Community Bake - Baguettes by Alfanso
This Community Bake will be featuring one of our very own; the "Baguette Baker Extraordinaire", Alan, aka alfanso. He is among a handful of fine baguette bakers on TFL who have spent years concentrating on baguettes, alfanso's favored craft, and his baguettes are consistently outstanding and consistently consistent.. Consistence and repeatability, coupled with breads that visually signify a particular baker are the hallmark of excellence. When viewing an image of any of Alan's baguettes, those that have been around for a while know exactly who baked the bread. We are fortunate to have him on the forum.
We have extracted the bakes of 4 participating bakers and present it in PDF form
Attention New Readers:
Although the Community Bake started some time back, it is still active. New participants are welcomed to join in at any time! It's constantly monitored and help of any kind is still available.
For those that are not familiar with Alan and his baguettes check out his blog.
Since the Covid Pandemic many new bakers have joined the forum. For those that are not familiar with our Community Bakes (CB) see THIS LINK. It should give you an idea of the concept and how things work.
Alan supplied the following information as a guide line to the bake. There are links below with additional resources. Alan's choice of baguette for the CB is Pain au Levain with Whole Wheat, by Jeffrey Hamelman. Jeffrey Hamelman recently retired as Head Baker at the King Arthur Flour Company. His book, "Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes, 2nd Edition" is considered a "must have" by most of the bakers on this forum.
Alan writes:
I’ve attached the formula and some photos of my most recent bake of this bread. It is another really easy to manipulate bread that has a fantastic taste, but is not too heavy on the whole grain side. 1250g is a nice amount to create 4 "comfortable sized" baguettes.
I’ve simplified the formula a little by converting it from a 60% hydration to a 100% hydration levain.
Mr. Hamelman uses the term “Bread Flour” but in our realm this really means a standard AP flour with a similar protein profile to King Arthur AP flour, 11.7% protein.
This dough can also be mixed mechanically if you have neither developed the skills nor have the desire to mix by hand."
NOTE - for those using home milled flour a tweak may be necessary. Whole grain (100% extraction) will absorb quite a bit more water than white flour as well as commercial whole wheat flour. Since I used home milled grain, it was necessary to add more water before the dough became extensible enough to slap and fold. I estimate the water added was approximately 28 grams which brought the hydration to ~72%. I should have taken my own advice and measured the additional water, but I didn’t. For those using home milled grains, if would be helpful if you reported the extra water necessary to do the Slap & Folds. See THIS TECHNIQUE.
Additional Resources
- Shaping and scoring Maurizio’s baguettes
- Scoring and baking Hamelman’s pain au levain with mixed SD starters
- Shaping and scoring Bouabsa baguettes (still in my infancy, they’ve come a long way since then!)
- Martin Philip shaping and baking baguettes
- Jeffrey Hamelman shapes baguettes
Everyone is welcomed. Both expert and novice can learn and improve their baking skills by participating and sharing their experience. Make sure to post your good, bad, and ugly breads. We learn much more from our failures, than we do from our successes.
Danny
A late addition -
In Alan’s reply below he reminded us that this is not a competition. The goal of every Community Bake is to learn from one another. There are no losers, only winners. Each and every participant should become a better baguette baker with the help of others.
So final proof after the cold retard, which I suspect the length of which doesn’t do anything specific, at least I don’t think so. I’m thinking, without any scientific evidence, that the warmth of my kitchen during the bench time of dividing, pre-shape and then shaping and resting in the couche could be allowing the yeast sometime to get active again and create more gases to raise the bread and create the openness.
I wonder about the gluten development and was thinking that developing the gluten less might allow more open crumb for baguettes. However, I did do windowpane tests after each of the two coil folds and the first almost pulled a decent windowpane and then the second one I was able to get a good windowpane. So despite doing so little to the dough, it still had good gluten development.
I’ve mentioned before that whenever I feed my starter only white flour that it rises much more slowly than when I feed it anything else. So with this bake I added a tiny amount of rye to get the levain to rise better. Even with that and the tiny 0.07% IDY the dough takes its time to get to 35-40% in the aliquot jar. I didn’t time it, but I know that my other sourdough breads with more whole grain in it take less time to get to 40% rise in the aliquot jar than these baguette doughs. So I don’t know if that contributes anything, but the bulk fermentation is a bit on the slow side, compared to what I think most others would see using this formula.
Not sure what else to tell you, I’m really happy with how far I’ve come along, but sometimes I think I’m an imposter/pretender and that you guys will figure out soon that I really don’t know what I’m doing.
Is that the rye from your starter I see in the crumb? Or is my screen that dirty? The crumb looks more like SD than a yeasted bread. The long retard must help to aerate the crumb is my guess. You are definitely creeping into ciabatta territory. Nice work they look like the definition of open crumb.
Don you have a good eye, my starter is 100% whole red fife and I did spike 5 g of whole rye into the levain build for this bake so although your screen may be dirty you did spy some rye in the crumb.
@ Benny - your crumb is beyond compare. I am working to emulate your results.
Here is today's run. Better shaping and a little more open crumb (chasing Benny). The upper two were baked on the baseline oven program while the bottom two were run on high convection fan speed for the first 8 minutes and they were in the oven for only 10 min of the baseline 17 min profile (which means they did not get the last 7 minutes @ 430°F/low fan speed). They were getting too brown so I pulled them to cut my losses.
The dough was still quite soft and somewhat difficult to handle, there was no preshaping to speak of, just fold them over and let them sit for 20 min so that they were fully stuck together at the fold, then tighten them up and roll them out. Two of the four needed a short rest and a second stage of lenthening to reach 20", but a one minute rest was enough and once they got to 20" they did not rebound.
Note that the slash did not open well on the two that were baked at high fan speed. I think that the surface may have been so well cooked by the time the heat got in deep and the oven spring started to expand strongly that it could not break open at the slash. So this might be a case of too much early heat and might suggest that a lower start temperature or fan off in a convection oven might produce a better result (let oven spring get started before increasing the heat transfer to the crust).
Doc your shaping looks great, I’m amazed that you achieved that nice even cylindrical shaping with so little manipulation in shaping and essentially very little pre-shaping.
Very interesting that you baked them two different ways and the resulting differences in the final baguettes. I didn’t think that you could maintain enough steam in the oven if you had the convection setting on, is that not correct?
The oven is German and sealed so once there is steam in the oven it does not leave until a valve or the door gets opened. And once the steam generator is up to temperature it makes lots of steam (15KW). The convection fan is a~15" diameter 1/6 HP squirrel cage blower with four modes: high speed, low speed, and intermittent with either speed. Box humidity and temperature are independent variables except that there is not enough power to run both the box heaters and the boiler at full power simultaneously so I have come up with some programming tricks to do what I want.
For your shaping, I was where you are a few weeks ago. Cutting off a narrow rectangle made for a loaf that was too long without folding it over. The best solution I found (before I abandon that approach) was to cut off a strip and fold it in half lengthwise, then fold it in half the short way and let it rest for a while. Then tighten it up and roll it out.
Eventually I decided that cutting the dough into quarters and pre-shaping like a batard yielded a better final shape. But it depends on the hydration and how far you push the BF. The long cold BF was not doing much for me so I switched to a long (but less long) warm BF then a retard to improve handling qualities then pre-shape cold and then final shape while still quite cool. But the cold dough was fighting me and did not want to stretch even with 0.5% NY. Then I decided to try doing pre-shape and shape while warm and then proof and then retard to make it easier to transfer to the oven. That is where I am now. But I have a big set of experiments to run to make sure I am close to optimized before my new mixer arrives and I begin to transition.
I think there is a way to thread the needle and do BF at a lower temperature, then pre-shape and shape at mid 60°s but the process time will be longer which doesn't fit my schedule well. So I may need to completely rework the timeline but not before I get the new Famag.
The oven cycle may benefit from some further optimization as well, but that is something that I could do by running four different cycles on a single batch of dough. Maybe start at 350°F/(low speed - intermittent fan) and a lot of steam for time T1 (a few minutes) and after the slash begins to rip, turn up the temperature to 500°F and crank up the fan to high for an additional time T2, then vent the steam and finish browning.
Doc your crumb advancements have been remarkable as of late. I have actually browsed images through all 4 pages of the CB, 1195 replies at this time. The improvements by participating bakers have been nothing short of phenomenal! Maybe once you are satisfied with your crumb goal, you can try baking them in your home oven or remove the bells and whistles from your Rational. If the same open crumb is achievable, it would be great to have you document the process. Your Rational oven is way out of our baking capabilities so our results may be quite different from yours.
It seems that as we refine our baguette goals that 2, maybe 3 goals surface.
Flavor seems easily achievable by choosing SD and/or CY. And it seems that flour is of outmost importance. It appears the flavor is more easily attained than the top 3 points.
I am thinking about trying it in my other oven once I get the design optimized for a new steam generator. I need to test it as it would be used. At the moment I am looking for cheap metal trays of usable size and shape. I think I have a scaleable mechanism that will put a fixed amount of water onto your lava rock a delayed time after you shut the oven door. It is another one of those round tuits.
Doc, be sure to notify me when you figure out the delayed water for the Lava Rocks. A big problem with the Lava Rocks is losing huge amounts of steam to the atmosphere when pouring water in.
Even on the bottom baguette, the clean scoring is evident. My personal leanings are toward a darker bake, but one can't quibble with what these look like.
alan
I too like a darker bake, but have not yet figured out the right approach to keep the bottom from burning (using12x 20" Teflon-coated perforated aluminum sheets). Have tried putting a piece of foil under the dough but that is too much and it sticks to the crust even if lightly oiled. Have not tried a polished aluminum perforated 1/2-sheet or a jellyroll pan with quarry tile lining. There is a way to control the timing of the heat, I just have not figured it out yet.
On the other hand it is pretty good as it is, so my motivation is weak.
I virtually never burn the bottoms. But I max out between 460-480, as experience has taught me to steer clear of kendalm's 550 and even Dan's 500. I have a convection feature in my oven, and I've yet to figure out how to use it. But, hey, it's only been about 4 years now.
Since the first half of the bake is on parchment, removed when I release the steam, I'm certain that it acts as an insulator, which likely helps avoid that burned underside.
I find the whole venture pretty darned exciting, with a few folks like you and Michael Wilson taking the studious scientific approach, Dan taking the "OCD" perfectionist approach, Benny bringing his stethoscope to the game, and MT turning out superior quality baguettes like clockwork. And then on the low end, there's me, who pays close attention and work a step or three above the seat-of-the-pants approach. But I am super anal about scaling of ingredients and paying attention to detail.
And when I began baking at home sometime in mid 2014, I decided to concentrate on baguettes, for two reasons. I love the crust to crumb ratio, and I wanted the challenge. And now you folks are infected as well!
likewise mine never burn at 550. but to fair thr oven temp is probably 500 or a tad under by the time the loaves go in. i also throttle down ealy (while going through the max dynamic pressure <- space shuttle reference). im just looking for pop and also tend to underproof by a tad. so yeah, stones dont burn bread like a metal sheet does ;)
You’ll recall I was having problems early on with burnt bottom crusts, even at 480ºF. Then Doc suggested adding aluminum foil to my setup. So now with crumpled aluminum foil in the broiling rack and the baking steel on top of that, the bottom crusts never burn even at 500ºF and the broiling rack set up on the lowest oven rack. I am a bit surprised at how well those sheets of crumpled aluminum foil work to further shield the bottom crusts. Now I just keep the whole broiling rack set up in the oven and when I bake my batards, the dutch oven goes on top of the broiling rack as well and again the bottom crusts get a good shade of brown without burning.
I just looked up the thermal diffusivities for aluminum and granite/brick
So your granite slab may hold a lot of heat but it doesn't give it up quickly, while the aluminum holds less but absorbs it quickly and gives it up quickly too - like from one side through to the other.
So I should be looking for my stack of 1/4" quarry tiles
Further reduced bulk fermentation to 2:00 with a dough temperature starting at 84.8°F and finishing at 81°F. Slightly shorter mix time today (3:30 vs 4:00 yesterday) and I may have paid a price for that slight undermixing, though it had pulled itself off the sides and bottom of the bowl before I quit. Dough was on the sticky side of workable but with minimal flour I was able to divide and preshape, and after a 20 min rest (which it probably didn't need) I was able to tighten it up and roll out a decent baguette. A 2:00 room temperature final proof and a 2:00 retard for timing made them ready to bake when I was ready. Two oven cycles today, one was the baseline time and temperature but with the pan containing the baguettes sitting on a layer of 3/8" quarry tile that was sitting on an oven rack (I could not find my 1/4" stack of 6"x6" quarry tile so these were 3/8" x 4" x 8" on a 13" x 21" rack. The fan speed for the first batch was low and high for the second batch. The result was a lighter bottom crust for both batches (but too light to get full flavor out of the final bread). So the current baseline is still the best option (until I find something better). The high fan speed was not invoked until after the slashes had started to open (successful strategy) but the ears were not great for either batch so I may decrease the hydration a couple of percent and see what that does. The crumb is not as uniform as it was yesterday and I suspect that is due to insufficient mixing and probably more difficult handling at final shaping. The dough is quite soft when dividing so that would benefit from a little cooler dough temperature which would mean a longer bulk fermentation.
I pulled a 32g sample after completing the mix and weighed it at multiple points during the last 1:30 of BF. It lost 100mg of CO2 which is about 0.44% of the weight of the flour (0.26% of dough weight) which should be accurate enough to use as a monitor for a slower/lower temperature bulk ferment. If this technique is successful it will offer a definitive way to achieve the same bulk fermentation end point without using time and texture to decide when it is done. The fermentation seems to be quite rapid and for a 28g sample to lose 100mg in 90 min the resolution is about 1% which seems incredibly precise to me. And the sample size could be as large as 110g so the accuracy might be increased by a factor of 4 if that turns out to be important.
Next batch will be a little lower hydration and a slightly different oven cycle.
This CB has come a long way, and all ideas put in practice could actually be the most complete compendium on baguette baking available online. I have made a simple post in the beginning, and then stepped back and enjoyed the discussions. So today I wanted to share some pictures of the baking I just finished using yeast water levain. The recipe is the same as described in the beginning of this CB (except that I used equal amounts of WW and rye), but instead of sourdough levain I used yeast water made of fresh crushed grapes. Overall, it was a pretty good bake with nice crumb, crisp crust and mild taste that traces back to grapes. Apparently I have not made progress on shaping these hybrid crossing between batards and baguettes.
IMG_20200808_180546_1.jpg
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I don't see a single thing wrong with them. And you've just introduced a brand new aspect to the conversation by using YW. Yeah, the conversations around here have been quite involved, a lot of valuable navel-gazing. And I see you agreeing that this is potentially the world's finest in depth baguette learning adventure in the history of mankind, if not the universe since before man existed.
