Pain a' l'Ancienne Baguettes- attempt #1
Today was a good day :-) I made baguettes.
I used the Pain a' l'Ancienne formula as recorded here: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/8524/philippe-gosselin039s-pain-à-l039ancienne-according-peter-reinhart-interpretted-dmsnyder-m [1]
The baguettes came out great and the instructions were really easy. It's surprising how little attention this dough needs. What I was struck most with in this baguette was the taste. It was literally "cool and creamy". I was reading in Reinhart's BBA and Reinhart describes a good bread as tasting cool and creamy on the palette. I really experienced that with this bread.
So, pretty good for my first stab at a baguette. Next time I will make a few changes in method:
-The formula here has a smaller quantity of dough than that in Reinhart's book. His formula would make 6 baguettes and this formula calls for dividing into 4 pieces. I believe dmsnyder made 2 of the larger pieces into pain rustiques and the other smaller 2 into baguettes. Instead of compensating for the two larger pieces and the two smaller, I just made 4 equal-sized baguettes and they ended up being too long for both my peel and my stone. There was a bit of arranging I had to do to accomodate the size. So next time I will make probably six small baguettes or 5 medium ones.
-Next time I will also not slash them. I tried two different slashing tools on 3 of the baguettes. Because of the nature of the dough, they both just drag and tore. I also did not slash properly or deep enough. The 4th baguette I left as "rustique" and it was the best looking of the bunch. Incidentally I gave that one away and didn't get a picture. Here are the others:
This is one formula that I will keep trying again and again. I do want to also try Anis' baguettes and Nury's light rye- but I could stop at this baguette and be satisfied. Which is great, because I would choose to eat a baguette over dessert any day.