This is my latest attempt at Maggie Glezer's Acme baguette recipe. I used scrap dough and poolish as she specifies and the taste was very good. I used K.A. First Clear flour for the scrap dough and K.A. French Style flour for the poolish and dough. Still needs work on shaping technique.
Hamelman's Poolish Baguettes with pate fermente
Hamelman's Poolish Baguettes with pate fermente crumb
SF Sourdough baguettes
SF Sourdough baguettes crumb
What follows is a case study of "Its beautiful! Let's change it!"
What makes a great baguette? Well, first of all, what's a baguette? It's a post-war, "we're sick of tough pain au levain, we want what the American's have", loaf of very light, white bread. It's made with yeast, very white flour that is very often, believe it or not, a mix of French soft and American hard wheat. Most French bakeries "cheat" and use white flour with stuff in it like ascorbic acid which produces an even light loaf. The baguette "tradition" is the no-cheat version, made with only flour, water, yeast and salt, no additives.
I had occasion to try several new things last weekend: Rose Levy Berenbaum's recipe for "Levy's" Real Jewish Rye Bread, one of my recently acquired bannetons from SFBI, and the Pampered Chef equivalent of a La Cloche (which has been sitting around unused for years). This also marked the second time that I have made bread on the new soapstone countertops that were recently installed.
SF SD Pain de Compagne
SF SD Pain de Compagne crumb
These are pictures of the process beginning after mixing. I made Jeffrey Hammelman’s Light Rye Bread from his book BREAD, A Baker’s Book of Techniques and Recipes (page 197)albeit a slightly modified version. I would have to say that this recipe is wonderful and very easy to make. His recipe ingredients consist of 2 parts. (1) SOURDOUGH, (2) FINAL DOUGH. He makes what I would call a sponge, which he calls “Sourdough” as the first step in his recipe. This takes 14-16 hours to ferment. Then he mixes the SOURDOUGH with the FINAL DOUGH ingredients. 
I have a variety of grains in my arsenal, and I thought it was time I tried something other than the usual. I settled on spelt and found bwraith's post on Marcel's Grandmother's Spelt Bread (http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/2828/marcels-grandmothers-spelt-bread).
