. I'm wondering if it's possible because I imagine having three baking stones would block the steam/ create uneven heat distribution. I just don't know if it's possible.
Any tips/ideas?
Thank you!
you want to take a hit on quality. One of the most important parts of baking baguettes is getting a good oven kick in the first 5 minutes. Home ovens are notorious for being kinda weak in that department and the more you load up, the more energy they will suck up from your oven. My guess is tripling the amount of dough in that oven will most likely mean a much slower bake. A good baguette should be done in max 20 minutes - I would venture to guess you'd be looking at 30 minutes for inferior loaves. But who knows maybe your oven can hack it ?
Baguettes aren't very heavy, so I think that's in your favour. Try and get as much thermal mass in your oven as you can and preheat it well.
As long as you have an inch gap round your stones, the heat should travel round OK. I'd say to go for 3/4 inch thick stones or better.
If your oven has convection, preheat with that and then switch to static heat for the bake
Lance