May 13, 2017 - 10:41am
Doc dough and the baguette time machine
It works, I finally made something that works! Ok lame title I know but just keeping it fun. Doc dough has been private messaging me with advice on dealing with gas ovens and getting Browning to improve and the last changes he suggested was to remove my lower slab and preheat longer to add some additional time to allow for more ambient heat. Combining that with vent plugging etc and this is the result of today's bake. As we can see significant improvements on ear development. As with every bake I am hyper critical and a little irritated at myself for wrapping these a bit loose ad well as starting late yesterday on bulk so interior wise well just ok. Otherwise. This is the best contrast I have seen on ears so far :)
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Impressive coming out of a gas oven.
David
The honor is all mine - thanks sir dmsnyder !
It would be really educational to see the pictorial progression from your first baguette bake to this one --- to see the leaps and bounds of change in shaping and scoring and crust colour and crumb... It looks to me like they are looking better and better every week (even though you persistently find something to diss yourself about...)
Thanks for sharing your journey!
Malt experiments ! About this time last year I produced some classic disasters with over malted loaves. This all came from rereading up on malt differences used by the French and American mills. It wasn't long before experience taught me exactly what they say about malt - ie it destroys dough and turns it to mush !
I just got schooled on being too critical by my wife and actually the crumb is better than I thought - the runt served as crumb model and was the worst of the lot. I,should go and fond some old pics from about a year ago. I just transferred from a pie obsession and the first attempts had some really interesting disasters ! Here's the other loaves showing pretty decent crumb. Thanks for following the quest !
Doc's suggestions have really helped! Gas ovens are way more difficult for sure. Well done and Happy baking
On this batch the tips for,the outer scores really indicate that the bulk of the heat is at the edges of my slab. This is the result of taking out the lower slab as doc suggested it may have been preventing upward convection. You get to a point however where you start wondering how much more augmentation is worth it and I personally tho,I this is about as far as I am willing to take futsing with equipment - would really love a rofco - I'm sure you've seen bikeprof's photos of his loaves and now he is awaiting a real deck oven. That combined with you usually pics of Sunday brunch is one way to make a home baker really jealous !