Although Mr. Hamelman had no Idea when he published this formula as a pan au levain boule/batard, it does seem to be just about an ideal combination for taking the simple but elegant baguette de tradition to another level entirely.
Thanks for keeping the flame lit!
Peter, you have achieved excellent ears on those baguettes, the shaping is quite even, I’m impressed. However, much more impressive is the open crumb and the fact that you’ve made the first yeast water baguettes that I’ve seen. The crumb really is great.
Do you fully develop the gluten or not? I ask because I’m wondering if fully developed gluten (intense machine mixing, or many slap & folds, etc) might strengthen the gluten too the point where even and open cell structure is more difficult to attain.
Thanks Alfonso and Benny, I have seen great in-depth analysis in the comments. I agree with Alfonso 100% that this is the most valuable collection of know-how on the matter in the universe. It is also the first time I use YW for baguettes. I am very surprised with the crumb, needless to say it is the best I ever achieved.
Dan, I have not developed gluten at all. Autolysed for one hour, mixed levain, and waited another 20 min to add salt. Did some quick kneading to make sure salt was integrated. After that I applied two sets of stretch and fold in 40 min intervals, and that was it. I had to put the dough in the fridge for two hours during bulk fermentation because I had to do something outside. I pre-shaped and bench rested for 20 minutes, de-gassed quite a bit during final shaping, but still got a nice crumb.
Nice looking loaves. Introducing a new leavening idea to this CB is like a breath of fresh air. How was the taste? How was the crust? The crumb looks great.
Thanks MT for the comments. The taste was quite mild without sourness due to the YW. There was a subtle sweetness note to the crumb which I attribute to the fresh grapes used to make the YW. I think the crust was thinner than my first trial using sourdough, but it was at the same time quite crispy and crackling.
Good morning, friends.
A little twist on Silvia's towel. The only down side, I can only bake two baguettes at a time due to the height. If this actually works, I will cut the lip off one of the pans so it can slip inside of the bottom pan. Smile. #Necessityisthemotherofinvention
Very Ingenious, Will!
That is a great idea. You may need to elevate the baguette apparatus to keep from having moisture from the towel.
Do you have any of those black paper clips for securing the top and bottom?
I hope there is enough resident heat to make steam and at the same time not rob the heat from the dough. Look forward to seeing your results...
As it happens the baguette pan is hits the slopped ends of the pan and is supporter about an inch off the bottom. Yes I have the clips your talking about. I am curious to see the results also. The one pan two baguette bake will be directly of the superheated pizza steel I am thinking I will pre-heat the bottom pan, with the towel then drop the baguette pan in, add 8 oz. boiling water cover and bake
In another thread, Ciabatta had purchased a large steaming tray, the type restaurants use, that he was going to use to trap steam over 3-4 loaves baking on a baking stone. The steaming tray like your aluminum trays was shiny. He ran into problems with the loaves being unable to brown. In the end it was discovered that the shiny tray was too reflective and in fact the temperature inside the upside down tray enclosing the baking dough didn’t reach a high enough temperature. Ciabatta (James) purchase a temperature probe and was able to measure that the outside temperature of the oven was significantly higher than that inside the tray.
I hope your set up doesn’t run into the same issues that James ran into. Thread here - Whole Oven Cloche
I thought about this, and determined that it is going to be very difficult to reconcile, both a very high heat at the beginning of the bake, and a fully enclosed repository, to trap steam. What I have decided is two fold.
1. look to baguette skin tension, shaping and slashing as the main stumbling block
2. Use a simpler method to help trap some extra steam directly on the baguettes.
My solution or the steaming apparatus is simple indeed. I will use only one pre-heated over turned tray a top the baguette pan. The pan will sit directly on a 16" round pizza steel. This will leave the underside some what open. On the rack directly below will be the steam source. At this point I am thinking #1 is the main issue. If I can correct/ improve that area, my baguettes will improve too. Once I can honestly say I am doing the best I can with the challenges in #1, then and only then will I look elsewhere. (Now that I have the pan, I will give one pan a whirl)
It is definitely worth a try to see if it works, maybe because your aluminum trays are thinner than what James used the heat will still penetrate your set up. I just wanted to bring it to your attention since I saw the trouble he had with it in case it was applicable to you, I didn’t mean to discourage your ingenuity.
From home baking ace Steve B. at breadcetera.com . His method for steaming. Basically a hotel pan with a hole drilled into it. He uses a small hand help steamer's nozzle inserted into the hole.
If the seal is good you may not even need the towel. Just a little water in the bottom might do it. When do we find out how it worked?
The flour is at the tail end of a two hour Autolyse, the sour biga is at the ready (8hr second build ferment)
I am smack in the middle of a fairly large out door project. Pouring 20 yards of concrete and building a 12x24’ covered work area.
I’ll be back...
when I do it will be with a keen focus on Benny’s crumb. My first idea is to do as close to no-knead as possible. Maybe it is the less developed gluten that is allowing the cell expansion.
Both you and Benny are not developing the gluten up front. And both of you are producing excellent crumb. I am sitting at my computer preparing a new spreadsheet as I write this. Next baguette bake will have the gluten developed along the lines of you and Benny.
If you decide to crawl down this bunny hole in search of the perfect baguette, we welcome you with open arms. It looks like this CB has a life of it's own.
I have been working towards a more tidy scoring pattern that doesn't tear apart the strip of crust that holds the grigne in the elliptical shape. I don't know what it's called but it is like the open crumb is being shackled by this thin strip of crust. That is my dilemma. I prefer the open crumb but still want the neat appearance of the slashes not bursting the baton open. I keep meaning to do one long score down the length to see what happens to the crumb. My plan was to use shorter cuts in a 19 inch stick I got 7 slashes but some bursting still occurred. Perhaps it's a shaping issue or they are under proofed.
This weekend I used the divine french flour again and the Bouabsa recipe with similar results. The bulk was left on the counter too long by mistake and the dough needed a couple more folds in the fridge to degas it and get it chilled. The shaping went well and the super duper peel is working well and the edge helps to straighten them out on the stone. I an also trying to achieve the graceful taper. Which is a challenge on another level that my left hand doesn't get.
I pushed the hydration to 74% which is about the limit for me with this flour. The flavor of this flour is incredible even the burnt ends have a special taste and the crust is like no other.
Excellent crumb and beautiful crust color. Your shaping has been quite consistent throughout bakes.
These are up to your usual high standards for baguettes but just in long form Don. Crumb is also nice and open, great job at the longer baguette.
I’ve done some good, done some ugly, but this one was definitely bad :-(
I wanted to try Benny’s baguettes, so Able’s Baguette au Levain was the choice. A new french flour (T80) was used. Benny’s method was followed closely. But T80 at that hydration was a mess. Shaping was terrible. The baguette crumb looked bad and tasted worse. I have grown extremely fond of a thin crust and soft chew. SD doesn’t give me that.
Either the dough will require more gluten development or the hydration will need to be lowered. It was confirmed that I am not a fan of sourdough baguettes, even at small amounts of pre-fermented flour. Unless I learn something new, baguettes that suit me utilize commercial yeast with no hint of SD.
To the connoisseur, the baguettes are not eatable. But the birds will love them.
Benny has mastered that formula, but the french flour didn’t work out for me. So back to Bouabsa or Louis L’mour’s Baguette au Tradition Francaise.
I also learned that the T80 is not a good choice for levain. After it had fully matured the levain was soupy and the gluten was broken down. Note to self, “use American flour for starters and levains”.
Update - after giving this some thought, the levain may have over-fermented since the T80 contains a large amount of bran. I don’t think that was the case, though. From what I’ve learned thus far, it seems that french flour is not the best choice for long fermentation and levains or starters that mix high ratios like 1:5:5. The ~12 hr fermentation breaks down the gluten.
I hope they like it if they can jackhammer through that crust. Maybe a herron or a woodpecker could open it up for the smaller birds to enjoy. The deer around here have come to expect my failures and stale heels. That dough might have made a nice boule or batard. Which reminds me how did the big pour of concrete go? I am imagining a bake shop with a wood fired oven and a large store room for hoarded french flour and razor blades. I was thinking of using Evian bottled water to take the Moulin Auguste to the next level.
I have been messing around with local Italian spring water these last two bakes. Here are the anecdotal results. The first bake was 100% aqua di Fiuggi. The second bake, when I opened the bottle, to my dismay, I realized I picked up the sparkling variety by mistake. I used about a 1/3 of the final dough water from the first uncarbonated bottle and the rest NYC tap water. I noticed no difference in the end result.
Now here is a question. If one was to use naturally carbonated water in a dough , would artificially infusing co2 improve the dough? Is this a thing? Alternatively would it kill the dough or possibly have no effect at all? Did I just invent a radical new technique?
Smile...
Infusing Co2 using carbonated water
Don, you made a statement early on in this CB that made me think. Basically, “sourdough makes a thicker crusted, tougher chewing crumb”. After more than 20 consecutive baguettes bakes during this CB, it is crystal clear how true that statement is. I love SD flavor. If baguettes turned out with the same thin crust and chew using SD, it could well be my preference. For baguettes, commercial yeast is my resounding choice. But for 99% of my other breads, its long fermented sourdough all the way.
The T80 levain turned to soup at maturity. The best and worst characteristic of french flour is that it is very delicate. But nothing I know of produces a baguette of comparable quality. It has spoiled me for anything else when it comes to baguettes.
Today’s forecast is sunny for today, so cement pour first things this morning...
Hey Dan, what do you think contributed to the result? You used T80 flour, do you think this led to the baguettes having more of a whole grain flavour and thus more sourdough like flavour which I agree I wouldn’t like either. The best results for flavour with Abel’s formula have been when using fully white flour, the set I made recently with flour erroneously label led T55 but which had a lot of bran in it definitely weren’t my favourite.
I’m disappointed for you, I was hoping that you’d like Abel’s formula as I have. For me, it has just a bit more complexity without having a strong sourdough flavour.
Yep, the T80 is a radically different flour from T65. There is no comparison between the 2. Of course the Le Moulin d'Auguste brand is what I’ve used for comparison. I assume that not all T65 and T80 french flour is the same.
I keep trying SD baguettes and after tasting the CY only baguettes they all disappoint. Taste are highly subjective, but that’s my preference.
Because I like SD so much, I keep going back to try another version.
Dan I can’t help but thinking that it was the flour you chose to use with this formula. I love sourdough but don’t love sourdough flavour in my baguettes and I get none of that really with this, only the greater complexity of sourdough. But as you say, everyone has their own tastes so you have to do what makes you happy.
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/65286/spiral-baguette
Interview and work of Mahmoud M'seddi, the young baker who won the competition in 2018.
His technique is unlike what we generally think of. Not a poolish dough. A 3 hour autolyse and a what seems like a long 1st speed mix with bassinage before switching to 2nd. Then rests the dough in the mixer for 1 hour, before pulling it out of the mixing bowl. An immediate S&F in the tub, and maybe another, and it is eventually placed into retard until the following day. Baked at 515dF for 19 minutes. No formula given.
Is this pre Raymond Calvel , or post Raymond Calvel? Boy oh boy, you give this "kid" a little information he really runs with it! LOL. I kill me! Okay no more posting today I am a bit tipsy! (Vacation)
That's my method! (Almost) Stolen from the Generations of Sothern Italian bakers for sure! Shame on the French! Tisk, tisk!
It is interesting that he describes the ideal crust as being thick, I wouldn’t want a thick crust on my baguette. The crust he shows doesn’t look thick though.
I wonder what the mechanism is that spits out perfectly round slender batons. Something like a cigarette rolling apparatus? The robots are going to replace us and leave us nothing to do but eat what they make. I do like his idea of what the crumb should look like.
It will be interesting to try the “light test”.
I bet he mis-spoke about the “thick crust”. Thin and crispy seems a better descriptor.
Yeah you're probably right, he likely misspoke.
The Maltese summer time, breakfast, lunch, brunch or dinner. Rats, I ran out of anchovies!
The crumb on your newest baguettes is looking much more open Will, great job.
I agree with Danny, regarding chewy sourdough crust for baguettes, I also prefer a crisp commercial yeast crust. I learned a lot with these couple of durum bakes. I think I will move to the less aggressive, short or the improved mixing method for all my breads.
The short mix works for a lot of breads. I wouldn't recommend it for the Approachable pan loaves though. Sandwich breads need more kneading. How did the steam pan work?
It takes some time to get my 100% whole wheat approachable loaf to come together. I think a kinder, gentler speed #1 will work for a lot of applications, not all. It seemed to work pretty well, I got some nice oven spring. At first I did not think the baguettes would brown. Then they started to caramelize.
Especially for a full durum bread, the crumb is quite open. Really nice going! But where are the Kalamatas?
Mom always had some on hand. I will have to pick some up. Also the wrinkly Greek type.
working with the durum, and being concerned about the fragile gluten, has a lot to do with the crumb, I think?
I think these are the 13th set of baguettes and I had high hopes for them. I continue to use Abel’s formula and haven’t significantly changed any of my methods. Because the dough seemed fairly extensible last time (using the same 10% protein AP flour) I decided to pre-shape as a boule. After 15 mins of rest I then shaped trying to get them to 15-16” in length, which I almost achieved, although they contracted a bit in the couche. They rested in the couche on the counter for 20 mins. Because the kitchen seemed much hotter than usual the dough may have proofed more than usual during its bench time. I put them in the fridge for 5 mins before scoring, given the ambient temperature, I should have shortened the bench rest and extended the fridge time. The dough was very delicate to score and I did experience some difficulty with scoring. I brushed water on the baguettes liberally prior to baking which helped with blisters and shine.
Not much in the way of ears to speak of. A couple of the ends of the baguettes are somewhat flat, this may be because my my fingers trying to hold the dough as I started to score, I’m unsure. I was hoping to improve, not sure that these are an improvement. They baked up darker than I intended. I had increased the oven temperature to 515ºF from my usual 500ºF thinking that this might help the oven spring since they were a bit over proofed so this contributed to the darker bake.
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Fortunately the crumb is good, happy with that. I cannot complain at all about the soft texture to the crumb and the crisp thin crust. The flavour from this flour is actually quite good, a clean wheat flavour with a background complexity from the levain but without any sour notes whatsoever. I may never actually have good ears or grigne on my baguettes, I suppose that isn’t the end of the world, but they are a nice to have. I still have the outward appearance to work on for sure.
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Are you sure that you aren't shaping natural sponges as baguettes and using them in your photos? Outstanding!
It’s what’s inside that counts right? No not using any sea cucumbers or sponges as stunt models for baguettes in my photos. Good crumb, so so exteriors. I wonder if I should dial back the bulk a bit and see if I can get better oven spring and better ears, perhaps I’m pushing bulk a bit too far. I think next bake I’ll go back to 30% rise on the aliquot jar but continue with the bench rest at room temp en couche and include a longer rest in the fridge prior to scoring.
