Baking baguettes with Steel and Steam.....
Hi everyone!
I have a new convection oven and a Steel piece to use as stone, all new equipment for me, and need a little direction and help getting started to make baguettes (which I am also learning to prepare). I thought this would be the best place to ask...
Should I use 'convection bake' or 'convection roast' or just plain 'bake' to make baguettes?
Which rack should I position the Steel?
And if using convection and Steel should I still preheat the oven to 550F and lower it to 475 after adding the dough?
And about steaming. This is bothering me a bit. I am not sure if I blew my old oven trying to steam.
What is the best way to steam? Place a cast iron skillet on a lower rack and preheat with oven and then throw some water into this several times during the first few mins? Or cover the bread dough with a huge aluminium pan for the first few mins?
Thank you so much, this will be a lot of help.
Okay, take my advice with a huge grain of salt since I am brand new at this. Yesterday, I happened to bake baguettes that turned out very good in terms of taste and crust. I baked them in a preheated oven at 465F for 25 minutes, in a baguette pan placed on pizza stone on bake. I did not use convection. The bottoms were pale so after the 25 minutes, I took them off the baguette tray, flipped them upside down and baked them on convection at 400F for another 5 or so minutes till they were golden. The crust was super thin and shattery (if that is a word).
For steam, I read, somewhere I think on TFL, that you can soak tea towels, put them on a half sheet pan (cookie sheet with sides) and put them in the oven when heating it up. This worked really well. Lots of steam and no worries about spilling water on the hot glass of the oven or trying to not burn my hands or arms on parts of the oven. I did vent the oven near the end to be sure that the crust crisped up but the towels were practically dry by then so no more steam was being produced.
Hope this helps.
Hi! Thank you so much for your input. Those baguettes look just about perfect! I have not been able to get 'ears' like that (yet!). I am going to follow your directions, specially the towel steaming. Do you have a 4-loaf baguette pan? I am debating whether I should get baguette pans. My Steel 'stone' just came in so I have a lot of experimenting.... THNXS!
My pans hold 2 baguettes and I have two pans. I think I just got lucky or I was given a reliable recipe or both. This is the recipe:
https://www.weekendbakery.com/posts/recipe-for-80-hydration-baguette/
I did change a few things like putting in 10% wholewheat and autolysIng the flour for a few hours before mixing it with the poolish and salt.
Back to you, I would try it without the baguette pans and see what happens.
Danni,
You selected a challenging baguette to do. That 80% is difficult for most folks and especially for someone just getting their feet wet with baguettes. So kudos to you.
If you are interested I can suggest at least three different formulae for you to try if you have an interest in moving forward with baguettes. One is a straight IDY dough made without any preferment as the entire dough is a preferment itself, in a way. The other two are both levain doughs. The hydration in these range from 68% to 75% so they are still in the range of high hydration doughs.
I won't hijack someone else's entry, but if you are interested, please start a new entry and I will give you greater detail. Trust that I know a thing or two about baguettes. You can ask around or look mine up if you have any doubts.
alan
Thank you for the offer. I will start a new thread.
Thank you too alan! I will follow that thread.
Danni, I read/saw that page (weekendbakery) with great attention and interest. I actually have been following this
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/31945/straight-method-baguette-good-starter-baguette-practice
and
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/19830/36-hours-sourdough-baguette-everything-i-know-one-bread?page=2
both from FL and they have been so instructive and inspirational.
:)