Alfanso Leone's “The Good, The Bad and The Tasty”
“My recent straying from baguettes to batards is a mere bagatelle, a minor distraction”, Alfanso said when recently quoted in the World Baking Journal**.
Alfanso was also quoted as stating that he was smitten by shaping of the dough the day prior to the bake, and to let them mature as already couched and shaped batards in the refrigerator overnight. Hence, a simple bake was all that was seemingly necessary the next morning. Fire up the oven, let the baking deck come up to temp for an hour, and toss the dough in. Voila. Bread! But sometimes all is not what it seems in Carb Land. A case in point shall ensue...
I’d been wanting, but forgetting, to snap a few “in process” photos. Until this morning. These are three ~500g each of my version of Ken’s bakery’s Country Blonde batards.
The Good
The couched batards just out of the refrigerator. They are camera shy in this photo. The couche was covered by plastic bags to retain moisture.
The big reveal! The couche is heavily floured as there is a lot of moisture that these batards contain.
High hydration somewhere north of 78%. From couche to hand peel.
From hand peel to oven peel. You can see in these photos the abundance of flour needed to have the batards release from the couche. If you look closely, you can see the seam. I set these into the couche seam side down.
The Bad
The three batards scored and ready to be baked.
As this is new territory for me, I seem to have erred by having removed the batards from the refrigerator a half hour prior to the bake. Rather than immediately before baking. In that ensuing half hour, in a warm kitchen and their proximity to the oven, the surface of the batards had softened to the point whereby scoring was particularly difficult. The blade, even with a light dip into olive oil, dragged mercilessly.
The result. You can see the inconsistency of the score and the lack of oven spring.
The skin still blistered beautifully. Blistering was already evident at the 10 minute mark when I opened the oven door to release the steam and rotate these babies.
The Tasty
Do I really need to bore you any more with this section? We already know how good our breads are!
Next time, I’ll remember to remove the batards from the refrigerator just before bake time. That is, if I can remember...
Oh well, live and learn. Umm - live, eat and learn!
**Sorry, but to my knowledge there is no World Baking Journal.
Comments
the cold. After a half and hour out of the fridge, these still had to be pretty cold but wet dough is way harder to score than 71% 1 ;2: 3. These still look great and and to taste even better. I'm guessing the lack of spring is a slight over proofing issue - but it was close. Don't have a photo of what the dough looked like pre proof in the couche. Bet the crumb was pretty good though. Well done overall and happy baking alphonso - Those blisters make up for everything!
to still be cold, but the surface skin had softened. The very few times I've been baking using this method of fully shaped retard - all recently, I've baked directly out of the cold. Pulled from the refrigerator, and onto the oven peel in a jiffy, then scored as soon as placed on the peel, I've had significantly better oven spring. I just sliced into one not already in deep freeze for a trip to the in-laws:
If I'm reading that Ciril Hitz photo of under, normal and over proofing (posted by Maverick last Fall) correctly, then the bread looks to have proofed okay. With its high hydration this dough is fairly sticky at all stages, and as soon as the surfaced warmed up it "remembered" to revert back to being sticky again. Ay, methinks there's the rub!