I agree that the outward appearance would improve with less time in bulk. Are you still retarding for 24 hours because of the schedule you are on? Perhaps you could reduce the IDY to minuscule or the levin by 1/2. I would say you could retard it at the first sign of any activity. It should be possible to still get something like your signature open crumb with a rounder profile. Maybe #14 is a luckier number.
Thanks for the feedback Don. The profile has been flatter and the grigne/ears even less than before since I tried pushing bulk to a 35-40% rise. For the next bake I will dial that back down and see where that gets me. I was getting a similar crumb on some of my previous bakes while also having a rounder profile and something more acceptably like ears/grigne. If that doesn’t do it then I’ll reassess the yeast/levain, but thanks for that suggestion I’ll keep it in my back pocket.
I only do the 24 hour cold retard for convenience, there is no noticeable growth in the fridge, I have it at 2ºC so there shouldn’t be any yeast activity.
@Benny - I have been slowly increasing my pre-bake retard temperature, currently up to 43°F and still see not volumetric increase over 8 hrs. But the solubility of CO2 at that temperature is so high that almost any CO2 production would go directly into solution and not contribute to internal pressure that would show up as a volume increase. I will (when the occasion presents) continue to take it up a little at a time and see where things change.
Benny, if you were nominated and we took a vote, bets are you’d garner the coveted title of “Crumb Master”, in the baguette category. You and Maurizio are neck and neck.
Absolutely, fantastic...
Posted under my blogs.
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/65305/abels-baguette-rústica-con-semillas-de-girasol
Great looking long board baguettes Alan, as I said in your blog your new improved signature, now with more to love. I do wonder if I’m futzing with the shaping a bit too much after watching Abel shape and score. I’m thinking I really need to dial back on the bulk a bit and let the oven spring do the work a bit more than I am currently doing. Although I’m getting good crumb, the profile of my baguettes in the last two posts have been a bit flat so I suspect I’m going a bit too far with bulk.
I also like what the little bit of levadura seca did for crumb on your baggies. Sunflower and flax seeds are my go to add ins when I want something healthy and tasty in my bread. Hammelmans Sourdough Seed Bread would probably make a nice baton.
and then it is a melange of water and differing seeds and grains. In this case it was just a slimy mess. I understand that the flax seeds themselves have too hard a shell to digestibly break down easily.
Incorporating what you and the other good folks here on TFL had suggested after my recent pleas for help. No nutritional yeast, this dough just about has to be corralled on rollout without the NY. My prior two attempts were in the shorter version and the resulting long batard was a little too rotund.
Also taking the advise - mostly yours, to cut down on FFs, going from my "traditional 300 down to 200 and now to 125. Time will tell whether the reduction is working out for me the long run.
Just checked out the Hamelman SD Seed formula. I'll put it on my to-do list. First, a fun task for the weekend. A neighbor asked if I'd supply her with some of my "famous" sesame semolina baggies in exchange for her Italian traditional Sunday Supper which they're preparing to have with friends coming over (yikes!). That seems like a pretty fair deal to me! Doing what I like and getting a free meal out of it.
I think the amount of kneading or folding is a big factor in getting the more open crumb combined with hydration. Bread flour and whole grain require more FF's but an AP with IDY only needs the minimum when combined with time in the bulk retard. Benny and I are mixing with the same method at different hydration and getting an open crumb. A minute or two of the Rubaud in the bowl and a couple of coil folds in the bowl and thats it. I know there is a certain joy to slapping and folding and some breads are better for it but batons seem more delicate to me especially when the dough is wetter.
Having dinner out with friends. That's something that hasn't happened in a while for us. Sunday Italian would bring me to the door although virus paranoia is still a thing here. Mangiare
I stumbled upon some good info on French flour vis-a-vis protein while trying to help user Huda. It's the Moul Bie web site that lists all their flours. Unfortunately, you have to make an extra click to find the protein percent in a PDF file.
But, the upside is that you get a recommended formula, if you can read French.
(my French is limited to speaking like Pepe Le Pew.)
As mwilson keeps telling us, T## just means the ash%. The protein is another dimension of specification. T65 could be anywhere from 10% to 13% protein, maybe higher.
Bottom line: you have to ask about protein separately. The text name like "traditional baguette" or "modern baguette" is just marketing nomenclature, not a specification, even if it is unique to just one product.
Here's where the protein % for each Moul Bie flour is:
Go to this page first: https://www.grandsmoulinsdeparis.com/produits/farines.html
There are seven different T65 flours on the above page, including organic ("bio"), and you have to go to page 2 to see the last couple. Then click on the particular flour that you want to look at.
Then Click the link that says: Télécharger la fiche technique de ce produit. I found one T65 that had 12-something % protein, but I did not check all.
This is similar or congruent to the Italian system of 00, 0, and 1. Those indicate ash%, not protein, nor particle size. And you still have to ask separately about protein. __
Actually, the W number and P/L ratio (elasticity) can be just as important as protein %.
I, (we) would love a better look at your prebake baguettes. However, the photo is very tiny.
Well, it tasted great, had a good crumb but I can't seem to get that lovely shiny crunchy crust no matter how much steam I use. My oven has a permanent on fan that I suspect is the culprit. My scoring also seemed to pretty much disappear in the oven. It was fun though, and everyone loved the baguettes - I was the only one who missed the crust being shiny!
Are those your first time at a baguette? Wow if they are, so much better than my first attempt. You may also have created a new type of baguette, but it will need a catchy name if it is going to go viral on the net. Your crumb looks quite good, you should be quite proud.
The oven’s fan staying on is a challenge. I’ve taken to brushing water on my dough after scoring and prior to baking. It really helps the bread have a shinier crust and enhances the blisters, if you like that sort of thing.
I hope you try baguettes again and post your efforts here.Benny
The first was definitely worse in terms of shaping. I watched all the videos in the community bake instructions and tried again. Shaping was actually okay - I just have to finagle them into the oven better - small oven - long baguettes! Not sure about a viral name - Mini gets to choose, it was her idea!
vieux rustique! (The rustic old ones!) What a great bake! I second the water, except I spray mine with a water bottle.
The crumb is superb!
I will just have to be happy with rustic I think. ;-)
CarolAnn, I have the same issue with dull and blisterless crust. I can apply as much steam as I wish and still, very seldom get shiny, blistered crust.
Can’t figure that one out...
Danny
That I am not alone. Oh well, tasted great that's all that matters really.
Sometimes, even I am surprised by my bread making prowess.
Watch the skill and efficiency in movements, of professional Boulanger, William Courderot. A true craftsmen.
The baguette, Flour, water, yeast, and salt, four simple ingredients, many different techniques.
Traditional French Baguettes | Cooking by Heart from Lowe + Helzer on Vimeo.
Love watching such skilled bakers shape baguettes or any bread for that matter. What I’m doing to shape is using many more steps than that he is doing based on videos I had watched at the beginning of all of this. I wonder if I should be simplifying my shaping with fewer steps.
Your right about the steps. Even the top dog at KAF, (Hamelmans protégé) his name eludes me, uses a more compact shaping procedure. Part of my aim for today, is to eliminate the series of short folds, in favor of folding the whole long edge into the center. I devised a procedure last night, today, I will test it. I also concocted an unconventional, low hydration commercial yeast formula. The formula is already in the first stages of testing, (bulk)
Boy oh boy! I am so like a Roman among Greeks here! A Loud, boisterous, braggadocio! However, it is all in fun, with some learning too! Smile.
P.S. Your doing better than fine, with the quality of your baguettes. I would say, if it is not broken , don't fix it!
“P.S. Your doing better than fine, with the quality of your baguettes. I would say, if it is not broken , don't fix it! ”
That would be unlike me, I’m always changing things to see if they might make things better, they often don’t but I learn from these things.
As long as we keep it fun!
This weekends wands were an incremental improvement in shaping and scoring, I used a curved lame to score with and shortened the length of the cuts to try to get a more uniform pattern with less bursting. They are getting better slowly and the shaping is becoming more natural with all the practice lately. Putting more emphasis on the pre-shape by building some tension helps to make the final shape go smoothly. The French flour is so tasty and nice to work with that it is the only flour I want to make them with from now on.
Judging by the burnt ends 18 inches is at the limit of the length possible in my oven. The ends do not taste burnt like they do with American AP they have a surprisingly rich taste.
The crumb was nice and open for going from the fridge to the oven in less than an hour. They photograph best when cut lengthwise to make a sandwich but I prefer to eat them sliced.
The crust shatters when you cut them. Safety glasses recommended ;-)
They even look delicious. Very nice work.
Cheers,
Gavin
It's getting better all the time sung to the tune of "It's getting better all the time". You are so right about the overall shaping, even getting the ends to assume their torpedo tips. Your shaping was really good and consistent before, so this is a next step.
The scoring is still completely you, but something looks just a little off. The off is the way it blooms from oven spring and the ears that are starting to assume their own identity. Different enough from your prior bakes, but still you. You always get a great crumb so there's no surprise there. Admit it - you're no Benny, but then, around here no one else is either ;-) .
The timing for kendalm to have come out from hiding just in time to goose Dan and you into buying the flour is suspicious! You may well be doing direct deposit with L'Epiciere before this is all over.
I seem to get more bursting oven spring than others. The crust does not have the strength to contain the oven spring no matter the flour used. It could be that the higher hydration is the culprit. I don't think it is from too much tension when shaping. The scoring was cleaner this time with no wrinkles or jagged edges.
I would prefer to use American flour if I could find one with half the flavor of the French flour. I wonder what it is about the Moulin D Auguste that makes it so superior? The strain of wheat? The soil? The climate? You need to try some except for the fact that after that nothing else will do.
I have no experience with them, but a lot of folks swear by Central Milling, Giusto's and other Western mills that supply bakeries. Might be worth investigating a few of them. Both price and shipping, if either for these are to be concerns, should be quite a bit lower for you than the August Mill flour.
I had a bag of the Central Milling ABC and it was nice flour to work with but I don't recall the taste being extraordinary. The Guistos pizza flour I can get here and it is pretty great. Maybe I should try that for batons one of these days when my supply of the magic dust is getting low. The Wheat Montana AP I use has a good flavor to it but the crust is nothing like the potato chip crust of the Auguste. No wonder the French are famous for their bread. It's the flour! I think Washington State University is breeding wheat for flavor and baking quality and working with bakers to develop the strain. It would be nice to find something similar grown in these parts.
The shipping rates on grain and flour is not cheap even coming from Utah. Fed Up and UPOS are gouging us on delivery these days. The Postal Service is being bled out by a moron. That's my excuse when I get caught bringing a large amount of white powder into the country.
Actually on the subject of flour, since this thread is so much about flour, is Italian flour a good substitute for French flour? Italian flour is much more available here for some reason than French. I’ve read that the tipo 0 flour is similar to T55/65. Any opinions about the use of Italian flours for baguettes?
If you find one with the right enrichments. Some that are made for pizza have an additive that allows the dough to be stretched out easily. I have access to a couple of 00 pizza flours I may try them out on the next weekend bake and give the magnifique flour a rest. I wish our white flour wasn't so homogenized and produced for enriched dough recipes that do not rely on the flour for flavor.
I’ll be very interested to see how your baguettes turn out using the pizza flour Don. The low protein AP flour seems to be sold out now everywhere I’ve gone to look for it. I still have some, but once out I’ll need a substitute so having not heard of anyone using Italian flour here for baguettes I was curious.
I bought this one here in NZ and really like it but it is rarely available to buy. haven’t tried baguettes but my bake is below
yes it says soft white but it was good for bread.
Leslie
Right at 9% protein, so soft but certainly good enough for you to make some nice looking bread. I lot of people would really like to make bread that looks like that - out of any flour.
Do you find that it requires more mixing to build the strength you need for a loaf like that?
quite disorganised at the start. A friend had tried baking cakes with it (too wet) and struggled so I held back water but added it all in. I just did my normal 200 SLAFs with salt added half way. It really came together and was not hard to shape. I admit I was really surprised. but happy! I really questioned its suitability with 9% protein but my thought is, in this particular instance, it must be the quality of the protein that makes the difference. I ran a mate at the same time with added gluten flour and the crumb was less open (here it is). I still have enough for one more bake (stored in the freezer) so next bake will try and replicate it (that bake was about 6 months ago I think).
thanks Doc.dough - love your baguettes, wish I could make them like that!
Leslie
Wow Leslie, that it remarkable that you were able to bake that hearth loaf using 9% protein flour, it has a beautiful open crumb. If you can bake such a lovely loaf with that low protein flour then it should work quite nicely for baguettes!
I don't know if it holds for wheat, but among garden vegetables, the heirloom varieties are known for better taste.
"Heirloom" ... meaning they have not been hydridized or changed in the past 50-60 years.
Many vegetables have been hybridized (cross bred) to optimize them for corporate farms, in terms of yield, quick maturation, less spoilage, more pest resistant, less blemishes, more consistency, etc. But, the trade-offs have often included less taste.
Heirloom wheat is abundant enough for boutique millers using stone mills and relatively small impact mills. But....
if you want to get white bran-less germ-less flour, (t55, t65) you need a multi-million dollar roller mill plant. and to use that kind of mill, you need large batches due to the fixed set-up time/charges for a given run. and a given farmer's batch of Red Fife or White Sonora may not be big enough to get time on a high tech multi-stream roller mill. Whereas, creating _whole-grain_ flour with an impact mill or a stone mill, it's a straight in and out, one stream, one machine, with a simple cleaning in between batches.
The shaping looks so elegant, slender and uniform. You’re getting great ears with these and I agree, the darker tips taste good. Even with my not French flour I’ve enjoyed the dark pointy tips, it’s one of the reasons I keep trying to get the torpedo shape, I like the taste of the darkly baked tips. The crumb looks great and has a nice sheen.
Don, the new shaping sure looks good!
” The crumb was nice and open for going from the fridge to the oven in less than an hour.” Are you saying that after the BF was complete, the dough shaped then refrigerated for only 1 hr, then baked?
The bulk was 17 hours in the fridge. Then divided and rested for 15 minutes and proofed for 40 minutes before baking. I have never retarded shaped batons.
Don, what would you estimate to rise increase when removing from the 17 hr retard?
I’ll be baking a couple today...
I retard in the square 2 qt Cambro and 500 grams of flour will hopefully stay below the middle rim. If it goes above that I fold it again in the fridge and it settles down after that. I shoot for about a 40% increase overall.
When I see the dough start to move or relax after the pre-shape which is about 15 or 20 minutes is when I shape. I would say they puff up about 50% in the couche. The finger poke test works well for me with batons and when I see gray air pockets inside I usually put them in the oven. I start preheating the oven when I take the dough out of the fridge and they end up going in the oven around an hour later.
