Finally it happened...but under weird circumstances. Check it out: I was making Hammelan's six fold french bread. Time got away from me and I missed the last 2-3 folds. Made the loaves anyway, had great ovenspring, and EARS. For the FIRST TIME. The next week I was making the same recipe, and was again negligent with the time. Missed the last couple folds again, shaped loaves without preshaping, baked and got ears again. What's happening here? Aside from not folding enough, I happened to use a much bigger bowl for the dough to rise in than I usually do, and they filled it to the brim. Also usually use a cast iron pan for steam, didn't these two times; I used a tin pie pan with holes so the water can drip onto the bottom of the oven. Usually I can't get my slashes to stay - they disappear right away or during baking. I feel like I didn't shape them any differently than I usually do. Is it because they had more room to rise  this time? Does that make the dough easier to score?  I've spent so much time reading posts and watching vids on how to score properly, and then I get it on a goof up.

Hi

I'm having reall problems with homemade baguettes, I am slashing the top but the bread always splits on the side near the bottom and the slashes never open up properly. I have a proper bakers Lame, and I use this technique

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3QdzHuhJ-ls

But no matter what I do, different oven temp, wetter or drier dough, the slashes on the top never open properly and the split is on the side near the base.

Any advice would be much appreciated.

Thanks

Sam

Hi everyone,

I have been reading posts on the forum for many months now and trying to gain wisdom on the topic of baguette scoring.  I have read almost every post on the subject but can't seem to get it right.  Out of about a dozen attempts at baguettes, I have successfully generated a nice ear/grigne one time.  Strangely enough, it was on the 3rd attempt.  Here is a picture:

I have been using Hamelman's Poolish Baguette and Hamelman's Straightdough Baguette for all attempts.  I have been using King Arthur flour and I usually do a 30-60 min autolyze and an extra fold to get sufficient gluten development.  I check the proofing with a "poke test" as most people do.  When the dimple very slowly returns after a poke, I consider it ready to bake.  I slash with a curved lame with a depth of ~ 1/4 in (or what I perceive to be a 1/4 in. It's difficult to say exactly).  I hold the blade at an angle (I think ~30-45 deg) to try to cut a flap of dough.  I cook the baguettes in a 460 degree oven (preheated for 45 min) on 1/2 in unglazed tiles.  For steam, I follow Hamelman's instructions: throw a few ice cubes into a cast iron skillet on the bottom shelf while slashing, slide the baguettes onto the stone, and then pour 1 cup of boiling water into the skillet.  I have followed this method for all attempts.

I think my shaping has improved in the past 4 months and I've tried to vary my slashing technique slightly to see what I'm doing wrong.  Now, I would like to request some advice.  I appreciate any guidance that anyone will offer.  Here are the pictures of my "ear-free" baguettes.  Individual photos can be seen at http://photobucket.com/atlbreadpics.  Thanks in advance.

On a positive note, I have eaten many many delicious sandwiches from all of this.  Thanks for your help!

Kyle

As I promised on my last entry, I took pictures of my bakery during work this morning.  I'll explain some of the methods and processes that we employ as well, since each boulangerie does things its own way.  We are an artisan bakery and use no pre-fabricated frozen dough or chemical additives.  The levain for most of the breads (excluding the standard baguettes) is all natural, made with apple juice we press ourselves.

I work with a small staff of two bread bakers and one pastry chef - the patron or boss makes the specialty cakes.  The bakers work from 3am/5am until 9am/11am every day, and the pastry chef from 5am until afternoon.  Breads not baked in the morning are baked by the boss in the wood-fired oven two or three times during the day, but all the work is done before 10am except for the specialty cakes.  The short hours and small staff keep costs way down while managing to put out between 800 to 1100 loaves daily in about 30-40 different varieties.  While some credit should be given to the equipment, most belongs to the two bakers themselves who are incredible to see in action.  I'm thankful to be learning from them!  So, the pictures:

We use an 8-deck hearth oven at 310 deg. C, or 590 deg. Fahrenheit.  Loaves are taken out of the retarder in the morning and let proof before going in the oven.  The first baker arrives at 3am and takes them out, mixing other doughs to let bulk ferment during the early morning hours.  Around 5am the other baker arrives and the oven gets going.  One baker forms baguettes to be retarded that afternoon and night while the other bakes the breads from the day before.  At 9am everything for the day has been baked and we weigh all the specialty doughs, which have been fermenting, and fashion all the loaves, and then they go in the retarder until the next morning.  This is the process for 90% of the breads.

The specialty doughs go in the spiral mixer and the normal white dough goes in the large oblique mixer.

Baguettes during pre-shaping:

Here are some loaves about to go in the oven.  The dark ones are baguettes aux céréales and the one with the ring is bread made with hazelnut flour.  The second picture show baguettes nouvelles, explained below.

For the baguettes nouvelles (new baguettes), the dough undergoes a 72 hour bulk fermentation in the refrigerator and then is formed with a hydraulic machine to not deflate the gas.  Notice the machine and the metal grill below:

Here are some loaves fresh from the oven: round miches, large pain paysan, regular baguettes on the oven loader, dusted baguettes de tradition, and baguettes nouvelles in the case.

My favorite bread we bake each Saturday is the grand pain paysan, a slab of dough weighing 5kg, or 11lbs!  It's sold by the kilo.

