The Fresh Loaf

A Community of Amateur Bakers and Artisan Bread Enthusiasts.

My First try at Anis Bouabsa Baguettes

mlayne's picture
mlayne

My First try at Anis Bouabsa Baguettes

Well, they're finished and it was very interesting working with such slack dough in a screaming hot oven.  Extremely difficult to shape.  I was afraid to do the normal elongate, fold, seal routine for baguettes so I simply stretched them to length like ciabatta.  They were really difficult to score.  My lame couldn't cut smoothly through the skin and there was pulling rather than cutting.  After 20 minutes at 480f and 100% steam in the Anova they were looking almost burned which seems to be normal for this method.  

I followed the directions without modification.  Mixed, rested, folded, rested in the fridge for 21 hours, portioned straight from the fridge, rested for an hour, shaped, let rise on the couche for 45 minutes then into the oven.

Photos show the results, they're still cooling so I haven't checked the crumb yet.  I'll post more when I cut into them.  Comments, criticisms and snide remarks appreciated. 

mlayne's picture
mlayne

Photo of Crumb of my first Anis Bouabsa Baguette

I cut into the loaf not expecting much but I'm very pleased with the crumb and the taste.  Since taking a bite caused me to close my eyes I've stopped worrying about the appearance too much but I'll be making more of this recipe and hopefully with practice the external looks will someday match the taste and the crumb.  Great bread.

MTloaf's picture
MTloaf

It’s a good recipe as written and very reliable in the flavor department. If the dough is still weak when you go to shape it then you need to build more tension in the pre shape without degassing it. Use a minimal amount of flour on the bench and lose the powdered donut look ;) For an extended version of baguettes pain and suffering, ending in triumph you should check out The Community Bake for baguettes we did here not to long ago. 
Don

 

 

mlayne's picture
mlayne

I loved the flavor.  My third try I used way too much flour.  Udder Disaster, if you'll pardon the pun.  I'll keep trying to figure out how to work with wet dough and I'll definitely check out the Community Bake for baguettes.

rgreenberg2000's picture
rgreenberg2000

I only try my hand at baguettes occasionally, so I'm familiar with the "rustic" shape! :) They look great from here, Mike, and the true test is that you enjoyed their texture and flavor!  Shaping comes with practice (a lot of it)....but you get to eat all the practice, so.... :)

Enjoy those with some cheese, maybe a Parisian sandwich with some butter, and ham? :)

Rich

mlayne's picture
mlayne

I had a nice ham and brie sandwich built on a Kerry Gold buttered baguette for lunch today.  It was my box standard poolish 67% hydration baguette and it was good but this one blew its doors off for flavor and crumb.  I plan on working with this one until I get it to look right and I also plan on working with Ciabatta and Focaccia at about 80% hydration just to get used to working with wet dough.

My go-to loaves of bread to keep in the house are Hamelman's 40% Rye, an enriched 100% whole wheat sandwich loaf and an enriched 67% AP 33% whole wheat 10 grain with sunflower seeds, and of course baguettes.  It makes it tough to lose weight but we do love baguettes.

Thanks for the kind words.

Benito's picture
Benito

The Bouabsa baguettes are well liked by the baguette brigade on TFL.  I like the organic appearance of the cracks that formed on the surface of your baguettes.  To make the scoring easier, you can place your shaped baguettes en couche into the fridge for 15 mins to firm up the dough.  This will make scoring easier so the blade will drag less.  You can also dip the blade into olive oil or water to help the scoring as well.

I haven’t found that the Bouabsa dough to be more difficult than other baguette dough to work with.  What flour did you use to make it with and at what hydration?

Benny

mlayne's picture
mlayne

I appreciate your suggestions and I'll give them a try.  I used Bob's Red Mill AP flour at 73% hydration.  It's my go-to AP here in Oregon.

alfanso's picture
alfanso

From me - https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/63557/simple-pleasures-idy-baking

And from MTloaf - to me, he is the acknowledged master of the Bouabsa baguette. https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/63580/baguette-virus-spreading

 

mlayne's picture
mlayne

Thanks, I'll check them out this evening.

foodforthought's picture
foodforthought

You might want to check out David’s (dmsnyder) version of Gosselin baguettes. His work with Bouabsa and Gosselin resulted in his excellent San Joaquin Sourdough recipe. He writes the most excellent procedural notes, too.

