Baking bread means do-overs

The slew of baguettes that I made the other day for my in-laws yielded a set of Hamelman Pain au Levain w/WW that I wasn't really thrilled with.  The crumb was too tight, the baguettes seemed to lack some standard amount of girth that I expect from them and all along the pathway from mix to bake something just didn't feel right.  A nice part about baking is that I get to do a do-over.  These seemed more "right" to me starting at mix time and beyond.

3x350g, 1x755g, baked at 460dF.  29 minutes for baguettes and 35 minutes for the batard with 2 minutes venting.

I occasionally read where someone complains about scorched bottoms when using a baking deck.  So I included a picture of the underside of this batch.  If the baking deck is not right on top of the heat source and the temperature in the oven is not too high, the bottoms should generally never scorch.  And as I'd mentioned in my "do and don't" list recently, I stay away from as much additional raw flour as possible, and the bottoms reveal very little of it.  As with many of our bottoms, not as attractive as our other side ;-) .

alan

Updated Sep 21.

Getting down the the final few slices of that lovely batard so I thought that I'd post these two pictures of the crumb.

To those about to dine, I salute you!  (okay so this isn't exactly what the gladiator generals said)