Baguettes de Tradition with old dough

These are the best baguettes I’ve made to date - light, crispy, very good flavor, crust and texture.  The recipe is based on Ian Lowe’s Baguettes with Old Dough (Pate Fermentee), with my own modifications.

Years ago, I took the Baguette class as KAF, but I never quite achieved their quality. It was an excellent class, taught by Jeffrey Hamelman, but I was new to more serious baking, and the concepts were foreign to me. Over the years, I tried to improve on my results, but usually produced somewhat heavy baguettes that didn’t rise well. 

I’ve been doing some panettone and shokupan experiments with variations on sweet lievito madre, and recently began maintaining a mid-sweet LM that grows quite aggressively but holds it form for longer than a standard LM.

I decided to use this rather than the Pate Fermentee in the recipe, reasoning that since it develops quickly without acidifying, it wouldn’t act like the typical sourdough in a baguette recipe. I also used a small amount of  yeast, in part because this was an experiment. This combination ended up working very well, and I will probably keep using this recipe!

Here is the Ian Lowe recipe (he shares this on his web page):

I decided to make a 20% batch. This produced enough dough to make six 16” baguettes (size that works in my Anova Precision Oven:

Notes:

I am using a French T65 flour, but I think regular bread flour mixed with AP flour would work well also. 

Instead of the Pate Fermentee, I used my 7%Su stiff starter, which is a maintained starter, not a one-day starter. It is a lievito madre/pasta madre-style starter, fed and fermented at ambient temperature. I refrigerate it between baking episodes, and at this point I usually use it as a booster for regular LM. 

I used 170g of this starter, rather than the 187g in the pink column. The dough was very active.

The malted barley flour that Ian Lowe uses is non-diastatic barley malt powder.

I used about 25g more water to compensate from the slightly drier quality of stiff starter vs pate fermenetee.

Ian uses fresh yeast, and I used about 7g of instant dry yeast instead.

Mixing:

I mixed 7 minutes using spiral on low speed, to combine all ingredients except the starter and the extra water. I autolysed for 10 minutes, then added the starter and mixed until fully developed, about another 5 minutes. I added the extra 25g of water along with the starter. Timings will vary by mixer.

FDT was 26C. 

I rested the dough on the countertop in a covered container for 1.5 hours, then refrigerated in a cold fridge overnight. I had intended to ferment this dough for 3 hours, but it was very active and doubled in 1.5 hours, so I put it in the fridge.

It was the most active baguette dough I’ve had at that stage of the process.

Next day, I divided the cold dough into 8” long rectanges weighing 240g, flattened them slightly and rolled them up. I placed them on a floured couche to rest and come to room temperature for about another hour, a process I speeded up slightly by using the B&T proofing box with couche inside.

Forming:

I did this in two stages, since the loaves were still a little cold in places. First, I formed baguettes using the standard forming technique, but only made them about 10” long, so  that I would not stress the dough. 

I put them back in the couche for another 30 minutes in the proof box, then hand rolled them out further, to the full 16” length. 

These were placed back in teh floured couche, this time on the countertop, not in the proofer. 

Baking:

The loaves proofed for 45 minutes before the first batch of 3 went into the oven.

During this time, I preheated the APO to 450F, with a baking steel on the second shelf.

A pan was placed in the bottom of the oven for water/steam.

Just prior to baking, I put the loaves onto a peel, dusted the tops with flour, and made 3 overlapping slashes.

While loading the loaves onto the baking steel, I put about a half cup of water in the steam pan.

These baked for just over 15 minutes.

These were really very good, similar to what I remember at the Aire (highway gas station) in Auvergne, where the jambon beurres were very dependable.