Lately I have been using an OXO triple timer that counts forward for hours on all my breads and I just start it when water meets flour. It has really been helpful for a forgetful baker like me.
I want that shattering crust....mmmmm
VERY nice bake! Do you mind sharing the formula?? I am getting back into baking and going full force with baguettes.
John
John, there are so many post. It’s difficult to know which formula you are looking for. Please post a link or a name of the formula you want.
Used Louis Lamour’s formula and T80. It was a quickie bake. I have been busy with the outdoor project, but needed bread.
I am coming to the conclusion that T80 is not suited for baguettes. Neither the texture or flavor was nearly as nice as T65. So, Bake # 25 will use T65 and KA AP (50/50). What to see what that combo will produce.
Boy! French flour is humbling. I finally nailed the baguettes (image below) using American flours, but got super spoiled for texture and flavor with French flours. But, I shall persevere...
It sure was nice to pull breads like these out of the oven. Oh well, “C’est la vie”.
Bake #25 just came out of the oven. Will post soon...
The two in the last photo really are perfection in baguettes.
Benny, how I wished I could turn out baguettes like that with T65!
Dan you will get there, it is humanly possible you will I’m confident of that.
Sure get a kick out of you drillbit loaves. The top one has great grigne. Yeah this flour is better IMHO for a pain de compangne - makes a good s sourdough batard or boule btw. I think its a nice addition to change things up.
Geremy, you areright. The T80 will be saved for more hearty breads.
Are you sure the flour is T80? I sifted it and came up with very large particles of bran and a fair amount of it. Could it be a flour of higher ash content?
From central milling and it similar in bran content so thats my only point of reference. Seems to me that above T70 we start to see bran. Also I confirmed with l'epicerie.com the mislabelled 65 was indeed T80. they knew about the gaf and as such sent a freebie 44lb replacement - was a nice guesture eh ?
That’s a super nice gesture, good company to deal with.
Both of these breads came out lovely. The bottom pic makes me think that you went fishing and landed a few narwhals. Is it the photo or are both of these lacking the typical sheen that steaming produces?
Just for clarity - the upper 2 pics are from the T80 run and the lower pic is from some American T65 flour?
I take "exception" to your "T80 is not suited for baguettes" line. Depends on what type of baguette one wishes to produce. If it is a baguette de tradition, then you have a valid point. But as you well know I'll take pretty much any formula and turn it into a baguette. To me, the baguette is the form, and not the formula. Not an admonishment, rather an update to your statement.
Alan, the 2 baguettes in the top two images are made with T80. The bottom image of the very picturesque baguettes were made much earlier (Bake # 13) using KA AP and Bouabsa’s formula.
As far as the dry and not shiny crust; I seem to have a problem with my oven consistently producing that. Blisters are also a rare occurrence for me. I have the ability to fill my entire kitchen with steam. Really wished I could figure that one out.
Yes, when I say (IMO) that T80 is not ideal for baguettes only traditional baguettes are considered.
I whipped up a couple of demis with this floue when I recieved it - to verify my suspicions and couse what I got was a dark crumb and as Dan alludes - not the expected flavor. but what I noticed was really nice crumb and crust which grew on me - good flour just different -
That reminds me of the flour I purchased that was labeled T55 but definitely had bran in it, quite visible bran.
I suppose if the mineral content comes out to the appropriate level then maybe it could indeed be T55 with bran. In this case that Dan and I are discussing well I have purchase a boat load of flour from lepicerie.com and know what to expect. Btw still havent tried the Canadian T55 but very eager. It's a really malty smelling flour so cannot wait !
Tried 50/50 T65 and KA AP. The dough was stronger, but the flavor wasn’t there. I will say the crust and crumb was excellent!
Used Louis Lamour’s formula again. Didn’t refrigerate. Crumb had a great texture but was tight (too much proofing?).
It is a huge let down eating a sub-par baguette after you’ve had a great French Flour version. I am permanently ruined...
Theres a reason why the French arw renowned for their bread. Now you know and also a little cursed. Sorry Danno :/
Flour from 2 continents lost in translation. That's a strange crumb for you, almost honeycomb lacy. Maybe the gluten was over developed or the dough was degassed too much. I would be tempted to use more water next time. The outside appearance of your brown barber shop poles in the previous bakes show really nice hand work to get that even shape and those grand, symmetrical ears.
My stash of The Flour is too precious to introduce it to other flours. It will be flying solo. I did get my hands on some Guisto 00 pizza flour which is their version of European flour. I am going to give it a go this weekend to compare it to the magic dust.
Sure, I've baked this probably dozens of times now. But I have been taking to heart the chatter and conversations offered in the CB to try and up my game, as we all have. Decided to keep these as long batards as I had enough changes incorporated without the added attempt at the longer shape. These are 14 inches long.
The Hamelman Semolina here is
So, what am I doing differently this time? It is rare that I do a 3 stage build for the levain in 15 hrs, but I did here and the dough seemed to like it. I returned to withholding the salt until post-autolyse, kept my French Folds down to 75, a 5 min. rest and 50 more, and used a new method for pre-shaping. I've also been shaping directly out of BF instead of somewhere halfway through retard.
The dough exhibited its typical dry "ropey" first FFs, but after relaxing and organizing for 5 minutes, it became more malleable. By the first LF at 40 min., it was a nice and easy dough to work.
During BF I was impressed at how this dough "puffed up" seemingly way more than in the past, most easily "told" to me by the dough itself during the LFs.
No retard prior to divide and shape. 20 min. rest in pre-shape form before final shaping. I really like the pre-shape method that Abel Sierra uses here, and am mimicking it now. Shaping was easy and the dough was completely compliant. Thanks to the goons here on this CB, I also feel as though my shaping has improved.
Well, my run was a second effort in three days because the breads that I baked the other day for neighbors suffered from a boneheaded move on my part. After loading the dough and steaming the oven, for the first time ever, I neglected to shut to oven door completely and didn't notice for the first 6 minutes. The temp had dropped to 350 and the steam previously produced had escaped. As it turned out the neighbors and their guests didn't mind, and the one baguette that we kept for ourselves tasted just fine.
In comparison to today's bake, the differences are stark. Dull finish and the ears barely lifted off the surface of the dough. The scores did widen nicely but did not "burst" as those today did. The crumb on this bake was lighter and more open.
420g on the left, 325g on the right.
Wow those are stunners Alan. I’ll have to watch Abel’s shaping and pre-shaping in that video you linked to, but you sure produced perfect baguettes in my book. Your first set there have better ears than the best I’ve produced. I do still want to get there, hopefully I will. Once I get there I will try a coating of sesame seeds because everything is better with sesame seeds on it.
making improvements. Never stop learning...So far in the very few pre-shapes I've done in his style, I like what I see. The sesame seed coating is really easy to do.
Thank, alan
Can you explain how you don't get the seeds inside the slashes? Eye appeal is buy appeal! I bet a bakery could charge $2.00 more a piece for these bad boys! Well done!
They are moistened by rolling on a wet paper towel and then rolled in sesame seeds before putting on the couche.
thanks, alan
After a number of trials that made small changes (all of which produced worse results than without the changes) I tried something new - putting the retard in a different place in the process. This was a case where I ran a 10 hr autolyse at 40°F and 60% hydration with no levain or salt (combined for 5 min @ speed 1 on the Famag IM-5 spiral mixer). The levain (12% PFF) was then added and mixed in for 5 minutes at speed 1. Then the remaining water was mixed in to bring the hydration to 69% and 1.5% salt was added during a 10 min mix at speed 1 followed by 1 minute at speed 4. The dough had no diastatic malt or nutritional yeast. The flour was ~13% protein, bleached, enriched, with ascorbic acid added. Dough temperature at completion of the bassinage was 67.4°F. Bulk fermentation was 4:30 with dough temperature rising to 74°F (warm day).
Divide and shape was an attempt to minimize manipulation so followed Abel's guidance. A 30 minute rest was followed by two folds and rolling to size (20") using as little flour as I could arrange. Final proof was about 2:00 at room temperature followed immediately by baking for 17 minutes without any chilling to stiffen up the dough.
Slashing was not easy even going quickly as the blade wanted to drag - and I was not going deep. But the ears came out quite well and the crumb is about the best I have achieved so far. These are large for baguettes at 425g but I think that is a contributor to the ears since the oven spring generates a lot of diameter increase which really helps break open the slash and push up the ear. Good color without adding diastatic malt. And the dough exhibited nice extensibility which I attribute to the long cold autolyse. The baguette that I sliced open was not as uniform in diameter as I would like, but I know what I did during pre-shaping that precipitated a big lump in the middle and I think I can do better next time. And the crumb in the tips of the cut loaf are a little tight for reasons I understand and should be able to correct with more practice.
Really good looking baguettes you’re making Doc. Your shaping even using a new technique looks great and you have gotten the ears down now too. I have baguette dough in cold retard to bake tomorrow afternoon. I think I’ll watch Abel’s video before I do pre-shaping and give his technique a try. It did appear to be a simpler method than what I’ve been doing. This batch I’ve bulk fermented to only a 30% aliquot jar rise before cold retard hoping for better oven spring and to get some ears.
Instead of making three loaves, make two with one at >425g and the other at 250-300g. Then see if you observe a significant difference in the ears between the two.
In theory, there is an optimum temperature for a pre-bake retard where the yeast still produces a relatively large amount of CO2 but most of it goes into solution (since the solubility of CO2 is so much higher in cold water than in room temperature water). If you can let it saturate the dough with CO2 before you bake it, you will get both blisters and a lot of oven spring. But you are also running up against the boundary where the dough begins to seriously leak CO2 through the surface. The temperature and time for this targeted retard is a strong function of the temperature sensitivity of the yeast so you will have to play with it in your specific case. I am setting the retarder at 38°F and that is not warm enough yet.
They look good inside and out. How did the dough feel after a 10 autolyse? Just how many speeds does this mixer have? I like the color better on these. You should try the burnt ends sometime, it tastes like BBQ
The flour is a pretty strong flour so while I am a little surprised that there was such a significant change in dough behavior, the mixing was substantially different from what I have used in the past as well. The Famag mixers have a continuously variable speed control that is labeled 1-10 with no stops along the way. The motor controller is a fully digital variable speed driver. As a result it provides both high torque and high efficiency at low speed (as opposed to a KA mixer). To keep the cost down there is only one motor and the mixing helix rotates at a fixed multiple of the bowl speed. As best I can figure out an industrial spiral mixer has a fixed bowl speed and generally a few (often two) spindle speeds where the high speed is perhaps twice the speed of the low speed.
Since I am baking in a convection oven, it would be really hard to get burnt ends.
The top two are sterling with a lot of good lift-off from the surface of the bloom. Shaping is really good and consistent, now avoiding the barbell end syndrome, and the open crumb is first class. The crust is quite thin from what I can see.
Also employing the Philippe Gosselin overnight cold autolyse he uses in his baguettes a l'ancienne. This is a great dough for open crumb. As demonstrated here.
Any reason to have used bleached flour?
That was what I had a 25 lb bag of.
I went back and looked at David Snyder's reconstruction of Philippe Gosselin's formula with levain and with the exception of his 20% PFF and my 12% PFF they are amazingly close and entirely by accident. I am using higher protein flour and no commercial yeast, but it is nice to stumble into a formula with a history of success.
Back again with another set of baguettes again using Abel’s formula which I’ve made a few minor changes to over time. Here is my current formula.
For three baguettes about 280 g (to account for aliquot jar)
Total Flour
Total Dough Weight (g)
900.3
Prefermented
9.09%
Total Formula
Liquid Levain
Final Dough
Ingredients
%
Grams
%
Grams
Ingredients
Grams
Total Flour
100.00%
522.5
100.00%
47.5
Final Flour
475
AP Flour/T55
100%
522.5
100%
47.5
AP Flour/T55
475
Strong Bread Flour
0%
0
0%
0.0
Bread Flour
0
Water
67%
353.5
100%
47.5
Water
Autolyse (93%)
0.00%
0.0
0%
0.0
Autolyse(cool)
306
Final (7%)
0.00%
0.0
0%
0.0
Bassinage(v cool)
0
IDY
0.07%
0.38
IDY
0.38
Diastatic Malt Powder
1%
5.22
Malt
5.22
Salt
1.80%
9.38
Salt
9.38
Starter (in final dough)
2.20%
11.5
24%
11.5
Levain
95
Totals
176.89%
900.3
224%
106.5
900.3
I dissolve the levain, diastatic malt and IDY in the water and then add flour and mix until no dry flour is present. (No NY is used)
After 20 mins I add salt wetting the salt with water (I’ve measured and usually add about 4-6 g of water at this point, I should probably add that to the table above as the bassinage) and ensure that it is fully dissolve and mixed first with dimpling it and then pinching it in. The Rubaud kneading used for 3-4 minutes.
After 50 mins of rest at 82ºF coil folds are done with another set 50 mins later. Watching the aliquot jar bulk fermentation ended when 30% rise achieved. The dough is placed into a 2ºC fridge. The next day 18 hours later the dough is taken out of the fridge and divided and pre-shaped. I watched Abel’s video and tried his pre-shape and shaping technique and really liked it. Once the pre-shape was done the oven was pre-heated set at 500ºF. After 20 mins the dough was shaped and placed onto the couche and left at very warm room temperature for 20 mins. The shaped dough was then placed in the fridge to firm up prior to scoring. The Silvia towel was then loaded into the oven filled with boiled water. After 20 minutes of chilling the shaped baguettes were transferred to the peel and then scored. This time the lame was about 45* angle to the dough surface, attempting to use quick cuts and maybe about 0.5 cm deep, however, I never quite get the score I want with one go so recut a bit to get the 0.5 cm depth. Flour is brushed off and then water is heavily brushed on.
The baguettes are then loaded into the oven and 250 mL of boiled water is poured in the cast iron skillet. The baguettes are baked with steam for 13 minutes. The steaming equipment is removed and the oven temperature is dropped to 480ºF convection on. After 5 mins they are rotated, after a further 5 mins they are rotated again and the oven temperature dropped to 375ºF. 3 minutes later they are done.
I have some flattish ends again, these are the baguettes with which I struggled a bit getting the length and applied too much downward rather than outward pressure. I still need more practice stretching and rolling. I have to concentrate on stretching outwards and not pressing downwards. The otherwise got a better lift so cutting the bulk was a positive and it helped with ears and grigne.
We shall see at dinner time if the crumb suffers from the reduction in bulk rise from 35-40 to 30%.
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I’m pretty happy with the crumb, it isn’t too different from the crumbs with the 35-40% rise. I think the benefits outweighs the negatives with reducing the rise back to 30% in bulk.
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Assez dit...
Merci beaucoup Monsieur Will.
I noticed that the Louis Lamour baguettes are rising during BF in the fridge. I have some BF now and may pull the at 20% anticipating more cold rise.