I think your bread looks lovely. Agree that cold dough will probably improve handling characteristics. I often make dough for multiple loaves and keep it refrigerated for up to 3-4 days (no more than 5) then have fresh bread every other day or so.

May the yeast be with you,

Phil

mlayne's picture
mlayne

I'll check it out.  I'm making dinner for a guest this evening so I'm making focaccia. fresh pasta and Caesar Salad to go with the ragu and creme brulee that I put together yesterday.  Should be pretty good.  The ragu and custard are resting so I'll just need to heat the ragu and brulee the custard tonight. In addition to making the pappardelle pasta and focaccia.

foodforthought's picture
foodforthought

You might want to check out David’s (dmsnyder) version of Gosselin baguettes. His work with Bouabsa and Gosselin resulted in his excellent San Joaquin Sourdough recipe. He writes the most excellent procedural notes, too.

I think your bread looks lovely. Agree that cold dough will probably improve handling characteristics. I often make dough for multiple loaves and keep it refrigerated for up to 3-4 days (no more than 5) then have fresh bread every other day or so.

May the yeast be with you,

Phil

mlayne's picture
mlayne

really good.  I've made pan d' campagne with 5% ww and 5% dark rye before and liked it a lot.  I'll definitely put the San Joaquin Sourdough on my to-do list.

mlayne's picture
mlayne

I used Janedo's yeasted levain this time and applied the suggestions received to chill the shaped loaves before scoring with an oiled razor blade on my lame.  Both suggestions were excellent and helped a lot.  I highly recommend them to anyone working on high hydration baguettes.  The loaves came out pretty good, certainly prettier than my first batch. For some reason, I hit a huge hole when I cut into this baguette.  Go figure.

Now my levain for David's San Joachim Sourdough Baguettes is working on the counter and will be mixed in later this evening.

As always criticism, comments and snide remarks are welcomed.

 

  

Benito's picture
Benito

Good improvements there. If I may offer a diagram on how I score my baguettes. The scores are in red and the beginning and ending of each score in blue. Imagine your baguette divided longitudinally into three lanes approximately equal widths. Your scores should stay in that middle lane. Ideally each score should overlap with the next by about ¼ to ⅓. If they don’t overlap the baguette will end up sausage link shaped with lobes. Your blade should be angled at about 30-45* from the surface of the dough. This will give you nice ears.

mlayne's picture
mlayne

with the scoring part of making baguettes.  Your's look very professional and I'm appropriately jealous! 

I try to stay down the middle and only slightly angled right to left; with the blade held at about a 45 degree angle; and about 1/3 overlap; but my slashes always seem to have a mind of their own and roll to the left more often than not.  I decided that I like the 250g baguettes because they fit my smaller Anova oven better than the 330g ones I had been making in my wall oven but I may go back to the wall oven.  

I know there's no substitute for practice so I plan to make up 1k a day of some kind of baguette dough to practice on so I'll have 4 loaves a day to butcher.  Meanwhile, I gave away 3 loaves today that were still warm and yesterday I made bread pudding.  Silver lining to all the excess bread that seems to pop up around here.

Thanks for your help, I appreciate it very much.

Benito's picture
Benito

Nothing beats persistence and practice with baguettes, your two efforts are already showing improvements.  Your plan of baking them regularly will get you to your goals.  Nice to have another baker here interested in baking baguettes.

mlayne's picture
mlayne

Well, I'm not sure what I did wrong this time around.  I used David's San Joachim Sourdough recipe and I'm pretty sure I followed the instructions carefully.  The dough was very slack but I did 3X20 stretch and folds over an hour and a half, followed by 17 hours retarding at about 48dF.  The dough was still extremely slack after its long rest but I let it come to room temp for an hour and then shaped it into 3 baguettes, left them on the couche for 45 minutes and put them in a steamed, 480dF oven for 24 minutes.

Not much oven spring and not much decent color.  The loaves were basically flat and dense.  Photo's show it all.

So now I'm making my tried and true 12h poolish, 63% hydration yeasted baguettes to recover my severely damaged self-esteem and give us something decent to eat tonight and to make croutons for Caesar Salad for Thursday night dinner guests. 

