I've been baking for about 3 weeks, and have been trying to really hone in on a great baguette for sandwiches.
Would love feedback and thoughts for how to improve upon the ones I made last night! (See photos)
I used 155g per baguette, and was aiming for about an 8" roll. I went with a more intensive mix this go.
This was my first time using my baking stone, which I pre-heated to 500 degrees, and then I baked them for about 22 min in 450 degree, without convection.
I had a pan of water at the bottom of the oven, and then also sprayed the oven for steam, but I think I could have sprayed more.
The baguettes in the back seemed to particularly darken, and the bottoms, even with the stone, stayed fairly light. Some of the baguettes were slightly doughy on the inside.
I still ate three of them for dinner.
They were too close together in the oven. The stone needed more pre heating and also placed lower in the oven for a more even bake. Did you slice them before they had completely cooled down?
Good points about spacing and preheating the stone. Letting the loaves cool completely really helps with the texture. Adding a bit of steam at the start of baking or rotating them halfway through can also improve the final result.
Yeah, totally agree good spacing and a properly heated stone solve half the problems already. Letting the loaves cool all the way is huge too. Steam and a mid-bake rotation are great ideas. One more tip: keep the shaping nice and even; any weird tension shows up later in the oven. And sometimes giving the dough just a bit more proof makes everything puff up more evenly.
Thanks much! And what about this issue with the dinosaur ridgeback? Two of them had these and two didn't... the two that didn't proofed for about an extra 20 minutes so reasonably I thought maybe that had something to do with it.
The scores didn't overlap enough. See how the loaf didn't open as much where it wasn't scored, and it opened the most in the middle of a score? When you get the overlap right, the two scores will share the opening and you will not get the ridgeback.
TomP