This is my second or third time using the aliquot dough as pate ferment for the next dough. It is working out nicely and mixes well with the new dough. I plan to start using 100g dough in the aliquot.
Idea - since most of us don’t slice warm breads, I have started the practice of mixing an extra 100-150g dough. That way the extra dough can be shaped and baked, then sliced and eaten warm. No guilt for slicing hot bread. It’s a special treat...
Very interesting and provocative idea of using the aliquot jar dough as a pate fermenté. I only bake baguettes at most once per week, I wonder if the pate fermenté would last that long in the fridge.
I have to admit that I have eaten one of my baguettes warm, once or twice....
They look great from all angles inside and out. Beautiful crumb as usual. The shorter bulk was the ticket to grigne and ears. I am surprised that they didn't want to roll out more. That tells me that you could even go shorter time in bulk and gain more extensibility. If memory serves me, Abel's recipe has an 8 hour bulk. I calculate the hydration at 69% with the water from the levin and saline solution. Not counting the brushed on water. I was wondering about the heavily brushed on water after scoring. What is the reason for it? When I tried it on other loaves, not baguettes, I got uneven browning and a harder crust.
Nice to see your analytics paying off. Keep up the good work.
Thanks Don. As you’ve always said higher hydration, I am slowly inching hydration up, about 5 mL this time over last. The shorter bulk time does seem to have helped with the grigne and ears, at least seems to be the case. Then of course, I changed more than one variable which makes it harder to discern cause and effect. I increased the hydration a bit, shorten bulk and used a different pre-shape and shaping technique. But it would be more logical that the shorter bulk did the trick.
In terms of extensibility, it may just be my shaping isn’t quite good enough yet, I feel that I was pressing down too much on the two that got squashed ends a bit too much instead of pushing outwards. I think I have enough of the same flour to bake another set with it again. I now have a good idea of its extensibility I don’t have to be too worried about it getting too long so the pre-shape can be rolled out a bit longer to start me along the way to the final length.
In terms of the water, I’ve been in the habit of brushing on water pretty generously right before my doughs go into the oven as a last step for some time now. I like the sheen it gives the crust and it seems to enhance the blisters. I haven’t seen uneven browning as an effect, I went back through my photos of my baguettes and I can see the same browning pattern in the ones I didn’t brush water onto as the ones I did. I’ll have to keep an eye on that.
Edited to add: Sorry I didn’t answer your question about bulk time. The bulk takes about 3.5-4 hours I think. I don’t watch the clock after the second coil folds, I just keep an eye on the aliquot jar. I bulk at a warm 82ºF.
Benny, because we are mercilessly going to run you though the paces and have you walk us through either: how you get that open crumb, or where you buy those baggies from. And your scoring and shaping are in continuous improvement mode! Study up!
As I keep telling you folks, I don’t know why I’m getting the crumb that I do. I just keep applying the lessons learned from each bake and all the information that everyone has contributed to this CB. I have no secret sauce that I know of. Well, maybe just he miso I am making but that isn’t ready yet.
I should have been specific. I was referring to the retard time of Abel's recipe. I don't think the retard is a period of suspended animation. Flavor is developed then and in my fridge the dough slowly continues to ferment for awhile before the chill sets in.
Ah I believe the original formula had a 12-15 hour cold retard. I don’t think I have done that short of a cold retard, but I’ve now made this so many times I can’t keep track. I think I’ve done between 18 to 24 hours of cold retard.
I’m sure since I retard en bulk that the dough does continue to ferment for sometime. Now I wonder if I should cut bulk earlier at 25% since it is fermenting further in the fridge and since I do allow further development on the bench during pre-shaping and shaping I might still get more oven spring. I’m not sure what effect that would have on the crumb but the only way to find out is to test it.
and it probably depends on a few variables, as in all things bread baking. But there is a point where a cold retard can only go so far before the gluten structure starts to break down. I'll guess that 18-24 hours is likely still fine for this formula.
Just made a discovery that the temperature of your dough going into retard makes a considerable difference in the rise/no rise during retardation. Prior to this finding my main focus was on the actual temp of the fridge. 39F and below - no rise. Higher temps - rise relative to the temp over 40F.
BUT, the actual dough temp should be factored in. Last bake the dough went into the fridge at ~30% increase and it doubled during retardation. IMO, the dough over proofed because of that. This present bake went into the same fridge at the same temp and exhibited no growth what so ever. Same formula. The difference was, the first dough mentioned was fermented at ~78F. I estimate the actual dough temp @ 80-81F. The present dough was fermented at ~73. Estimated dough temp of 75F.
I believe that the final temperature of the BF dough should be taken into consideration. If warm fermenting - terminate the dough earlier or put dough in freezer for a quick cool down. First option seems better.
We all agree that baguettes are a unique bread that requires special considerations. Using CY (alone or as a kicker) probably exacerbates the issue.
I am interested in the thoughts of others concerning this.
Danny
What you’re saying is totally logical, a dough that starts out at a higher temperature will definitely take longer to reach fridge temperatures than a dough that starts out at a lower temperature. I’ve never measured the dough temperature at the end of bulk, but since I use my proofer and it is usually set to 82ºF I assume the dough temperature is pretty close to that. Because I bulk and proof the dough in a square Pyrex dish I cannot accurately measure rise in the dough that might occur in the fridge, I use the aliquot jar for that during bulk. But since the mass of dough would take far longer to reach fridge temperature than the aliquot jar I do not continue to monitor aliquot jar rise once cold retard starts.
It is quite possible that I’m still overproofing my dough then based on what you are saying. More convincing evidence as to why I’m not getting the ears and grigne until my last bake where I pared back on bulk rise......
Benny, I hope we are starting to break the “crumb code”. It is possible that I have fallen prey to old ways. Nearly a year ago THIS ARTICLE was published. Prior to that discovery, I was over fermenting my dough in an attempt to develop gas in an effort tp produce open crumb and large oven spring. Little did I know that I was headed in the wrong direction.
It is possible that I “feel off the wagon” and lost faith in the oven spring concept when it came to this quest for exceptional baguettes. I hope this hits the nail on the head. We need to run this by Don and Doc also. They are closely bringing up the rear...
Yes I remember your post well Dan. But I have fallen prey to so many bakers who say push the bulk, so I’ve even had some overproofed batards of late. Thinking about how long it takes dough to chill down to a low enough temperature that yeast activity ceases, I recall earlier in this thread that Doc posted a graph and it was quite a few hours of ongoing fermentation. It is likely that I am overproofing my dough for these baguettes when you also consider the bench time in a hot room with the oven heating while pre-shaping and shaping.
So I guess with my next bake I have to test this out and end bulk earlier, say 25% and see if I can get better oven spring, ears and grigne while still getting the crumb that everyone seems to like.
So is the secret to my open crumb that I have been relatively overproofing my dough at the expense of oven spring, ears and grigne? That is what this current conversation is leading me to think....
Next week, assuming we finish off the supply of baguettes currently in the freezer, I will have to reduce bulk rise to 25% to test this out.
“So is the secret to my open crumb that I have been relatively overproofing my dough at the expense of oven spring, ears and grigne?”
No, I don’t see it that way at all.
Ears and Gringe
It is my opinion that without large oven spring that both ears and open crumb s not going to happen.
The lack of ears, assuming great oven spring, is probably due to the physical characteristics of the skin and/or the heating of the crust during the first few minutes of the bake. Many of us are headed towards weaker flours that produce thinner crusted baguettes. It seems that thicker crust (very much like Hamelman’s Pain au Levain) produces the most dramatic ears.
I am of the opinion that weak flours make the best traditional type baguettes with outstanding taste. BUT, ears are not as easily produced.
So I improved my grigne and ears by reducing the bulk rise by 5% and kept open crumb mostly. I think that to me confirms a bit that I have been pushing bulk a bit too far. I plan to stop bulk next time at 25% and see what that does. If the ears and grigne improve but the crumb deteriorates then at least in part, my open crumb may have been somewhat related to pushing fermentation. If by stopping at 25% rise the open crumb persists then I would agree with you that my pushing bulk isn’t part of what was giving me open crumb.
I think Don ends bulk fermentation around 25% if I recall correctly.
It is still so hard for me to wrap my head around 25% bulk ferment. However, The results can not be disputed. So... Side note, could it be the weak gluten of durum wheat, that helped be unknowingly get such nice crumb, from my semola bakes? I will retire to my lodge, and think on this some more.
Benny, it seems that some of what applies to other breads does work the same with baguettes.
Oh yes of course, I agree. Overproofing batards also cause loss of oven spring and loss of ears. Everything is relative of course, if you're a bit overproofed you can still have great crumb.
And of course more water. Baguettes and Ciabatta are basically the same dough with the latter having more water and a longer proof. Ciabatta is not scored because it would not help and the cuts would probably seal back up even if you could get the blade into them. I think the lack of ears comes partly from fermenting to the limits and of course water. The reason most pros shoot for a less full bulk fermentation is to shape a more relaxed and less elastic dough. I am speaking about yeasted versions because it is quite another matter with SD. A hybrid like Abel's recipe will behave more like a CY than an SD only. SD is more of a flavor component than a fermentation engine in the hybrid version.
I have done the Bouabsa recipe as a hybrid and kept to the same timeframe as the IDY only. Yes I would guess 25% or less is what I look for. Just a sign that the yeast is active and the dough is starting to move.
The dough doctor advocates cross stacking the dough ball trays in pizzeria walk in coolers, to assist it dropping the temperature of the dough balls rapidly. Then after a couple of hours They are close stacked.
Lets just say I have watched a lot of Youtube baguette videos and many of the pros are quite specific about the DT for baguettes and the magic number for many of them is 74 or 73 F. The French dudes say 24. Abel says in his recipe 73 is best because it helps with extensibility. I saw that Doc called him out on the science behind that but I have found it to be helpful and that has been my target DT and it seems to work well for me. I will use warmer or colder during the bassinage to make adjustments if I miss the mark.
I was incorrect in the time he recommends for BR it was 12 to 18 hours and not 8 as previously stated.
Interesting, I’ve always liked a warm BF, not really sure why but I believe somewhere along the way I’ve read that 80-82ºF is pretty optimal for yeast.
Benny, it would be interesting to see the crumb of a bake other than Able’s formula. It may rule out whether it is the formula or the technique. What about Bouabsa? It is Don’s favorite, I think.
Hey Dan, I blogged my bake of the Bouabsa baguettes, but that was before this CB started. My second set of baguettes - Bouasba The crumb was surprisingly good for my second go at baguettes given how bad my first set were.
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Benny, formula doesn’t seem to matter for the crumb. But did the Bouabsa BF to 30% or what?
What did the Bouabsa have in common with your present bakes that are producing the great crumb?
The best baguette crumbs have had the tiny amount of IDY in common. When I made the sourdough baguette formula outlined in the CB I didn’t get an open a crumb. All my other baguettes which had good crumb had a tiny % of IDY in them, either alone in the Bouabsa or with levain in Abel’s formula. I’ve used so many different flours with differing protein levels I cannot even remember now.
Edited to add: In regards to the bulk rise, I made a note that it didn’t rise very much at all. I’d say it was around 25% or even less but not 30% or more. At that time I wasn’t using the aliquot jar so wasn’t as precise with the % rise. I also noted that I used 50% bread flour and 50% AP which at that time was 13.3% protein. I also used 150 FF. All of that to say it was very different from how I am making my baguettes now with low protein with less gluten building.
I take back what I said about you improving all along. You've only gone sideways and have been handicapping yourself with sourdough ;-)
Is rooted in changing as part of any sequential test only variables that are known to be independent. And the closer you get to optimality the more experiments yield worse results (because from the top of the hill, every direction is down).
One of the really great thing about this community bake is the richness of the well controlled and well documented experiments. The outstanding question is which variables really affect the outcome, and there is probably enough data to sort it out, or at least to structure a new series of experiments to close on that answer.
Hello, friends.
The good Doctor, is correct. This community bake is leaving behind a wealth of very valuable information, not only for the participants, but for all "John Q. boulangère!" To my point, I think it would be great if some of our best analytical minds, went over all the data and developed an open source, exclusive Fresh loaf baguette formula. It would be a shame not to document all this data, before we move on to a raisin muffin, or better yet Kaiser roll community bake, and this endeavor is pushed to the wayside. Some important points that should be included in our master formula are as follows.
1. Flour protein content/country of origin
2. Saccharomyces cerevisiae, Lactobacillus sanfranciscensis/Candida milleri?
3. Bulk fermentation % and gluten development
4. Time and temperature
5, Best practices for shaping and slashing.
To name just a few.
Anyone interested in heading up or joining the exploratory committee, can sign in below.
Project "B" crispy exploratory committee sign up sheet. (Top secret)
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
To get a condensed version or a summary of best practices. A cliff notes version of cherry picked highpoints without the the Tourettes inducing page loading is good idea. The first line would be practice, practice, practice because there is no substitute.
By the way I loved the line about a Roman among the Greeks. Like you, I am more of a fly by the seat of my pants kind of guy when it comes to baking. It's not that I don't appreciate the science but I rely on repetition and intuition. I pay attention when the professional speak and I wish more of them were involved here but I understand why they would not want to watch us bandy about something they do all day for a living.
consistently been "the first 10,000 are the hardest, after that it gets easy".
I'm with you that repetition and intuition, paying attention to details, both our own as well as others has been the ticket to my own success.. Trying to figure out the what went wrong and what went right. And why. Continuous process improvement, "copy exact", don't change multiple variables at any one time when trying to correct or figure out (although I'm occasionally guilty of that), don't let frustration get the better of us, there's always another mix tomorrow.
What a lot of it, probably almost all of it, really boils down to is that experience is the best teacher and that there's little substitute for time in the field. There's a reason that Abel and other professional baguetteers can roll them out perfectly in their sleep. No need to look any further than this CB to see that in real-time.
I've mentioned this before in terms of my own IT career, and of course now with baking - those who "never make a mistake" will never fully understand why what they do works. Mistakes, and then understanding/correcting them, were an essential part of my work-life success.
Maybe this should be the preface to any manual that Will has so graciously agreed to take on for us ;-) .
**Cliff Notes and reusing the same gussied up book reports from year-to-year kept my early education from being on life-support. It wasn't just my charm!
My forte, is to light the fuse, plant the seed, as it were. Then I sit back and watch my idea take shape! Very satisfying indeed!
I am glad, MT, that you enjoyed my analogy of a Roman among Greeks! Smile, sometimes my wit, hits with impeccable timing!
Yes I know, I had some very early success with the Bouasba and then introduced sourdough levain which introduced a variable which made the baguettes more difficult in a few ways. However, I did stick with a formula that I felt tastes really good which is why I stuck with the hybrid. I should give the Bouasba a go again sometime.