As always, Comments, Criticism, and Snide Remarks are welcome.

Abe's picture
Abe

And I can offer no better. Everyone who has commented in this thread has a lot of experience when it comes to baguettes. I'd follow their advice very closely. 

Not someone who has delved into baguettes myself I just wanted to say this... KISS!

That stands for "Keep It Simple Stupid". Now before you read too much into this seemingly horrible piece of advice it's not meant to be an insult. It's the saying (nothing I can do about that) and I say it often to myself  as a self deprecating piece of advice. 

When something goes wrong then it's best to keep it as simple as possible so one can concentrate on correcting the mistakes before one goes onto anything more complicated or fancy. Then practice that over and over again till it becomes second nature and only then go onto the fancy shmancy stuff. 

If I were to tackle baguettes i'd just do bread flour, water, salt and yeast at a low hydration till i get it perfect. Then I might swap the yeast for sourdough starter and repeat. Once that is perfected then i'd coat the baguettes with seeds. After which perhaps up the hydration etc. 

So that's my comment, positive criticism and a 'mistaken' snide remark. 

mlayne's picture
mlayne

Thanks Abe, I appreciate your chiming in.  I've been working with sourdough for a long time which is why I'm scratching my head about what happened here.  I think I didn't give the levain a long enough rise to get it seriously working.  My "off the rack" poolish based baguettes usually come out fine. In fact my ego savers just came out of the oven.  I seem to struggle with wet dough, unless its focaccia, which for some reason comes out fine.

alfanso's picture
alfanso

I probably ran the Bouabsa baguette more than a half dozen times until I started to figure it out, and then moved on from there in baby steps - very slowly.  It took me more than a year of nothing but baguettes 2-3 times a week to become an overnight success.

Abe's picture
Abe

Even a professional musician will take a bar or two they're stuck on and practice it over and over again till perfect. Then they will practice the piece as whole. So one turns the problem into an exercise. If one just practices the whole concerto from beginning to end the whole time it'll never be perfect. But if one takes each mistake out of the piece of music and just concentrates on that the mistake can be corrected.

If it's shaping make a big yeasted dough, keep it in the fridge and everyday take off enough for one baguette and practice. Same can be done for scoring. If it's the ferment then make a big dough and try staggering it till one finds the sweet spot. If it's hydration then slowly work up to where it goes wrong and stick with that. If it's the bake then with each batch alter the bake slightly till one finds what works just right. And so on.

And as you say it can take a long time but from your bakes it sure pays off! 

Benito's picture
Benito

Your baguettes are saying two different things to me.  The external appearance would suggest some over fermentation, that is the lack of the scores opening up and the relative lack of colour.  The profile however and the crumb point to underfermentation.  The crumb appears quite dense without much openness.  

How is your starter’s health and activity and how is your levain?  

It might be more productive for you to get practice in with commercial yeasted baguettes, they ferment so much quicker so you can get more bakes in to learn the harder things like shaping, transferring the dough etc.

mlayne's picture
mlayne

I'm thinking the issue was a lack of levain development and maybe a little excess hydration.  My starter is great, healthy, mature, and active.  IIRC, my levain wasn't showing much activity when I incorporated it into the dough so that's my strong suspect for an accomplice to the crime.  I wetted my hand a lot when doing the stretch and fold 60 times, probably 15 times.  If I incorporated 15-30g additional water that could add 3-6% to the hydration pretty easily.  I suspect this may have contributed to the delinquency of my loaves.

My box standard baguette is 200g of 50/50 poolish with 1g IDY, 500g hi gluten flour, 278g dechlorinated water, 5g IDY and 12g fine sea salt.  I usually correct the dough when I mix it with a little more water or flour as required to get the right kind of tacky feeling dough.  Mix on my KA mixer at 2 for 3 minutes, then 6 minutes or so at 3, then hand knead for 50 or so times on a lightly oiled bench.  Bulk fermentation is about 2 1/2 hours at room temp, proofing is about 90 minutes for 4 each 245g loaves or sometimes 3 each 330g loaves.  Bake at 440dF in my Anova steam oven for 17-18 minutes depending on the size loaf and the color I want the crust to be.  These come out fine. (See photo, left 2 are 450dF @ 18 minutes, right 2 are 440dF @ 17 minutes.)

