Baguette blunder
So for my first-ever attempt at baking a baguette, I watched an episode of "America's Test Kitchen", downloaded the recipe, and set about reproducing the ingredients and all steps as faithfully as possible. The recipe makes four baguettes, but as I was only feeding myself and my husband, I cut the dough in half and froze one portion. The first effort was very satisfactory -- lovely deep brown crust, great crumb, outstanding flavour. The only flaw is that I have not mastered the art of scoring the dough, but that will come with practice and patience. So far, so good.
Today I decided to repeat the exercise, using the dough that I had frozen. First, I defrosted the dough in the refrigerator overnight. Then let it sit at room temperature for a couple of hours, giving it a stretch-and-fold about halfway through. Then formed the baguettes, let them rise for another hour, preheated my oven (with pizza stone) to 400 degrees (quite a new oven, and it's always been reliable, so I don't think the fault lies there). Scored the baguettes, and slid them into the hot oven. As per Test Kitchen instructions, I covered them with a double thickness of aluminum roasting pans for the initial 5 minutes, and then removed the roasting pans. First observation: At this point, when I made the first batch the crust was starting to brown up quite nicely. Not so this time around -- bread was pale and sickly looking. So I left it to bake for another 10 minutes, then rotated them. At 10 minutes there was still no sign of browning. Another 10 minutes and the bread was kind of beige, but nothing approaching a really appetizing crust. I took them out of the oven at that point because they were certainly baked through (and my instant-read thermometer confirmed an internal temp of about 205 degrees F). The taste is ... meh... not bad exactly, but no screaming wonder either. The crumb is pretty good, but the crust is hard (and not in a good way), pale, and thoroughly uninviting.
Any thoughts on what I might have done wrong? My best guess is that this very lean dough just does not freeze well. Other opinions and/or suggestions welcome.
Ran out of sugars if the yeast ate it all up? That would affect browning in the crust. How do you mean the crumb was "pretty good"?
The crumb was nice and open -- good CO2 retention, I think. I'm wondering now if the oven just didn't get hot enough. I noticed that the parchment paper I baked on wasn't scorched as it should have been if the oven had actually reached 400 degrees.
Or, you might be right -- I may have overproofed the dough. (The rise wasn't all it should have been either).
When was the baguette dough frozen, just after mixing or after partial fermentation? Flat, to chill quickly or in a ball?
The browned crust is what makes a baguette's flavour, no browning...meh.
Try a Quick fix. Turn your oven back on. Mix up a coffee cup of warm water with a teaspoon of sugar and when the oven is hot, stand over the sink and pour the water over the baguette. Quickly pop onto the rack to bake and get crispy. No need for stone, remove or use a Toaster oven. See if that freshens up the loaf and gives it some colour. (When loaf is cut, cover end with a little cap of foil and don't get the crumb wet.)
(Might want to try this next time brushing sweet water on the loaves before scoring and baking if you repeat the same method.)
I froze the dough after going through the first round of rising -- lots of stretch and fold, just at the point where Test Kitchen instructs us to put the dough in the fridge overnight. I flattened the dough before bagging it for the freezer.
too late to try your quick fix, but that's a good one -- I'll keep it in mind if I have this problem again. I do something similar when I freeze bread from the bakery, and want a quick thaw for dinner. Thanks for your feedback.
i usually pre heat up to 500 F and bake with steam at 450 F then once the steam comes out 425 F convection to dry and brown the bread.
Thank you. The 400 oven worked fine for the first batch, but I will try preheating to 500 then dropping to 450. That's how I bake bread when I use the dutch oven method, and it seems to me that the double thickness of roasting pans serves much the same purpose.