Baguettes Take Two

After my first positive experience with baguettes last week, I wanted to give them another try (and we were out of bread…..gasp!!)  I decided I wanted to go with a 65% hydration dough this time to take any dough handling issues out of the process.  I also decided to just use a yeasted dough since I had a window to make bread, and didn’t have a leaven built up from my stored starter.  Here’s the formula I used (shooting for 3x 330g loaves): 

480g AP (80%)

120g Semolina (20%)

390g Water (65%)

3g ADY

12g salt 

I mixed the flours and water together, then let that rest for 30 minutes.  I added the salt and yeast, mixed those in using the pinch method, then gave the dough about 20 slap/folds.  I repeated the slap/folds 2 times at 20 minutes.  Then I let the dough bulk proof at 75 degrees in my Brod & Taylor for about 90 minutes.  At this point, I divided the dough, and pre-shaped each piece into a round.  I let those rest while I cleaned up a bit, then I shaped my “baguettes” (they are probably a bit heavy, fat and short to call baguettes, but I’m fitting them into what I need/want, so good enough) and let them rest in the couche with plastic wrap covering them up.  After about 45 minutes, they looked ready to bake, so I slashed them and popped them onto my baking stone in a pre-heated oven (450 on Conv Bake), with some ice cubes in a CI skillet.  Added more ice about four minutes later, then let it go for 11 minutes before removing the CI.  The loaves baked for about another 7-10 minutes, then out they came to cool.  All in all, I’m pretty happy with how these turned out.  I still have plenty of practice to do with the shaping (had a couple blowouts that occurred on the end of two loaves), but the entire process was way more manageable this second time around.

A shot of the loaves cooling:

A crumb shot:

Thanks for checking these out!

R