My problem seems to be with wet doughs. 

Do you suggest that I simply either make a straight dough version with 73% +/- hydration to practice on?  That would certainly speed up the iterations and the neighbors and ducks would love it.  

Benito's picture
Benito

OK that makes sense, the crumb told the story that the issue with underfermentation.  It is easy to want to rush the process but that doens’t usually work out that well when the step rushed is the levain.

If one of the issues with that last set of baguettes was over hydration, why don’t you consider starting lower say 70% that way your dough might be fine if more water is added during folds etc.  You really don’t need high hydration to bake great baguettes.  I learned on lower hydration dough and got great open crumb.  I have gradually increased the hydration over time because my thinking about baguette dough development has evolved over time.

Benny

MTloaf's picture
MTloaf

My yeasted version is kneaded very little only about a minute after the extra water and salt are added and then a few coil folds. 
I would recommend losing the oil in your version because it changes the crust.
It just so happens I baked these Bouabsas today.  77% hydration KAAP organic flour A really good baguette flour. Now if I could figure out how to orient the photo. 

Benito's picture
Benito

Wow Don, you haven’t lost your touch, those are outstanding baguettes.

foodforthought's picture
foodforthought

First. Nowadays, if time allows, I run my levain through 3 generations to make sure it’s lively. Process looks like this.

mix - 36 hours: mix 5 g starter with 10 g each, water and flour (Gen 1)

mix - 24 hours: mix Gen 1 with 40 g each, water and flour (Gen 2)

mix - 12 hours: mix Gen 2) with 100 g each, water and flour (Gen 3)

yields ~ 300 g+/- levain. Tweak 2nd, 3rd amounts to increase, reduce yield

Second. No crime in goosing your recipe with up to .5% active dry yeast. I pretty much always use .4% myself.

Cheers,

Phil

mlayne's picture
mlayne

Good ideas.  I'll work up my levain and add in .4% IDY to help things along and see how its working out.  I have 350g of levain working right now; 50g starter, 150g H2O and 150g bread flour.  It's been working for 6 hours so I'll check it out and if its not looking vigorous I'll give it your 3 day boot camp treatment.

mlayne's picture
mlayne

My starter is working beautifully so I decided to make a sourdough version of the baguettes with less hydration to work on shape and scoring and to see how that affected the bread.

Here's the formula

 Gram%
BF465100.00%
H2O32569.89%
SALT102.15%
 800172.04%
   

Here's the Method

I started with 200g of mature starter, then deducted 100g each of flour and water from the above formula.  Mixed the remaining 225g of water with the starter, then mixen in the remaining 365g of flour and started the clock.

 

Mix with KA paddle until comes together
Autolyse 30 minutes; add salt; mix with dough hook 2 minutes
Fold and rest 30 minutes; repeat 3 more times
Let rise on counter for about 1 1/2 hours
Move to fridge at 2:45 and go play bridge Out of fridge and pre shape @ 8:15
When taken from fridge, pre-shape and warm on counter for 1 hour
Pre-heat Anova to 440dF 100% Steam
Final Shape and proof for about 45 minutes
Bake at 440dF 100% steam for 17 minutes

And here's the result:

I'm pretty happy with everything except the blown-out seams although the crumb was tighter than I expected.  I suspect that under-proofing is the culpert here but I'm hoping for any ideas that might help solve this issue.  The seams were well sealed before final proofing and baking.  

Thanks for the help.  As always your comments, criticism, and snide remarks are greatly appreciated.

Mike

 

Benito's picture
Benito

The shaping and scoring both look good.  Perhaps you’ve used more flour than necessary and as a result the seams didn’t seal fully leading to the blow outs and/or the seams weren’t fully on the bottom while baking.

I agree that they crumb appears a bit under fermented.  The percent prefermented flour is about 21.5%, bulk was about 4 hours or so and then an hour on the counter.  Your room temperature must have been quite cool because that amount of prefermented flour and bulk and final proofing times would have ca used my dough to over ferment at the temperatures I typically ferment at.  

