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It has been several months since I made baguettes.   I had promised myself I would do a multi-week baguette experiment and compare different formulas and build my technique. But life intervened.  I’ve been very busy at work, and there never seems to be time for baking all the breads I want to bake.

Today I spent most of the day working at home, and I decided to work in a baguette bake.   My usual baguette drill is to make a full recipe of proth5’s “Starting to Get the Bear” Baguettes, aka “Bear-guettes”, first posted by Pat here (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/20831/starting-get-bear) and then again by Brother David here (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/keyword/getting-bear).  This is a superb formula.  With some sourdough and a Poolish.  The dough is a delight to work with, and the baguettes are delicious and crispy-crusted.

Because I can’t do a whole dough batch in one bake, I always have to retard some of the dough.  There wasn’t really room in the fridge for baguettes, so I made a Giant French Bagel and retarded and proofed it in a banneton.  It’s kinda purdy.

As the morning wore on, I started to think about what to make for dinner.  I remembered that I had some homemade Chicken Italian Sausage and some homemade pesto in the freezer.  Pizza!!!  So, I wondered how Bear-guette dough would be as pizza dough…. And then decided to find out.

Answer: Really good!! After the primary ferment, I carved off about 1/3 of the dough, balled it up, put it in an oiled, covered bowl in the fridge for about 4 hours, then pulled it out to warm up about 90 minutes before baking it.  It took several stretches and several rests to get it to extend into a 12" pizza.  But it was worth the effort.

It’s breadier than my usual pizza dough, but it’s delicious and tender.  I will use this dough for pizza again.

While I was baking, Tasha spent most of the day looking out the window and talking with her friends on the paw phone.

Glenn

After having such a nice loaf turn out from the last Chacon bake, we thought we would do everything we could to mess it up – and we did mess up more than half of it without much difficulty at all.  These things happen when you try new things.  Not to worry when we can learn from near disasters.

 We took a more difficult but very nice 90% whole grain formula and decided to try it out in the Cuisinart mini convection oven  we want to use for summer baking.   The problem is that space is limited, steaming is harder and keeping the steam in difficult.

 So we decided to try baking this loaf 2 different ways with steam and see which one performed better.

One was using the broiling pan that came with the oven, putting water below and baking the bread on the perforated cover.  The other way was to bake the bread on the broiler pan bottom and put a stainless steel mixing bowl over the top.

The spare tire.

 We also wanted to try out some different patterns for the Chacon as well as try out a new shaping method that would help in spring.   We did two folds and crimps (like shaping baguette) for the outside ring instead of one.

The loaf steamed with the full broiler pan and the water below, we decorated with flax seeds and bran stuck to the loaf with egg white.  One the other round loaf we used 3 smaller knotted rolls instead of one in the middle and left it undecorated under its steel steaming lid that acted like a cloche.

The winner was unmistakable.  The cloche, steel lidded loaf, performed much better as far as spring goes.   But, after removing the steaming lid my apprentice forgot to move the loaf up a rack level and burned the bottom of it.  OOPPPSSS!   The other loaf didn’t have any spring at all - but was not burnt.  Between the two, we got zero decent bread but would if you could cut the good bottom one of them and switch it to the other better sprung and looking top.

 Now we know that the mini oven will work fine in the summer to make bread when plugged in outside by using the cloche and the apprentice has learned her lesson.

The method for this bread was the 3 day process and similar to this bake:   http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/28806/hanseata%E2%80%99s-wild-rice-sd-w-yeast-water-multi-seeds-prunes-beer-and-sprouts#comments

3 stage levain YW and SD combo starter, overnight retard of the starter, 24 hour autolyse for the flour and the liquid using whey water from yogurt making this time, 1 1/2 hour ferment/development followed by overnight retard for the dough with final proof the next day in rice floured baskets in a trash bag.

We also used walnut oil and crushed walnuts for a separate paste like Phil did for his Walnut and Sage bread and put walnuts and pumpkin seeds in the bread too with the sprouts.  – Thanks Phil!  We preheated to 500 F regular bake and then did a regressive temperature baking profile.  After 2 minutes 450 F.  After 15 minutes, remove steam or cloche and turn oven down to 400 F convection.  Turn loaf 180 degrees every 5 minutes until done about more 20 minutes or 35 minutes total until temp hits 205   the center of the loaf.   Leave in oven to crisp for 10 minutes with oven off and door ajar.