I don't do much with pastries - one absolute master pastry chef makes them all.  Fresh strawberries are all the rage right now, and we're doing a buy 3 strawberry pastries, get 1 free deal.  The picture with the almonds and raisins shows mini-kugelhopfs, the special pastry of my neighbor region Alsace.

Finally, some pictures from inside the store.  Most boulangeries suffer from either an overly-elaborate or overly-dull store space, often too small.  Not the case here!  From the enormous wood-fired oven imported from Mexico - producing an unbelievably tasty bread - to the lime green walls, it's a great place to find whatever suits your palate.

At home after a long morning of work, enjoying a baguette nouvelle.  Hope you've enjoyed the pictures!

Nate

These are a couple of 755 gm bâtards of Hamelman's Pain au Levain I baked today. I think they illustrate the points made recently in discussions of scoring, ears and bloom, for example in Varda's topic To ear or not to ear.

To quote Michel Suas from Advanced Bread and Pastry again,

If the angle is not achieved and the cut is done with the blade vertical to the loaf, the two sides of the dough will spread very quickly during oven spring and expose an enormous surface area to the heat. The crust will begin to form too soon - sometimes before the end of oven spring - penalizing the development of the bread. If the cut is properly horizontal, the sides of the loaf will spread slower. The layer of dough created by the incision will partially and temporarily protect the surface from the heat and encourage a better oven spring and development. (Suas, pg. 116.)

These loaves were scored with a razor blade mounted on a metal lame. The blade was held at a 30º angle. The cuts were about 1/2 inch deep. I think the coloration of the bloom attests to the slow spread to which Suas refers.

I think you can clearly see three distinct colors in the bloomed crust, progressively lighter in color from right to left, with the lightest color being that under the ear. As the cut opens up during the bake, it does so slowly over a prolonged period. The darkness of the bloom demonstrates the length of time each area was directly exposed to the oven's heat. The ear keeps the area under it sheltered from the heat so it doesn't form a crust, but, as the bloom widens, the previously sheltered area becomes uncovered by the ear, and it begins to brown.

Scoring with the blade perpendicular to the loaf surface thus results in less bloom, and the blooming is terminated sooner in the bake. The coloration of the bloom is more uniform. An example - a Vermont Sourdough I also baked today:

I hope this helps clarify the point of the ear - how you get it and why you might want to.

David

Submitted to YeastSpotting

Or so it would appear.  Just look at these innocent, unbaked rolls.  See how happy they are:

And then see them after being baked:

Ahh! Demon rolls!

Just wanted to share. :)

The "Taste-and-Tell" is a monthly event held by the Chicago Amateur Bread Bakers.

Today we announced the focus for our April "Taste-and-Tell": Basic Shaping. For more information, and to join the group, please visit us at http://www.meetup.com/Chicago-Amateur-Bread-Bakers/

As a special treat, and a follow-up to last month's focus on basic scoring, one of our bakers will bring a bucket of dough and some lames to the event, so that we can practice scoring.

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Chicago Amateur Bread Bakers is a not-for-profit group of avid home bakers of yeasted, artisanal breads. We get together in-person to share our experiences and learn from one another. We strive to support and inspire those actively baking bread at home.

Well, dear readers, despite my recent silence on the subject I have not given up on my baguette quest!  For the last few weeks, however, I'd gotten a little sick of blogging about it.  This week was fairly successful, however, and so I want to share, and request some feedback.

The main change from previous bakes is that a little over a week ago I got a shipment of baking toys, I mean, equipment from TMB/San Francisco Baking Institute.  I got 2 yards of 18-inch linen couche, a lame/blade holder with razor blades, a proofing board (which I've been using as an all-purpose bench board), and a flipping board.  With these, I was certain, many of my problems would be resolved (specifically, excess degassing when shaping and transfering, and ragged scoring).  The first bake with the new equipment (last week) was a little rough, but this week I had things sorted out.

Exterior

Crumb - First Half

Crumb - Second Half

I'm getting there!  The slashing wasn't perfect, but it went much smoother with the new blade, resulting in at least two ears per baguette big enough to lift the loaf with.  Crust was decent if not exceptional, flavor was good.  Profile was nice and round, a nice change from some recent flatter bakes.  Crumb varied within the baguette I sliced (the one in the middle, up top) from good to great.

Here's where I'm looking for feedback: I'm still having problems with the crust bursting between cuts -- is this the result of under-proofing?  Or something else?  I could swear this batch was fully proofed, but I'm not necessarily a good judget of these things.

Happy baking, everyone,

-Ryan

I did a little experiment with my daily bread.  I usually bake 3 or 4 loaves, with 3 in loaf pans and one free-form.  I have always scored them the same way:  the free-form gets on long central score, the pan loaves get two parallel vertical scores.  But this time I wanted to see how identical loaves in the same oven would react to different scores.  Latitudinal, longitudinal, diagonal, and the long low-angle cut.  The results are clear:

The best bloom came from the free-form and pan loaves that got a single long cut with the blade held almost horizontal, lifting the dough up rather than cutting a slice in it.  All these were baked in an oven with no steam.  The depth of the cuts was uniform but the results quite different.  I think the dough was slightly underproofed, looking at the massize bloom of the free-form loaf, but I did learn that the simplest cut with the right technique lets the bread keep blooming instead of sealing up as the others did.

Happy baking!

-Peter