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Baguette proofing with a chilly twist – take 3 – it’s a wrap

alfanso's picture
alfanso

Baguette proofing with a chilly twist – take 3 – it’s a wrap

I've been a little lazy about posting this but here is the third and final installment of trying to satisfy my curiosity.  Both of my earlier postings of these tests can be found on my blog here. 

I’ve reached my own, albeit impure and unscientific (neither calipers nor micrometers were used), conclusions with a little further testing about the effect of cold proofing shaped baguettes rather than letting them prove at room temperature.  At least for me, I am convinced of the effects in two ways.  Firstly, the cold proofing provides what I would refer to as a false positive. And secondly, cold proofing can be a useful tool in the service of the time/temp realm - as long as one takes the first point into consideration.  

My early finding and initial conclusion was that the cold proofed shaped dough took no longer to prove than had it stayed on the counter, which seemed to make no sense.  What I mean by false positive is that as the dough cooled down in the refrigerator, it retarded slower, as should be expected.  And the dough also chilled back to the point that the reliable finger dent test was what produced the false positive.  As we can basically agree, an underproofed dough should spring back faster that a proofed dough.  But as the chilled baguettes sprang back in the “standard” amount of time that we expect for proofed dough, it seemed ready to score and bake.  But it wasn’t.  My belief is that the chilled dough acted as though it was ready, due to the delayed spring-back, but in reality it was just reacting to cold and the spring-back was also retarded and slower.  And that gave the impression that it was properly proofed.

My second point is that as long as one can keep the false positive issue in mind, the cold proofing can be used to control the time element, and delay the finished proving of the dough.  Thereby allowing freedom to schedule a bake.  For instance, if there is only one baking deck in your oven, but you have two decks worth of dough to bake, the cold proofing can allow your oven, deck and steaming apparatus to recover to its next baking cycle while keeping the dough from overproofing.

Fromartz levain baguettes – these two photos are from the cold proofed test.



Fromartz levain baguettes – these next two are from the room temperature proofed test.  It is fairly evident that these had better oven spring and an improved overall look to the crust vs. the cold proofed version.



Bouabsa IDY baguettes – these three are the results of cold proofing.  The third photo is when I decided to really investigate a cross section of the bread.  Based on the excellent pictures from Ciril Hitz, and provided on TFL by Maverick last fall, I would have to rank the baguette as underproofed.  
Here is that link:  http://www.thefreshloaf.com/comment/308447#comment-308447

This baguette usually get a great oven spring and a nice open crumb, but you can see that neither happened here.  Bouabsa baguettes almost always produce a better oven spring than these and are typically chubbier in appearance.



I certainly can’t say I’m sorry that I did this work.  Anything but that.  It helps me to understand the process better, and gives me a chance to spread my baking wings (ugh, not a pretty picture taken literally) a little more.  And hopefully someone reading this on TFL will have benefited from this experiment as well.

alan

Comments

CAphyl's picture
CAphyl

Alan:  I have never cold proofed shaped baguettes; I have only bulk fermented (I have some in the fridge now!)  I do love your crumb.  Here are the ones I baked earlier this week, along with my husband's sandwich:

Thanks for sharing your experiments.  Please keep them coming.  All the best,  Phyllis