Pain Ancienne WW version?
Hi I have been baking bread for many years but only recently decided to try to bake artisianal breads. I also decided I wanted to stick with WW flour, or at least no white flour, since I am already eating too much of that. My first goal is to make a simple WW "baguette" in the pain ancienne style. Here is more or less my current recipe:
400g flour 100%
340g water 85%
8 g salt 2%
<1/8 tsp yeast
You will see I am also trying to keep it simple.. get the simple version right first I figure. I am using no starters bigas etc - just instant yeast. The low amount of yeast and the high hydration are techniques I have gotten enamored with in my pizza dough making, along with a very long room-temperature fermentation.
The recipe itself is pretty simple (and partly inspired by JMonkeys recipes here): mix all together in the early evening and leave out. When it has risen do a stretch-and-fold. If still awake when risen again do another. Next morning early do another s&f, rise, and one last s&f. After the final rise I gently dropped it on to parchment and gently stretched into a crude loaf shape with wet hands. Immediately baked the loaf at 450F (no proofing following pain ancienne) and steamed the oven following pain ancienne again. The final products have been nice, with a crumb that is quite airy, similar to a baguette. I like the taste a lot. However, they are too flat and wide. I was planning on working on slightly less hydration and/or using a lot of bench flour when the final loaf is shaped to help hold it a bit perhaps (this also follows the pain ancienne recipe in Reinhart). The loaves initially have a very nice crisp crust, but it quickly softens. I am wondering if the high hydration is also keeping the final loaf on the moist side. Your thoughts appreciated. I would particularly like to know if there was some recipe for a WW pain ancienne style baguette out there which I could draw from. I have Reinharts WW book and did not find anything in there.
Scott