Same formulation as yesterday but because I had a mid-day meeting I had to retard for 4hrs after BF and before divide/shape. And it over-fermented as well so it was a little hard to shape, plus I did not chill before baking so slashing was again sticky though it came out OK. This is 100% levain with no commercial yeast but based on Bennie's results I will probably give it a try as the only change. The first shot is my regular 3 whole +1 cut, the second shot is one a neighbor sent of the one she received which might actually be a better looking crumb. Shaping seemed to fix the problem of yesterday but still not as open as Bennie's.
Over proofed or not, your shaping is super consistent Doc. You’re right the crumb in the bottom photos is excellent.
I took a random baguette out of the freezer, for sausage and pepper hero's tonight. The photo compares my mediocre baguette, to the offering from a mediocre Italian restaurant. (John's of 12th street) For my money, the flavorless soft crusted mass produced bread can not even be a blister on the seam side, of my home baked number!
Smile...
It would be really hard to eat most mass produced bread now that I've been baking my own for so long, I can imagine how flavourless that bread must have been compared to your home baked bread.
I would guess you are nearing the limits of incremental improvements with SD. That's as close to fabled lacy honeycomb that I have seen. I would agree as you stated to try the CY addition to achieve the crumb Benny is getting and you may like the effect on the crust as well. It may feel like starting over but it is the just next planet in the system.
Doc you are running up on perfection at warp speed. “Beam me up Scottie”. Each of your latest bakes are progressively approaching the ultimate in all respects. Stellar improvement...
The time has come to lock down the formula, and procedure. Because, from the lofty preach on which you sit, there is no where left to go but down! Boy, I am something of a wordsmith, for a barley passed, pot head H.S. Graduate! (There it is again...Boisterous Roman!) Smile...
Something a little different for a change...
Posted as a blog at http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/65401/hamelman-sd-seed-bread-baguettes-course
Not only are your baguettes quite fetching, you are an accomplished photographer to boot!
I'm a point and shoot type of photographer, more a picture taker than photographer. But with these baes I get plenty of practice.
thanks, alan
This batch went back to the 10.7% protein that comes from mixing up the levain with a 13% bread flour and making up the dough with 10.5% AP (12% PFF). 69% hydration, cold autolyse with AP flour and water only. 1.5% salt (which is a little low, even when there is salt sprinkled on the crust). Put levain in mixer, added IDY and autolysed 60% hydration dough, mix on speed 1 adding 43g of water and 15g salt over 8 min. After 10 min at speed 1; double spindle speed to 200/min for one additional minute. 3:00 BF from a starting DT = 67°F and finishing at 76°F (82°F kitchen) with two folds when it came off the mixer then one more at 20 min to see how it was doing. Aliquot jar showed 28% volume increase at 3:00 after start of mix. Divide, 30 min rest, shape, counter proof for 90 min and chill in 38°F retarder for 3 hr for timing. Standard oven cycle (preheat to 525F, bake 8 min @ 500°F 100% humidity, then 9 min @ 430°F 20% humidity.
Pre-bake chill made slashing easy, and I tried to use the full 1/3 of the circumference as boundaries for slash lines. This increases the spacing between adjacent slashes which helps to keep the belts from breaking and seems to make for better ears. There is clearly some adjustment to be made in terms of slash placement to minimize the tendency of the loaf to twist counter to the direction of the slashes. I need to do some measurements to calculate how to set up the boundaries for the slash offsets as they progress down the barrel.
The result shows that it is not just the inclusion of a small amount of IDY that yields Benny's crumb.
I have included the photo of yesterday's batch below for comparison. Not much difference that I can see, so the impact of the addition of .07% IDY is not a significant change.
OK so it isn’t just the IDY alone....
Now you bring up the scoring, that was another variable in yesterday’s bake. I also scored more across the width of the baguette than I have in the past and tried to leave more dough between the scores just as you have been doing Doc. Interesting that you mention that this seems to make better ears, that might be what also helped with the ears too. I had noticed in your baguettes that you leave a good amount of spaced between the scores so I made an effort to do the same, but not nearly as well as you have done. I think that is a good point and something that I will strive to do more so next time.
Your shaping is so consistent now, really impressive.
Doc, your baguettes are so consistent. It is difficult to tell one batch from another. The mark of an expert!
When I started this challenge I had no idea what would come out of the oven. It was very much like tossing stones in a pond and watching what happened. Eventually I got to a place where I was consistently making ugly "baguettes". But once they were consistent I could see the impact of making single parameter adjustments. So many parameters and so many relationships between them: time, temperature of each step and ingredient, type of flour, protein level, ash content, bleached/unbleached, %salt, aliquot jar, poke test, window pane, P/L values, oven cycle, shaping, slashing, browning, ascorbic acid, L-cysteine/nutritional yeast, diastatic malt, hydration, autolyse, bassinage, retard time/temperature, steaming, mixer type and capabilities, ... crust thickness, crumb color and tenderness, ... and of course taste.
I am now (after almost 5 months) at a place where I am happy to give the test baguettes to the neighbors, and they seem happy to get them. And every batch has a single change or if an improvement was observed becomes a repeat with no change to verify consistency and define a new baseline. There is a constant quest to understand what makes a difference (and how much of a difference) and how to simplify to get rid of non-value added steps (like discovering that a long period of refrigeration at low temperatures is useful to stop the process when you have to interrupt it, but what happens during the cooldown time it takes to reach the low stable temperature is very important and has to be understood and planned carefully). Details count, mostly, but some things actually don't seem to make any difference (within certain bounds). And you need to know what is important and what is not. And baguettes are quite unforgiving of process errors. So it has been great fun, with more foreseeable fun as things continue to improve (slowly).
Hey all. Just wanted to post my baguette bake today...first post on here since 2013! Yikes.
It was my 2nd try at baguettes. My first was back in 2010 I believe...with lack lustre results. I am happy with how these turned out considering! This bake produced 3 baguettes. It took the first two to get the hang of shaping...so the largest 3rd one came out the best. All three have good flavour, crumb structure and crust. The 3rd one just looks the best. But probably should have kept it at 3 slashes instead of trying to fit in 4 on shorter baguettes as this. I took the formula from breadcetera which I believe was inspired by Boubasa's Baguettes formula. I used a mixer, in lieu of slap and folds, followed by 3 stretch and folds in the bowl during the bulk ferment. Also, I used a 13% bread flour. I hear that AP is best for baguettes, so maybe next time, I will mix 50/50 bread and AP flour.
Glad to be back at baking!
John
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Welcome to the Baguette CB, glad you came over to join in the festivities. I’ll say it again that your baguettes are quite amazing for your second go in 10 years.
Thanks! Glad to be on board. Looks like many inspiring posts to look forward to!
John
They look great for early attempts. Every one of the active participants of this CB have come to respect the difficulty of baking such a simple bread.
Danny
Thanks Dan!
Do you have any advice on the following?: Instant yeast vs sourdough starter...in baguettes, do you find much of a difference in the overall flavour or texture? I know the answer for sourdough loaves and rye breads, etc. Just wondering if there is really a need to use a starter in lieu of commercial yeast, to achieve the best results. I am under the impression that most artisan bakers in France use instant yeast for baguettes and yield some of the worlds best....am I wrong?
John
John, there seems to be 2 distinct camps on the CB. Maybe 3... Some prefer SD, others a hybrid of SD & CY, and those that use CY only.
The consensus is that SD produces a thicker crust and chewier crumb and CY produces a thinner crust with a softer chew. Of course, CY doesn’t have any of the sour notes like SD. Myself and MTLoaf use CY. Most others on the CB use SD (with or without a CY kicker).
The thread has grown to enormous proportions. It contains a number of findings. There aren’t many regular participants, but they are very committed to excellence.
Let us know if you want to try CY only, SD, or a combo of both. We can suggest formulas.
I think I will try another few goes at a 100% CY formula, then take you up on that offer and ask you guys for a good CY/SD formula.
John
I am in the IDY camp for making batons. White flour and yeast for me with an occasional dollop of SD for a change. SteveB was an early influencer from my lurking days when he used to post here on TFL. The constant ringing in my ears makes it hard for me to hear the song of the baker from a cooling loaf. Nice work on the baggies. Judging by whats has transpired here I should warn you that they are addictive and can lead to OCD
I remember you actually from back in the day. Great to be back.
I have ringing in my ears as well...too many years of having my guitar blasted to eleven on stage...I can fortunately still hear the baguette singing though!
Wonder where all the oldies are...PiPs, Dabrownman, Golgi70, Wingnut, isand66, Jantecook, etc. Been too long!
John
Long time no see. For a guy who is out of baking shape, at least on the baguette front, you put up a pretty mean first post here.
Yes, a fair amount of the old timers have ridden off into the sunset. Isand66 is still active as well as dmsnyder and minioven, but dabrownman took to hiding out at the tail end of last year. He did it once before in 2017, but not for this long. PiPs - boy I wish Phil was posting, and also his photography shots as well. Golgi Wingnut and Janetcooks had taken an exit stage right quite a while ago. Ditto for the magnificent txfarmer and siao-ping. Same for proth, mebake, CAphyllis and a handful of others. Debra Wink still peeks in on occasion too. However the B team has stepped up their game and we have a new full squad ready to post some fabulous bakes, just as they've been doing for the past few years.. And now you.
alan
Hey alan! Great to be back.
Thanks for updating me on all the past regulars. Sad to see many of them gone. Hey, I came back, so maybe they will too!
Look forward to once again contributing and viewing!
John
Still working to dial in the T65. It has been a long journey, but a major breakthrough may be right around the corner. For those that are not “gifted”, perseverance is an absolute necessity.
French flour is very foreign to my previous skill sets. Even though it is a weak flour, it develops gluten quickly. I am under the impression that developing the gluten up-front helps when handling the sticky, slack dough later in the process. BUT, if the dough is worked too much, the precious flavor is compromised. Because of this consideration the next batch will be mixed on slow speed only and for as short a time as possible, while still developing the gluten. It’s a challenge to make a good looking baguette, but a beast of a job to make a great looking baguette that possesses the texture, chew, and flavor that is expected from a traditional french version. When it comes to food, the French are un-excelled.
BF ~30%. Shaped dough was final proofed using the finger indention and was terminated a little earlier. The dough was then placed in the freezer to finished proofing and stiffen up a bite for slashing. That worked very well. Whereas previous slashing of un-chilled T65 was a “drag fest”, the chilled dough slashed cleanly with moderate effort.
These were baked at 485F. Previous bakes were at 550F initially, then dropped to 485.
I have hopes that I am sneaking up on the crumb. The focus is on terminating the BF @ <30%. The BF temp is also cool (73F) in order to eliminate rise during retard. The present hypothesis is that gassy dough hinders shaping. That the cell structure will form during Final Proof and especially during the initial phase of the bake. Nothing proven, just hypothetical at this point. Benny has set the bar, and a number of us are determined to jump it...
Bake #27 is in the works. Dough was mixed on speed #1 only. BF rose ~22-25% (will accurately calculate and report when the bake is published) with no rise in fridge.
Your shaping and scoring now is so refined, it really is Dan. You now have a signature look to your baguettes as well just like Alan, Don, and Doc. I must be the only one other than Alan since his room temperature is so high, who bulk ferments at a warm temperature. I’m very interested to see your next next bake with the greatly reduced BF to 22-25% turns out. This is the direction I was thinking of with my next bake. I will still BF at a warm 82ºF so as to not change too many variables especially since I’ll be doing half of a different flour as I am running low and cannot find the same flour again ugh. Next time as well, I will pre-shape and shape my dough earlier to allow for even longer in the fridge to firm up for scoring as that does seem to be the way to go. Unfortunately with a side by side my freezer isn’t large enough to put the shaped dough into it. ’ll also continue to do the scoring leaving a larger dough gap between each score.
That or you slashed them differently. I see some shackles broken through which some may consider a defect but it provides hope that the crumb is what you are striving for.
Don, the crumb shot was added to the post.
Your comment about the broken bridge got me to thinking... my previous (many) bakes started at 550F. This time I baked at 485F. Wonder if that affects the bridges? Have you tried starting out at 550F?
Wow stunning crumb Dan, you must be very happy with that.
Was 500 and the my stone got too hot and charred the bottoms and curled the ends up. I am beginning to think my Fibrament is too big front to back I have an inch clearance and two inches on the the sides. I wander if I could trim it with a diamond blade in a grinder.
You can trim it with a diamond blade. But if you call the company, I think they will tell you an inch around is good. I believe that is how they cut mine and it works fine in my oven.
Have you tried raising the stone a little? I’ll be raising mine a notch hoping to get more heat on the crust to even out the crumb.
It was getting too hot on the bottom rack and the heating was uneven so it sits on the second rack and that makes steaming from above more of a challenge. I moved it towards the back more and it helped today so I may have found the sweet spot. I may try smooth side up to see if that works. The stone seems to follow the oven temp is why I don't start super hot
The baguettes in black background looks like Klingon torpedoes in outer space but that is an explosive crumb they delivered. No denseness on the edges, a lot of uneven sized holes with a nice sheen. Eurika! or By jove I do believe you have done it. Take a bow before we lose you to IG;-) I would imagine the taste and texture are out of this world.
Don, the taste and texture was, as expected good, but it was not as good as it should have been. The dough was oxidized too much and the flavor was affected. This time (not baked yet) the dough was mixed only on speed 1. It seems french flour handles better when the gluten is at least moderately developed initially.
French flour is fickle and requires special handling, IMO.
Me and IG will never be! I see it as a “post pretty pictures place”, with way too little information. Floyd is stuck with me :-)
Is the new mixer that powerful? That it could oxidize that quickly seems unlikely since the crumb was so open but I have never used a mixer for baguette dough. The flour is delicate and tears easily and maybe better suited to hand mixing.
How long was the bulk retard? That is when flavor is developed. Was this the recipe by the guy who wrote Hondo?
Fickle is not how I would describe the Gluten of the Gods
Don, oxidation actually strengthens the gluten. The spiral mixer is extremely gentle and thorough on a dough. But it seems the gluten in french flour develops quickly and it is possible that oxidation occurs likewise.
With only limited experience and no scientific evidence it seems to me that Le Moulin d'Auguste Traditional Wheat Flour - T65 comes together super quick. It appears to oxidize quickly and when this happens the flavor is adversely affected. Not terrible, but just not as outstanding as it can be. My balancing act is to develop the gluten to build strength and make it more easily handled without pushing it to the point that characteristic flavor is compromised. Further testing may prove this wrong, but for now this is my avenue forward.
NOTE - I purposely described the type of T65 that I am working with. I am under no impression that all or any T65 behaves the same. When flour is described by mineral content and not protein and when some french flour is not milled from french grain but American and Canadian grains the variables are many.
and if that's your goal, it seems to be working. Where do you go from here? I'm also surprised how white the crumb is, but that could be lighting and the camera too. Once more, this bake checks all the boxes: shaping, consistency, scoring, crumb.
