The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

Hi from UK

JeffUK's picture
JeffUK

Hi from UK

 Hi all .....

I make over-night poolish  bread baguettes every night before I go to bed for the following day.  They are made in some would say is a weird way with 80% hydration, just combine the ingredients with no real mixing (I just roughly combine the ingredients with the wrong end of a wooden spoon and once combined - that's it!), no kneading and take virtually no effort but are by far the best baguettes I have ever made or tasted when I've lived in  France.  I started the journey using traditional methods and ended up with this method.  I find it confusing that this bread that takes so little effor tbut  produces such great tasting results.  A warning.  They are extremely  ugly because I hardly handle them but I promise absolutely delicious.  I use exactly the same approach when combinging other flours as well as this approach.  My approach adds a lovely sort of rhythm to my day and the day isn't complete without an ugly baguette.

I have described how I do them if you're interested and added a few pics to show how ugly they are.

http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/59526/my-weird-way-making-baguettes

Best to all and please feel free to comment.

Jeff

Our Crumb's picture
Our Crumb

Bugger the atypicalness of your method -- although it isn't really all that atypical being just a straight dough with no preferments.  A key is clearly the temperature of that "cool place" for the long, overnight fermentation, especially with notoriously aggressive commercial yeast.  This is what hurtles naive followers of Ken Forkish's "overnight"methods into overproofing territory even with sd that proceeds with a more stately kinetic.  Have you done this in summer in the UK where A/C isn't as 'necessary' and abused as in a certain other unnamed country?  Your effort:outcome ratio is sure hard to argue with and flavor always trumps appearance, current culinary fashion notwithstanding.  Fresh baguettes every day - you spoil yourselves.

Nice.  Thanks for posting this.  Bookmarked ✓

Tom

JeffUK's picture
JeffUK

If I'm completely clear and honest this approach has really floored and confounded me.    I do the same thing day in and day out summer and winter and I cannot seem to find a way of producing anything other than what has been really sublime baguettes.  It simply never fails and never tastes any different.  The crumb is always wonderful and the crust is always crispy and crunchy. It is exactly the baguette I'd been searching for all those years except that it is not photogenic.  But I sort of like that.  Ugly delicious.

Also, to add some detail, so obsessed have I been about bread I use to drive around looking for all night bakers because anyone who loves bread knows how only really good bread will do and using all the traditional methods at home bread baking has been tough an elusive for me. I have driven a 270 mile round trip for a dozen bagels - although now I do make my own.  I went through sourdough periods and all that stuff.  I think basically the change came when I started to seriously make pizza at home.  I'm fortunate enough to have a proper catering Neapolitan pizza oven in my kitchen that reaches 960f and produces pizza in around 90 seconds.  I also have a spare fridge where I can store dough balls for a spontaneous pizza.  I have taken balls out of the fridge after a couple of weeks and they were sublime.  I undesratnd that Mr Caputo use to yell down the phone "add more water, add more water" and so my pizza dough is alos 80% hydration.  When I developed my skills for batch making pizza dough for the fridge that was when I started to experiment more and sort almost restarted.  I digress into pizza.  Apologies.

I suspect that what is at the heart of the forgiving nature of this approach is the nature of water and flour as we all know seems sort of magical and the longer you leave them together the more complex the relationship. With respect to your observation about the aggressive nature of the yeast I suspect that we often forget that it is both temperature and salt that can retard or accelerate the overproofing thing.  And my wife likes salt in her bread and I suspect that as I add a decent teaspon or more to the 300gms of flour that allows the right rate of childhood.

I'm glad you found the approach interesting.  Because I am obsessed by my baguettes and this is so easy it has I am rather shy to say saved my doughy life.