You might want to stick with a formula that is tried and proven, it would probably give you more predictable results. I hope you aren’t taking me as being too critical, I think you’re doing extremely well.  Benny

mlayne's picture
mlayne

I don't think you're being too critical at all.  I appreciate your comments very much and I've successfully incorporated them into my trial and error testing.  I.e. cool the dough before scoring, add hydration a little at a time to work on shaping and scoring etc.

Bulk fermentation after stretch and fold was 1 1/2 hour on the counter, then 5 1/2 hours in the fridge at about 40dF.  I'm increasing my hydration in relatively small increments to see how the shaping and scoring works out.  I think that I may have had a bit too much flour on the bottom since I pre-shape and then rest on the couche.  Today I'll try 73% hydration and both bulk ferment and proof on the counter since I'm not obligated to go out for any reason.  I'll try pre-shaping on a lightly floured board and final proof on the couche with a light dusting of flour.  Apparently, there are drawbacks to having a ready source of bread flour in 25# bags.  And my wife can attest that one of them is the amount of residual flour that I trail behind me in the kitchen.  Another is my generous dusting of my couche.

Thanks again for your review and comments.

Mike

 

mlayne's picture
mlayne

I'm happy with my latest iteration of baguettes.  Yesterday’s baguette bake came out just fine.  Here’s the formula. 

TODAY'S BAKE JANUARY 22, 2022

 

Three 250g Baguettes

 
   

LEVAIN

FINAL DOUGH + Starter

 
 

Grams

Baker's %

Grams

Grams

 

BF

440

100.00%

100

340

 

H2O

321.2

73.00%

100

221.2

 

SALT

9

2.00%

0

9

 
 

770

175.00%

LEVAIN

200

 
    

770

 

Kitchen counter temperature = 68dF

 

Mix all ingredients with Danish wisk until dough comes together

Rest 30 minutes; give dough 1st turns 2x4

Fold and rest 30 minutes; repeat 3 more times

Let rise on counter for until risen about 175%

Pre-shape and rest for 30 minutes

Pre-heat Anova to 440dF 100% Steam

Final Shape and proof until ready to bake 2 hours

Bake at 440dF 100% steam for 19 minutes

Turn off oven and crack the door for 30 minutes

Cool on rack on counter

 

I did all the mixing and bulk fermenting in the same bowl and didn’t use any oil to make it easier to handle.  I portioned the dough and pre-shaped the loaves on the bench without oil or flour.  I shaped the loaves on the bench without oil or flour and moved them to the couche to proof.

 

I’m happy with the results and I guess I’m getting better at dealing with higher hydration dough. The loaves didn’t “blow out” along the seam or side so that’s a plus.  These are 73% hydration and other than oiling the razor blade in my lame and avoiding oil and excessive flour I didn’t really do anything different with these.

Next time I’ll try the 21-hour retard but I’ll pay more attention to how the dough feels than to the clock.

Many thanks to all of you who reviewed my efforts and gave me a lot of very helpful advice.  Now if I can repeat the results ....

Mike

Benito's picture
Benito

Beautiful baguettes Mike, you are obviously pleased with them, congratulations.

Benny

mlayne's picture
mlayne

Benny, for both your kind words and your unstinting help along the way.  I'm going to work with these naturally leavened baguettes until I get confident that I can replicate them on demand then branch out into Ciabatta.  I'm also planning on cutting down on the amount of starter I keep on the counter and emulating your more minimalist approach.  I probably don't really need to have 3 mason jars half full of the same starter available at all times.

The only other loaves I've made lately are Hamelman's 40% Rye; a 100% WW soft sandwich loaf; a 10 grain seeded 33% WW sandwich loaf, and focaccia with rosemary, olives and Maldon Sea Salt.

Thanks again,  Mike

MTloaf's picture
MTloaf

The shaping and scoring look good which is half of the battle. Much better without the oil and excess flour. My wife doesn’t allow me on the furniture on bread baking day.  I can’t help you with the recipe because I prefer to use yeast in my baguettes. We found during the CB that AP flour is better for a more open crumb and a lighter chew. When you work through the bread flour maybe give it a try. 
Don

mlayne's picture
mlayne

my flour supply and this time I got bread flour with 12% protein rather than 13%.  My AP from Bob's Red Mill runs 11% so I'll give both a try and see what the difference is.