Alan, the crumb is light white. I need to go back and check out my first bakes with T65. They were mixed by hand relying largely on Stretch and Folds for gluten development.
Don, how would you describe the color of your T65 crumb?
Maybe the flavor carotenoids are more fragile in the french flour. I sometimes get a yellowish crumb from minimal hand mixing. Maybe you should have gotten a diving arm mixer ;-) You would know best if the lighting had that effect.
I forgot to ask this question. On my bake yesterday, I had three baguettes baking on stone about 2 inches apart from each other. Once sprung, they were more like an inch apart. I noticed that the bottom side edge crusts of each baguette were still very light coloured and super soft, all along the entire length of the baguettes. Could this be a result of the crowding, or are there other factors at play here?
John
It looks like your oven has room for a couple more pieces of tile if you want stretch them out and be a side loader. That is what is currently in vogue here. You obviously have the dexterity for it from playing music.
I will definitely get more tiles in there next time! Thanks!
John
Yes probably too close together and perhaps not a convection oven. Convection could help but even then radiation is the primary mechanism for getting the crust to the high temperature that browning requires. When the loaves are close together they see each other more than they see a source of heat and the shape factor become critical which you can only fix by spacing them out.
But late in the bake when browning is possible, you can move the loaves off the tile and directly onto the oven rack which both improves the shape factor and allows free convection to put hot air in direct contact with the lower sides of the loaves. Also pulling the parchment as soon as the bottom has hardened up enough to allow it will provide some addition heat where you need it. I don't know what the emissivity of hot parchment is, but being thin it gives up its heat almost instantly and probably is a negative factor after 5 minutes.
I’d say they were too close together I’ve had that as well when I tried to bake four baguettes at once. Three is still a bit iffy but better.
Thanks! More tiles it is!
John
I woke up this morning with an idea in my head, (not really, just figuratively, for effect) what if I treated my baguette dough like I do my pizza dough? That procedure would be to forgo the bulk ferment altogether. I would take the dough straight from the mixer to pre-shape/retard, or even al the way to final shape/retard? Worth the time and energy of giving it a try, or a waste of my time?
Baking baguettes is very addicting. I feel kind of off and anxious, because I don't have a bake going. Thanks for reading. (Photo is strictly for attention)
Kind regards,
Will F.
Enjoying incremental increases... The less aggressive (slow speed) mixing seemed to work out. The flavor was better and the dough (68% hydration) handled well. The ability to shape T65 is getting better. 68% seems a good hydration and developing the gluten early is facilitating better handling. Calculated the increase in the aliquot jar. 30% at the end of the 73F bulk ferment. The dough in the jar rose to ~50% after retardation (~21hr). Raised the bake temp from 485F (last bake) to 500F. I think I am consistently getting better crumb on the bottom half than the top. Thinking more top heat may help eliminate this. Plan to raise the stone another notch.
Ears are improving... So is the color of the crumb.
Overall - Continual Improvement Process (CIP).
Recently started baking one smaller baguette so that it can be sliced and eaten hot, straight out of the oven.
Appreciation and Thankfulness -
I can vividly recall how much I struggled to produce ears on a baguette. Alan has worked patiently with me over the last two years or so. THANKS for sticking with me...
Danny
Now, if these two possible hurricanes could die before they run over us or our neighbors.
Danny it is really remarkable seeing the improvements and refinements you’ve made to your baguette game, truly remarkable. Your shaping and ears are really consistent now and the crumb keeps getting better.
But thank you, and it makes me feel good nonetheless.
There's only so much one can provide via text and phone chats. If you didn't have the aptitude and stick-to-it-ivness no amount of chit chat would bring you so far. There's nothing wrong with taking a bow for your own successes. I recommend it - even in some quiet corner of your psyche and, while it might not make you a better person, it is good for the soul and for the recipients of your efforts.
Personally, in retirement, now that poochie is gone, I might go stir crazy without an outlet like baking and being a member of this community. It's a fine and admirable avocation.
A friend said to me years ago words that still sometimes ring in my ears. "Think about this Alan. With your hands you create the most basic food that families place on their dinner tables".
This is indubitable evidence, that ultra high hydration is unnecessary, and a substitute for poor procedure and technique, when the goal is an open crumb. Kudos on another great bake Danny!
Formula tweaks:
Reduced IDY by .25% to 2.5 Grams @ 1000 G AP Flour
Mixing: 5 minutes on Bosch #1, no other gluten building (i.e.: stretch and folds)
Bulk ferment (In leu of an Aliquot jar)
Start height - 2 1/2 Inches
60 Minutes - 3 Inches.
Timer reset to 15:00 Minutes
75 Minute target - 31/2 inches. Actual reading 3 1/4
Move to pre shape
Set the timer for a 15:00 relaxing rest. Shaping table at the ready.
The shaping was remarkably uneventful, it went off without a hitch. Now to put the babies to sleep.
First cold retard/proof check at 8:00Hrs. (5:00 AM)
The end game. No slip ups today. All is well.
Huge improvement! Baked at 9hrs. retard! So happy! Thanks for not letting me founder around aimlessly, Danny!
Bake timings:
12 Minutes 500+F Full steam (Silvia's towel & broiling tray)
4 Minutes Purge oven and remove steaming apparatus. (Turn, 90 degrees, and switch racks) 500+F
4 Minutes (Turn 90 degrees, and switch rack) 480 F
4 Minutes (Turn 90 degrees, and switch rack) 480 F
4 Minutes (Turn 90 degrees, and switch rack) 460 F
15 Minute oven off door cracked cool down
Conclusion:
This is a result I can build on! I will stick with this exact formula, and procedure. Patience, practice, practice and more practice! At this point, after a couple more bakes the only tweak I foresee, is to raise the hydration too 67%.
Note: This is 100% white AP flour (KAF) Get a load of that color!!
Awaiting the bake.
Will, this is far and away your best looking bake so far. These are true beauties. Perseverance does pay off, along with getting to know what and how to do it. Really satisfying to see. Congrats.
I have to tell you, I was getting pretty frustrated and ready to pack it in. Danny, must have sensed as much, when I stopped posting about two weeks ago. He emailed to check on me. Then, after his nudge brought me back for another try, he emailed again with the revelation that, my bread was grossly over proofed. Two bakes later, here we are!
Smile...
Will, so glad you are seeing dramatic improvements! More often than not, bakers having problems with oven spring, ears , and crumb are due to over fermentation. The reason I know is because I suffered the ill-affects of over fermentation for years. THIS POST was a major breakthrough for me.
The term “over fermentation” is purposely used because the problem can occur during BF and/or Final Proofing.
IMO, everything about your bread shows improvements.
Will the improvement suddenly is super amazing. No longer overfermenting you have great oven spring, ears and grigne. Look at the scoring, you are staying in the middle lane now and without overfermenting they look remarkable. You must be so pleased. Never give up.
You can imagine how disheartening it was for me, watching everyone improve by leaps and bounds, yet my bakes remained mediocre at best! Thanks for your encouragement and taking the time to diagram the scoring. The bake just before this one, when I tried to cut the ferment, and it got away from me, could have been a disaster. I was truthfully about to give up, and resign myself to, very consistently poor baguettes! Thank again for the encouragement!
Kind regards,
Will F.
When you don't oversleep. They look great. It's a new day! The hills are alive with the sound of music! Almost too pretty to eat :-)
I am thrilled to have an outcome I can build on!
You know, all kidding aside. I really think I can at the very least, supplement my retirement, doing something I love, with just baguettes to start!
Nothing better on a summers day, than this sandwich, if your Maltese!
Hey all. I made some adjustments to the baguette formula I used yesterday, to make it yield 2 baguettes instead of 3. Just wanted to get some advice...changes or additions, if you have them. It seems to leave out temperature in a few spots where I feel there should be. Also, do you agree with the procedures, times and temps?
French Baguettes
Final Dough
333g 50/50 organic bread flour/AP flour blend
250g water
7g salt
¼ tsp instant yeast
Instructions
The flour and yeast are all mixed together in a large bowl. A central well is then formed in the flour mixture and 200 g of the water is added to the well. The water is gently stirred with one hand, gradually drawing in all of the flour mixture until a rough dough is formed. The bowl is then covered with plastic wrap and the dough is allowed to rest for an autolyse period of 30 minutes.
After the autolyse, the remaining 50 g of water and the salt is added. The water and salt is then incorporated into the dough by further hand mixing and squishing the dough between fingers, Once the dough starts to come together and all the water is absorbed, the dough is placed in a mixer bowl. Knead mix the dough for 2 minutes on speed 2, then for 10 minutes on speed 4. The bowl is then once again covered with plastic wrap and the dough is allowed to undergo a 1 hour fermentation at ambient temperature, with 6-8 stretch-and-folds being performed every 20 minutes during the 1 hour period. After the one hour bulk fermentation, the dough is placed in the refrigerator and allowed to ferment for an additional 21 hours at 40ºF.
After the 21 hour fermentation period, the dough is removed from the refrigerator and allowed to warm to ambient temperature for 1 hour. The dough is then divided into two pieces of equal weight and each piece is pre-shaped into a short cylinder. The dough pieces are then covered with a plastic sheet and allowed to rest for 15 minutes. Each piece is then shaped into a baguette laid onto a floured couche and allowed to proof at 78ºF for 45 minutes. The baguettes are then scored and baked in a 480ºF oven for 20 minutes, the first 10 minutes with steam.
Thanks in advance!
John
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Geeze, sorry for all the script glitch...what a mess...no idea what happened...i can't even see my post in the EDIT option, so I can't even try to fix it.
John
John, consider dividing and shaping cold.
” dough is removed from the refrigerator and allowed to warm to ambient temperature for 1 hour” At 75% hydration it will be easier to pre-shape and shape the dough cold. At that hydration and using white flour the dough should be extensible for shaping. Once the dough is shaped and couched it can warm and final proof. This way the gas produced and the cell structure will not be disturbed by handling.
I assume this is what most of us are doing, but not sure. Hopefully other bakers will reply, especially if they disagree.
What are you looking for in your baguettes? Crust, crumb, and texture? The group of bakers here have probably tried most everything.
Allows him to edit his post to clear the white space.
When I go into the edit field, all I see is white, where my post should be....no words, no photos, nothing. So I can't edit anything.
Hi Dan. The one problem I noticed when I baked these the other night was that the dough was fighting me during the final shape...mostly during the rolling/extending the cylinder. It kept pulling back to it's original size. I had to roll each one for approx. 15-20 rolls, if not more, till it got to the final size I got. I am surprised I got the cell structure I got after this debacle! I probably should have waited longer for the dough to come to room temp but I followed the formula to 1 hour.
Overall, I am looking for a chewy but not too chewy baguette with a relatively thin crust. Less 'american' style french bread, and more 'euro' french bread. That probably makes no sense. Basically, at this point, I just want to practice baguettes and hopefully get a nice edible end result! Eventually I will be on the search for my perfect baguette, but I am not there yet.
John
The elasticity you experienced is due to the gluten being tight, from the pre-shape, and yes cold dough will be more elastic and less extendable. If you would have stopped, and counter rested the dough for another 5-10 minutes, the gluten would have relaxed, and the dough would have been more extendable. That would have made for less manipulation needed to achieve your final shape.
Best, regards.
Will F.
Thanks Will! Had a feeling that was the issue.
Happy baking
John
One thing some of us are doing here when the elasticity is fighting stretching besides a 10-20 mins bench rest after pre-shaping is to pre-shape in a loose cylinder shape that is partway along to the ultimate size of baguette you wish to reach.
Also while doing final shaping, after each fold giving the dough a stretch to continue to get that elongation so after you’ve done the folding that you don’t need to roll and stretch much more at that point.
Regarding the dough, using a lower gluten dough is also helpful to have less elasticity, many of us are using something around 10-11% protein flour.
Thanks for the advice! I used a 13% protein organic bread flour. Next bake ill mix 50/50 AP and bread flour.
John
John, I think you’re in BC if I’m not mistaken. During the pandemic I’ve spent far too much time shopping for flour. What I’ve found is that most Canadian AP flour is 13.5% protein, the same as most of our bread flour. I was quite surprised to find that. It has been a challenge here in Toronto to find any unbleached flour around 10%. Most AP on our shelves here is Canadian 13.3% protein. I’m not sure what AP flour you have, one that I found that is again out of stock is a PC brand all purpose, it is US grain and it is 10% protein. I actually found that makes a good baguette and my last two bakes were with that flour. I now don’t have enough for another bake so will have to mix and switch to yet another flour and have to get used to that flour’s characteristics.
Yes I am in BC. I typically use a locally milled organic flour, Anita's.
You are correct. I searched for lower % protein flours but it was very difficult! I did find Robin Hood's Cake and Pastry flour. It has 10% protein. I can attest to it's lower gluten development. I once made cinnamon buns and accidentaly used this flour. There was no chew or pull to the dough whatsoever. More like 80% cake, 20% bread in texture. I'd be afraid to try this flour for bread, but please do let me know if you try it and how it worked out!
I haven’t used their Cake and Pastry flour because I thought it was bromated/bleached so I avoided it. La Milanese from Quebec has an AP flour I mentioned somewhere along the way that is 10% protein. I just found a bag of that and will give that I go eventually. I was hoping that Anita’s would be lower protein but again 13.3%.
I actually like my baguettes to have a bit of a chew to them so I don't mind the higher protein flour. The softer a baguette goes, the closer it gets to Wonderbread for me...and that's not what I am after at all!
Good luck with the QB AP!
John
All good information. I remember reading it all now. We were speaking about this yesterday. It would be great to have a few of our best analytical minds, comb though this thread, and cherry pick the most pertinent information. Then compile a readers digest version. That will become a roadmap/baguette manual for the ages! There is so much knowledge in this C.B., we must preserve it, for future generations of fresh loafers! Little too dramatic? I know, I get carried away...Smile.
John, you will be pleased with Alan’s posted formula in the original post of the CB. It is based n Hamelman’s Pain au Levain. It produces gorgeous baguettes that score beautifully.
One comment of the process: You might want to hold the bassinage water until after the gluten is developed at least part way rather than committing it immediately after the autolyse.
Thanks. Actually, I didn't follow the autolyze part of this formula as I thought it may be a mistake by the writer. I always knew autolyse as being a step to hold back the addition of salt for a portion of time. This formula didnt make sense to me to add all the salt and water THEN autolyse.
Thoughts?
John
Technically it wouldn’t be an autolyse if it has the salt. Theoretically the salt would slow the activity of the amylase during autolyse. During autolyse you want the flour to be fully hydrated, but you also want the amylase to start breaking down the starches to maltose that the yeast will be able to use. However, Elsie Lu on this site, did a small study, now it hasn’t yet been repeated but it didn’t show a significant negative effect of the salt on the amylase. That would suggest that adding salt during autolyse, I call it saltolyse, should really be fine. I know some bakers who swear that adding salt during autolyse is completely fine.
