Baguette Progress (w/pic)
Hello,
Today I made wild yeast baguettes with the formula given by member dmnyder in his post San Joaquin Sourdough Baguettes. This is my favorite recipe to work with, as it is easier to shape than the higher hydration sourdough baguette recipes on TFL, and just as 'good' meaning flavor-wise, and has the 'big hole' texture I like.
The baguette is not as straight as I'd like, as when I transferred it from the couche to parchment, it stuck a little. Should have rolled it in flour. My main concern is that I'm not really getting the ears and the oven spring I see in the pictures in the recipe post. I follow the recipe to the letter, aside from using only whole wheat and no rye flour, and using the towel method to steam my oven.
Any help is much appreciated.
Nice color and shape. A crumb shot would be helpful.
Oven spring develops grigne (ears) as the gas expands, and the expanding interior bursts through the exterior. If you didn't score your baguettes the expansion would burst out at some other weak point in the formed loaf. High temperatures cause the quickest expansion and hydration of the exterior (steam) keeps the skin of the baguette supple, so that the the expanding interior has some place to go.
With that in mind you need to start diagnosing your process. Is there sufficient gas development? Did you see a blowout somewhere else? Do you need to increase your temperatures and use a massive device (stone?) that keeps the oven temperature from dropping too much when you introduce the much cooler loaves?
If you have good gas development in the fermentation and then destroy all the gas bubbles in the process of shaping your baguette, this will cause the problem too.
Jim
Thanks for your input. My girlfriend has the nice cell phone camera, and I didn't want to cut the baguette because it just came out of the oven, hence no crumb shot. Next time I'll have one. Next time a lot of things will be different. You are correct that the diagnosis process begins now, and I just baked a few large loaves last night that gave me a better understanding of gluten development based on things I've learned in this forum put into action. I will keep updating. Thanks again!