Baguette journal #3: Bánh mi with little happy accident

So about a week ago, I was determined to finalise my lean starter formula for baguette practicing as salted bran starter (24:12:1 bran:water:salt), and put it into test. And since my baguette making skill is beyond awful (lol), I thought let's make something extra difficult for the sake of practicing.

I have starter specific problem. My bran starters (both lean one and buttered one) always acting out whenever making contact with glutinous rice. Dough always turn out sticky and melty. But I like it difficult, hoping it will be much easier later on when I handle easier flours.

The dough was 20% glutinous rice flour, 30% PFF, 65% hydration, 2 stages levain. I can't go beyond 65% hydration with rice flour, otherwise I'll have crusty long pancakes. I used custom made 40x60 cm cookie sheet, 0.3 mm thin, to test whether plywood-parchment method can be ditched altogether. The oven temp were 250 °C (bottom) and 300 °C (upper). I lowered bottom heat to 230°C once I saw the loaves have reached maximum height.

I mixed the dough until passed windowpane test, followed by room temperature S&F for roughly 2 hours, then retarded it for better time management. My infrared thermometer registered 30 °C by the the end of levain fermentation.

But there was a happy little accident. I forgot to spray water after loading (lol). So I sprayed water 2 minutes after the loaves were loaded. Their height turned out unexpectedly better!

I can only speculate. Maybe that 2 minutes window gave the loaves a chance to set a little so they won't spread laterally. Maybe spraying water in the beginning will exarcebate the potential squat problem.

Oh and the flavor. One of signature characteristics of my starters are their ability to produce literally sweet loaves. And that extra harsh environment really squeezed out the sweetness out of the dough.They are sweeter than usual. And since the salt treatment, I feel there is a touch of umami present in my practice batches. Both starters never disappoint when it comes to fermentation flavor.

They are not there yet, but it's getting there. What a productive night! (or dawn. Whatever. lol) And pardon the awful scoring. The razor blade of my lame was split in half during scoring (weird, I know)

edit 1/9/25:

I just identified another culprit of shorter height in preceeding practice batches. I tend to score too vertical (length wise, so they're less than sausage cut) and too deep making the loaves prone to spread laterally. The batch in this post weren't as vertically scored, and can be scored less deep.

I decided to keep the cookie sheet method using the custom made sheet for the time being, and will custom order 40x60 cm baguette pan that can fit 5 loaves and see if I can figure something out to decrease product handling without sacrificing crumb aesthetic

Jay