See how the purple color comes out under inside artificial lighting - The walnut oil paste finally shows itself. 

As you can see the crumb is nice and airy even with 90% whole grains in this loaf.  The power of YW shows.  The crumb was moist.  The crust stayed crisp and crunchy even hours later.  Tuns out the dark crust came from reusing the parchment paper from the Croissant bake - butter transferring to the crust and turning dark. It didn't taste bad nor was it tough or hard to cut - just dark - and extra tasty.  The Chacon curse was partially lifted.  This is one great tasting bread too.  We love all the whole grains, add ins, nuts and sprouts.   The whey water makes this breadhave a deep SD flavor that builds over time.  The Chacon has it's new formula now too. 

As a final note we did pinch of 100 g of fermented dough right before it went into the fridge to use as a starter for a pizza and pide for tonight’s dinner - turned out very well.  We will make that a separate post though.

The formula follows the pix and we won’t have crumb shots for 24 hours.

My wife got me the Kettle Pizza cooker for my BD (discussed in this thread here). This is the 18.5" model, MSRP $129.95. This is my first try. Not bad, but need to tweak techniques: the timing - how long to heat the stone for ideal crust; how to spin it around; when to yank parchment paper; ideal temp to start cooking, etc. The trick is to balance cooking the crust with the top. I missed it by that much on this go-round. 

I used parchment paper to ease the transfer off the peel. Hardwood added was maple - in abundant supply in my woodpile. (Tried it subsequently with cherry, and it was slower to burn, but reached a much higher temp. In fact, I left the top on after cooking batch #2, and 2 hours later the temp was 400F with the cherry wood.)

The crust was underdone. You can see the thing heats the Weber to 700 easily - took about 12 minutes once the hardwood started burning. Total cooking time was about 6 minutes. Using it again tonight and will report back. Very happy with this, and don't see why this can't be used for loaves of bread.

And call me parochial, but I like it that this is made by a guy about 15 miles from me (in MA). 

Crust was sourdough from KAF's website, minus the yeast. I also did not use the starter straight from the fridge; instead I refreshed it to make a cup, let it ferment 8 hours, made the recipe, and it rose just fine in about 2 hours.

A sequel to my previous WFO bake of my Greek Pide.  This time it was baked in my electric oven 'EO' just because...I had nothing better to do and wanted to use the dough I had frozen from last weeks previous bake and I was curious to see how the GP would turn out versus the heat of the WFO.  Well, the results were pleasing.  Flavor wise...well very pleasing from the EO..excellent from the WFO.  No doubt there are certain types of breads that benefit from the smokey hot flames, coals and intense heat of a WFO.  I pre-heated my oven and stones, 550 convection setting, for an hour..this gets the stones much hotter versus a 45 min. pre-heat.  The pizza and pide both had crisp crusts that were nicely browned without to much browning of the cheeses.  Both were done in 8 minutes.

First the same favorite for Mike..the pepperoni pizza.  One large thin crusted from previous frozen pizza dough.  Very tasty with mixed italian cheeses.

                                        Without the charred crust the pizza would be lacking in flavor.

Greek Pide ..... This time with Goat Cheese.  It was tastier last bake with the creamy Feta.  I forgot the Greek Olives, remembering to add them just as I had loaded the pide onto the stone.  I did remember to add some black sesame seeds :) how pretty and tasty.  I brushed the rim with a little egg wash to help them stick.  I had to trasfer this pide to the paddle with my 'Super Peel' as it was to heavy to pull onto the paddle.  Last time I was able to pull the pide onto the peel.  I wasn't fast enough making this one and the dough was slacker after being frozen.  It would have only stretched and not moved if would have tried to pull it or lift it onto the peel.  I love my 'Super Peel'.  I might use it only once or twice a year...but when I do, it's WIW in flour.  

                                             Added the Kalamata Olives I forgot earlier.  Baked at 550F convection for 8 minutes

                                     Teeter Tottering Greek Pide  -  Lovely crisp crust - I preheated the oven a few minutes longer after

                                     removing the pizza.

                                             Sliced for crumb shot.

                             One of the 3          My Bella, relaxing after dinner : )

                                                  Joey just took her spot!  

            Sylvia