Authentic Baguettes from Cook's Illustrated and MegaSteam

Oh goody, another baguette nut in our group :)

I'm still pretty near the beginning of the path compared to some of the excellent and generous bakers on TFL, but for a first (or early) attempt I'd say these are great! A nice bold bake (maybe a tiny bit darker than I like, but that's personal preference), great oven spring, and again, the crumb looks super. I'd say you are correct about oversteaming, I learned about that a couple of bakes ago and now take out the steam as soon as everything looks like it's peaked, and I've got ears, if I'm lucky.

Slashes will get better with practice, and you need to work on consistent shaping a bit. What are you using to score the loaves, and are you weighing dough portions to make sure they are very close to the same size? Are you using a peel to get them on a baking stone? You can straighten them up before loading if they are a bit wonky.

If you look through my blog nearly everything is baguettes, and I have received masses and masses of thoughtful, accurate, and incredibly helpful along the way from many on here, notably alfanso (who I call Caption of TFL Team Baguette), dmsnyder (The Pope of TFL, IMO), and dabrownman (Master of Whole Grains). Take my advice with a grain of salt (or .064799 grams for those of us who hate volume measurements :) ), but when these guys comment, listen well.

I'm not familiar with the Cook's Illustrated recipe, but for starting out with minimal fuss and a quick turnaround, these are great: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/31945/straight-method-baguette-good-starter-baguette-practice (txfarmer is another guru, but she doesn't seem to be active on TFL any more). Other highly regarded recipes are these:

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/19830/36-hours-sourdough-baguette-everything-i-know-one-bread

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/32906/san-joaquin-sourdough-baguettes

And I haven't tried these yet but am looking forward to it: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/17415/baguettes-l039ancienne-cold-retardation 

Great job, I look forward to watching you nail this!

Cheers,

-Gabe

of steam at 450 F and 8-10 minutes of 425 F convection without steam will usually get you around 210 F on the inside.  It looks like they were baked too long with that bold color on the outside.  i use an instant read thermometer to get it to 210 F exactly then the oven goes off and Iet them sit on the stone with the door ajar until they hit 212 F to crisp the skin.  The crumb is nicely open, the slashing nt too bad at all - some temperature and time adjustments will make a huge difference and .....  next time will be better!

Happy Baguette baking  

Hi Emma,

That's some professional looking crumb you posted.  Really nice work.  I will also side with dabrownman in that your final product looks way too well baked, and with Gabe's comments.  You are off to a nice start.  Keep with it.  I'll repeat it for the umpteenth time: there's a fair amount of agreement out there that baguette shaping and scoring is among the harder aspects of dough prep and shaping to get down well.  Perhaps pick a good formula to follow, something not too challenging so that you can concentrate on the more basic aspects of the task, and then branch out from there.

As far as Gabe's reference to me: I have been called a lot of things in my time, many unprintable in most places where social niceties are meant to be practiced.  I've even been called Title, Header and in nastier moments as a put down - Sub-header (ooh that one hurt my ego!). But I've never been called Caption before!  If what he meant was Captain, well, let's pull the plug on that one.  I'm barely capable of being the captain of my sock drawer.

This is a good community of quite helpful folks.  You've come to the right place.