Thanks for the ideas.

Mike

dmsnyder's picture
dmsnyder

The benefits of persistence and reflective practice are showing. 

David

mlayne's picture
mlayne

for the kind words and encouragement.  I appreciate it very much.

Mike

mlayne's picture
mlayne

that I keep on the counter.  I'm drying out a bunch of starter to freeze and some to take with me on a trip to Mexico next month.  I plan to keep about 50g of starter in a small Bon Mannan jam jar on the counter and feed it daily.  I'll use about 2/3 of it to bake one loaf of bread each day unless I plan to give some to the neighbors in which case I'll make more levain overnight.

I'm shooting for 25-30% pre-ferment with 100% hydration, does this seem about right to you sourdough enthusiasts?

Thanks,  Mike

dmsnyder's picture
dmsnyder

Around 20% OF THE FLOUR in the total dough in the levain would pretty standard. This may adjusted downward at times to slow fermentation in very warm climates, for example. 

It's really helpful to think of the proportion of the total flour that is prefermented, rather than the proportion of the levain by weight.

David

mlayne's picture
mlayne

I would use about 34g of pre-ferment in the final mix to get about 20% pre-ferment?

alfanso's picture
alfanso

Think of how off your calculation would be if your preferment one time was at 60% hydration, 125% hydration the next.  Only consider the flour as the amount of PFF - Pre-Fermented Flour.  The percent of hydration doesn't come into play for that 20% of PFF.

If the Total flour is 171g then the final dough would include only 137g (171 - 34 = 137).

It is possible that what you stated is what I describe here, but just by the way you worded it, I can't infer that.

Unfortunately nomenclature is not only all over the board in baking in English language, but there are the multitude of other languages.  It can get confusing, but there are some terms that should be immutable.  Actually all terms should be, but good luck with that.

At least we can (mostly) agree on the term "bake".

Your progress is showing good signs of life!

mlayne's picture
mlayne

because I used to make my pre=ferment by using 200g of starter, all the water in the recipe (less 100g) and an equal weight of flour to the added water.  After it got nice and active I added the remaining flour and salt.  I would use this approach no matter how much dough I was making and just accepted that a larger amount of dough would require longer to get the pre-ferment active.

I really appreciate you all clearing up the rule thumb of levain = 20% of total flour + equal amount of water.  Generally, I've made 800-1000 grams of dough at a time so I guess my ratio's haven't been too far out of whack through blind luck.

Thanks again,  Mike

dmsnyder's picture
dmsnyder

What Alan said.

Here's an example in round numbers:

Let's assume you are making a dough with 500g  of flour in total. Your levain is 100% hydration. If you want 20% of your flour pre-fermented, that would be 100g. Since your levain is 100% hydration, for it to contain 100g of flour, you need to mix 200g of levain. You would add that to your 500g of unfermented flour and enough water to build a dough of the hydration you desire. Here's where it gets just a bit more complicated (unless you are building a 100% hydration dough!).

Let's assume you want a 70% hydration dough with 2% salt. So, your formula for the Final Dough would be as follows:

Flour:500g (total) - 100g (in the levain) = 400g

Water: 350g (total) - 100g (in the levain) = 250g

Salt: 10g

Levain: 200g 

Total dough weight: 400 + 250 + 10 +200 = 860g

Hope that helps.

Happy baking!

David

mlayne's picture
mlayne

So if I'm making a 70% hydration dough and I want 500g of dough to bake then I divide the total weight of the dough by 1.72 (100% flour, 70% water and 2% salt to get my flour weight of 291g, resulting in 70% water weight of 204g and salt weight of 5.82g, Total weight just over 500g.

To calculate the amount of 100% hydration starter to use I simply take 20% of the flour weight (58g) and double it (116g).  Then I subtract 58g from both the flour and the water weight to find how much flour and water to add for the final build, remembering to be sure to add the salt after autolyse. In this example 233g flour, 146g water and 6g salt for 501g of final dough.

Thanks for clearing this up for me, assuming I finally got it right.  If I didn't, thanks anyway for the help.

Mike

alfanso's picture
alfanso

you will find the real life example here https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/69775/community-bake-rye-bread#comment-500930 .  disregard all the extraneous components and just absorb how the FWS are incorporated.