Now what am I doing wrong?
I recently tried a recipe for an 80% hydration baguette. Again, since I don't have a scale, I converted to cups and teaspoons and I halved the recipe. The first time, I had waaaaaay too much water in it, but I thought I had halved it wrong and gotten confused between the water and the flour. The second time, I got this:
As you can tell, I finally learned how to score those suckers! I followed a suggestion and let them bake in the oven a minute and then scored them - that seems to work. I also got some nice holes in the crumb.
However, I then tried to make the full recipe as it stood and after 5 tries, the dough is incredibly wet. It will not come together no matter how much I stretch and fold, unlike when I made it as a half recipe. This last time, I cut out a full third cup of water and it's still too wet to form into baguettes.
This is the recipe from the blog of a member here:
http://www.weekendbakery.com/posts/recipe-for-80-hydration-baguette/ [1]
Ingredients for the Poolish:
380 g bread flour (1 2/3 cup flour)
304 g water (1 1/2 cup of water)
3 g instant yeast
Ingredients for the Baguette:
poolish
380 g bread flower
304 g cold water
12 g salt
1.5 g instant yeast
Now the poolish is supposed to go into the fridge for 10 to 17 hours. My fridge is set at about between 32° and 38°, so I leave the poolish out for about 12 to 18 hours. Is this part of the problem? Also, Since I am sooooo tired of scraping flour off my counter, I am now doing folds in the bowl. I only take the dough out to form it into baguettes. That worked well for the half recipe - maybe it's not working so well for the full recipe?
Any suggestions? And also, is there any way at the beginning to tell if I have too much water in the dough? When I start, the dough looks no wetter than any of the pictures of wet dough I've seen here. I guess it should be coming together after I fold it several times. If at that point I don't think it is, should I add more flour then to salvage it or should I just toss it and try again? I'm baking this latest disaster because I also forgot oil, so the bread is going to burn on the cookie sheet, but I can practice scoring. Otherwise, I would be dumping it like the last 4 times.
Kelly