I haven't done anything scientific along these lines, but my casual observation was that salt slows down my home-milled flour's absorbption of water during autolyse. So I settled on 60 min without salt. 90 min with salt.
I suppose the salt competes with the flour for the water.
More than once i have forgotten salt entirely, so I like someone's idea (likely alfanso, doc dough, or Mtloaf) to throw it on top (but mix it in later) so as not to forget.
I agree with you that the rationale for no salt is not clear. I had been under the opinion that it slowed down the amylase enzyme activity and thus reduced the maltose availability to the yeast when it was introduced, but some recent unpublished work by Elsie_Iu has convinced me that reduced enzyme activity is probably not the case. And while salt is hygroscopic but I am skeptical that the presence of salt substantially impacts water absorption by the starch (though I could be convinced otherwise).
The one thing that might argue in favor of that theory would be any inhibitory effect that salt might have on the permeability of the coating on whole (un-broken) starch granules. Would like to hear ideas about how to test the hypothesis that absorption is slower with 2% salt than with none, or at least slow enough to impact the dough.
Interesting. I have never heard of that. So add the last 50g water till after the kneading and before the bulk ferment?
John
gluten development requires that energy has to be deposited in the dough and at high hydration’s you just can’t get the dough to accept it because the viscosity is too low and you can’t generate the necessary shear forces without going to a high speed mixer (and even then it takes a very long time). So the guideline I follow is to develop the gluten enough at ~60% hydration that it is showing some strength and then slowly add the remaining water. It works beautifully and you can reach some incredibly high hydration levels without too much trouble. How you handle it after you have mixed it I leave up to you.
I wanted to give the ecstasy powder the weekend off and see if I could find a reasonable domestic alternative for the french flour. I found some Guistos 00 organic pizza flour that they tout as similar to European flour. I used my normal Bouabsa recipe with the 75% hydration. The dough had a similar feel just not quite as soft and silky. It fermented slower and did not exhibit the same extensibility as it did when used to make pizza.
I would say it was the second best flour I have used for baguettes. It was better than any AP I have tried and the crust was very crispy but the flavor was lacking compared to the Auguste. The store also had their organic AP and I may give it a try assuming that it is a lower protein flour.
They baked up ok but didn't grow much during the proof. The crust was really thin and crispy.
Since Benny has been given the open crumb award, the shaping prize is in Dan's pocket and Alfanso has the best ears. I have no chance at the best scoring so I am claiming the thinnest crust award Thank you very much.
Bonus photo Is the backlit baggie like the guy in the video above.
I love how you were able to achieve those long slender elegant tapers Don, those are beautifully shaped and what I’d want my baguettes to grow up to be if I had a larger baking surface. I quite like the crumb and I would agree, you do get the thinnest crust award, the grigne look so delicate. The backlit baguette would make a nice nightlight for a guest bedroom or bath.
Is it your oven that is confining you or the size of your steel? Good idea for the baton night light. It would be nice to include a bread in the oven scented version. I am looking for investors to ramp up production ;-)
I have $20 USD I can invest in your innovative product!
I could order a larger baking stone than the baking steel that I have. I’m just cheap. I’ve only had the baking steel a little more than a year and don’t feel like I’ve gotten my money’s worth from it yet. I really purchased it to get more heat into the bottom of pie crusts so size wasn’t an issue. It is only in the past month where I have been baking better baguettes that the thought of a larger stone has started to enter my mind.
Good morning, Bennie.
I too, am toying with the idea of a scrap piece of marble. However, the baguette pan has it's advantages, in my old leaky gas oven. I can move the pans around the scorching hot oven with the agility of a gazelle! That old oven is the only thing I will miss about Manhattan! She is an old reliable friend.
I have a question for you regarding the aliquot jar method. I remembered my wife always has a specimen jar around in case we need a sample from one of the pets. I acquired it,(smile) and plan on giving it a go next bake. I plan on trying to use the 30 ml line (1 oz.) The graduation marks are 1/4 I will shoot for hitting that 1/4 line. Very small distance. I was wondering why you mark off the dough manually?
Good morning Will. I’m still uncertain of whether or not I will upgrade to some sort of larger baking stone. I think I will hold off and decide later, I’m currently not certain that I will want to bake longer baguettes since they will not fit in the side by side freezer section of my fridge anyhow.
Because I can never predict how high the small dough sectioned off for the aliquot jar will be, and I’m not precise about measuring it, I always measure the height of it once I have it firmly compacted at the bottom of the jar. I recently have been first placing about 10 mL of water in the jar and then pressing the dough into the bottom of it. I have found, based on Doc’s suggestion, that having the water in the jar helps reduce air pockets at the bottom of the jar. Once I have the dough pressed in well, I just pour off the water and then measure the height of the dough. I then can easily calculate what height 25, 30, 35% rise would be and mark those. I usually use painter’s tape. Then it is easy to watch for growth. It makes adjusting build fermentation more easily from bake to bake rather than guessing at the rise since I don’t use a cambro like many of you do.
Dan has suggested, since I have two jars, to pour the equivalent amount of water to the height of the dough into the empty jar after taring the jar. Then you can easily calculate how much water is 25, 30, 35% more and use those higher markings in the aliquot jar. I may actually use this method next time.
Anyhow, that is why I mark them manually because we’re talking about small differences in height so want to be pretty precise to make this useful.
Benny
I am thinking to just lop off 15 minutes from the bulk. Then gage from there, up or down. All my other variables remain constant. Room temperature has been holding steady at 74F. I keep my flour and water always in the same spot. Granted I will need to adjust from room temperature seasonally. I call this the close enough for Rock & roll method! As I mentioned in another post, I am more a big picture type, and not very detail orientated. (That 25% rise line is really a small change!)
Consider this, Benny. Determine a specific weight for your Aliquot dough. Use your water/dough method to mark the level height of that dough. Calculate your desired increase and mark the jar.
Once this is done, if you continue to use the same Aliquot dough weight your measurements will remain the same.
NOTE - I bet the results would be the same if you spritzed the Aliquot jar instead of use more water. My concern with water is that it is capable of weakening the outer gluten skin. I’ve experimented with that before. BUT, pouring it off is a good practice that may negate the concern.
Hey Dan, Doc had emailed me about his methods and I believe he is leaving the water in the jar with the dough and measuring the change in rise based on the water meniscus. His reason for this was that the top edge of the dough becomes rounded and may make measurement more difficult. He found that he got the results he predicted using this method. I too had a concern about leaving a lot of water in the aliquot jar with the dough. I thought that the extra water might also be absorbed by the dough affecting the rise and also increasing the hydration a bit might speed up fermentation of the aliquot dough as well. Thus my reasoning for pouring off the water.
I used Doc’s water method a couple years back during a time lapse video experiment. The problem was the dough detached from the bottom of the jar and floated up above the water level, the gluten also got slimy, and I though weak.
Doc, what is your current findings with the water coverage idea? It would be ideal IF the problems mentioned above were not an issue.
I am not too particular about exactly how much dough gets into the container, with 30g as the target so long as I know what it weighs. The density is a little more than 1 g/ml but not much and it quickly goes down from there. I put just a little water on the surface of the polypropylene and press the dough down so that it burps out the visible trapped air before I add enough water to bring the meniscus up to 40ml. The tamping down and the manipulation that it takes to massage the air out is enough to keep it stuck to the sides of the jar until late in the process. That also means that only the upper surface is subject to absorbing water (mostly - since water will go down hill into every available crack but the dough will expand to seal those very soon). To cover the worst case be sure there is enough water to cover the dome that will form - figure that the radius of the dome will be the radius of the container (it won't be but it is worst case). The jar is ~43mm diameter so the radius is ~22 so if you put in 30ml and add 22mm of water which is about another 30ml if you want to be conservative. I have been filling it to 40ml which takes ~10ml and covers the top of the dough. And 20% volume expansion for a 30ml initial volume is 6ml so if it starts at 40, it finishes at 46ml and you can judge that well enough. It will grow a little more while you are getting ready to divide but that is OK
I was draining off the water and putting the 30ml back into the dough when it is divided but that was more trouble than it was worth. If you are worried a lot about the dough absorbing water you can use vegetable oil instead of water. I found that it was difficult to read the level because the graduations are on the inside of the jar so I put some blue tape on the outside and mark it before I load the dough. CO2 production and thus volume expansion is exponential with time so once it starts to expand it accelerates quickly.
Duplicate
A flashlight and a leftover heel with instructions. Not the french flour ones though. Or you could go the Alan route with the same money and buy a remnant stone and give your batons what they deserve. A chance to grow up in the world and then be cut in half and frozen.
Hmmm interesting, never thought about the possibility of halving them before freezing. Let’s see if I can get my shaping where I want it to be before even considering trying to go even longer.
I can see a table top in Cheech and Chong's house. These are marvelous looking. The crust has a cross between the attributes of your "older" vs. more recent bakes. The snail's eye view makes the crust look almost like a flaky pastry. I think that even a most critical professional baker would be hard pressed to find a thing to complain about with these.
I also find, in my very limited experience of rolling 'em out longer, that they assume a really slender post-bake profile, more so that I would have wanted.
In the video of Parisian baker Mahmoud M’seddi he talks up the desire to produce an uneven crumb structure, as you have here.
You came into this CB game with truly top shelf baguettes, and now we need to have another shelf above that for your wares. Maybe we can keep the lower shelf for the cut flowers and fruit you referred to yesterday.
Has been a fun little arts and craft project and I am growing fond of the burnt ends but I will probably return to the uniform blunts as more practical bread if this CB ever comes to a conclusion. I mostly make them in the winter time to have with soup. It seems almost like eating fruit out of season now.
There must be an equation for the proper circumference and length per specific dough weight. Anybody?
Baguettes 'fruit out of season'???
-Summer Bruscetta
-Brie and fig jam
-Sliced thin and toasted to accompany a charcuterie or cheese board
-Duck liver pate with cherry jam
-Sliced thin and toasted to accompany a charcuterie or cheese board
-Bare fisting and gnawing the entire baguette poolside, while the other hand shamelessly grips a block of stilton.
Just saying....?
John
That's the spirit. All good options and I would include with butter or Nutella.
The third verse in your song repeats that must be the chorus
Don
Hah! Just wanted to repeat my personal fave option!
You really like word plays with my tag name...here's a link to the song I took it from...originally done by Small Faces...
https://youtu.be/gb9Y9syHW_I
Song Of A Baker
There's wheat in the fieldAnd water in the stream
And salt in the mine
And an aching in me I can no longer stand and wonder
''cause I'm driven by this hunger
So I'll jug some water
Bake some flour
Store some salt and wait the hour While I'm thinking of love
Love is thinking for me
And the baker will come
And the baker I'll be I am depending on my labour
The texture and the flavour
Ok now back on topic...
John
The original song of the baker was the squealing sound bread makes as it cools right out of the oven. It's not just your tag name, I like word plays in general.
they considered changing the name to Drunk Faces, but settled on dropping the "Small" from their name.
BTW Stewart's first two solo albums are worth their weight in gold, still far and away the best work he ever did. Now he's the modern-day Vegas Wayne Newton.
Ok now back on topic..
about Cheech and Chong until much later(palm to the forehead) The burnt ends should have been a clue to my disjointed brain.
350g of dough rolled out to 55-60 inches as a uniform cylinder tends to be about 1.25 inches in diamerter.
Else we'll be rolling them into the next room!
What did Chaim get stuck in his nose ? How did Dr get it out ?
Ehm, Benny recently asked about consistency in shaping. Best results seem to come when you fold and elongate to around 70+% length. Then really important to not stretch the thing or else you may develop thin sections. Downward force only and bobs yer uncle !
then try and convince me it's raining! Smile...#stagefright
1. Joint
2. Fatty
3 splif
4. Bone
5. Doobie
6. J
7. Jay
8. This just in...
French Baguette
should have been 4:20
Now I always thought that we wanted more stretching or lateral forces rather than downwards Geremy. Or is it if you are a good ways toward the length you ultimately want the downward force only. But if you have a long ways to go to get to that desired length you then also need to apply lateral/outwards forces as well.
Benny, your reply caused me to remember something about my shaping of the last batch. I am an advocate of elongating (spreading)the dough. That may or may not be correct, others are producing better crumb than I.
But, I wanted to mention this while on the subject of shaping. I actually slapped the pre-shaped and shaped dough down. It was patted down quite a bit. In spite of that the crumb turned out fairly open.
Nothing about baguettes will surprise me, ever. And that doesn’t surprise me either. When you see the professionals slapping their dough during shaping I wonder, isn’t that going to degas it too much and cause the crumb to be very tight? Yet they somehow produce good crumb.
And there probably isn’t a right way to shape, there are about as many ways as there are bakers of baguettes. I guess it boils down to what works for you. Although with this CB we are distilling some aspects of the art of baguettery down to some pearls, I think.
Benny, you are proof that we don’t need wet dough for baguettes to produce gorgeous open and uniform crumb.
The baguette is one bread that defies lots of rules. That can only be attributed to it’s size.
Doesn't mean your bread has to be. I don't understand the trepidation some bakers have about adding a little more H20. I believe all else being the same the dough with more water will have a more open crumb. As we discussed, our different locations and flours makes the whole thing relative. In the batches we are mixing of 500 gr flour, a teaspoon of water is another percentage point. A squirt from my mister is 2 gr. and wet hands surrender some to the dough. I truly go by feel and I end up between 73 and 78% depending on flour but it is not some unruly blob. I try to get my dough to mimic the same consistency as the ones I admire in the videos I have seen. Does your dough act similar to those at 67%? Then we may be close to the same relative hydration.
Benny I think gets his crumb for the same reason he struggles to produce ears. They are at the limit of fermentation. Doc lost his ears with too much proofing in his recent foray.
Adding more water is probably the last thing a guy under a hurricane wants to hear right now so stay safe and dry Dan.
I suspect you’re right Don. There isn’t anything special that I’m doing, but I have been relatively overproofing my dough compared to what I believe the rest of you have been doing. As such, the oven spring, ears and grigne suffer a bit as a result. I have a levain fermenting now for another batch and this time I will only bulk ferment to 25% rise and see what happens.
I also suspect that Don’s higher hydration at least in part, is related to his lower humidity and thus drier flour. I’m not sure where Doc is located but Louisiana, Florida and Toronto are all super humid this time of year and MT isn’t so humid.
I hope the hurricane doesn’t hit your area Dan, stay safe.
We already know that bulk fermentation pretty much determines the final crumb character, but if you are interested in the extent to which that is true try this:
When you divide the dough, cut a narrow strip off one edge and set it (without any shaping) on the couche.
Then cut another and pre-shape it to full length but do no final shaping
Then cut another and pre-shape, rest, and final shape
Compare the resulting crumb.
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