The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Ganachaud Baguette

DonD's picture
DonD

Ganachaud Baguette

Recently, I tried to make the 'Flute Gana', the poolish baguette from Bernard Ganachaud according to the formulation that Daniel Leader described in Local Bread but ran into a few hiccups. I was wondering if anybody has tried the recipe and been successful.

The problem I have is it seems that the recipe calls for an excessive amount of yeast especially with the 12 to 24 hours retardation. First, my poolish tripled in size in 8 hrs at 72 degrees and overflowed the container. For the retardation, because of the lack of room in my fridge, instead of proofing the shaped loaves in the fridge, I ferment the dough at room temperature then refrigerate it for 24 hours before shaping, proofing and baking. The first fermentation at room temperature took only 1 1/2 hours to double in size and it kept expanding while refrigerated. The loaves were easy to shape and had good oven spring. The crumb was light but the holes were small and uniform in size. The crust color was pale gold after 23 mins in the oven and just did not have the caramelization that I normally get with an extended fermentation and the taste was kind of bland. Maybe the corn flour addition has something to do with that. All in all rather disappointing result.

Any comments would be greatly appreciated. Thanks.

 

Don

xaipete's picture
xaipete

Hi Don. Funny, but I was just looking at that formula this morning before I saw your post.

Did you use the gram calculations in the formula or the baker's math?

--Pamela

DonD's picture
DonD

I always use the gram calculations as I find the metric system much easier for measuring ingredients and converting to baker's percentage.

Don

xaipete's picture
xaipete

Just checking because the other calculations in this book are often screwed up.

--Pamela

LeadDog's picture
LeadDog

I kind of did this bread a couple of months ago but did it as a sourdough.  You can read about what I did here.  The bread truned out really good.

DonD's picture
DonD

Pamela, I did not know that some of the calculations in Local Breads are screwed up. I did not check to see if the weight calculations correspond to the baker's percentage. I just went by the weights listed. I guess I better cross reference from now on.

LeadDog, your baguettes turned out very well but I am intrigued about the poolish version because I have read a lot of rave reviews about the Flute Gana being among the top baguettes in France.

xaipete's picture
xaipete

Apparently, they are royally mess up. Their are a bunch of threads on it on TFL.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/4097/formula-issues-leaders-local-breads

Before you make anything you might want to see if anyone else made it and what they had to say.

--Pamela

DonD's picture
DonD

Thanks Pamela for the info. I had no idea about the discrepancies in the book. Scary!

I will tweak the recipe this weekend and give it another try based on some info that I gleaned from the Ganachaud website.

xaipete's picture
xaipete

In spite of its flaws it is one of my favorite books. I've made some terrific breads out of it.

--Pamela