January 24, 2011 - 3:59pm
New from Oregon
Hello all, new to the site, just joining in. I've got good cooking skills but pretty new to taking bread seriously, been having a lot of fun with it for the last couple of weeks. I regularly bake a 100% whole grain loaf with consistancy and recently started experimenting with no-kneads and high hydration doughs. I'm having good luck with 80% hydration baguettes and fired up a sourdough starter this morning, also trying a 90% baguette as we speak. I never knew baking bread could be this fun!
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Hi mjbleck
Welcome to TFL.
It sounds like you have quite some baking experience already. How did the 90% hydration baguettes turn out?
I've got tons of cooking experience but very little bread work. I've really only been taking it seriously for a couple of weeks. Quite honestly I was always a little intimidated by it and kept my distance. But I took the plunge and have found I have a good feel for it.
The 90% was done more as a trial to see how the dough behaved. It was a sloppy wet dough but not any harder to work with than the 80%. I didn't do it with a well developed poolish so the taste was plain, but the crust and crumb were in the direction I wanted to go. Following the success with the 90% I did a 100% hydration which was like working with paste but I was able to make it work.
I posted the results of the 100% on the Artisan forum, and got a comment that hinted that I was using a flour with too high protein for baguettes, but like I said, what do I know?
Everytime I pull a bread out of the oven I've got a huge smile on my face! Getting a little tired of eating all this bread though...
That's what bread is about - pleasure. The smile you have when a loaf bakes up nicely is almost as good as the pleasure of eating it.
Happy Baking