Poolish Baguette with Sunflower Seeds

This is a variation on a formula I learned at the SFBI baguette workshop. The original version was delicious, but crumb was not that open since hydration was only 68%(probably to make it easier for students to handle). I increased the hydration to 75%, scaled the amount to fit home ovens, kept the rest the same. Still minimal hand mixing, with a long bulk rise and several folds. Delicious and nice open crumb.

Poolish Baguette With Sunflower Seeds (adapted from SFBI)

-Poolish

Bread Flour (I used KA AP flour), 163g

Instant Yeast, 0.12g (I mixed 1/2tsp of yeast, which is about 1.5g, in 150g of water, then took 12g of yeast water)

water, 163g (if you measure yeast like I did above, minus 12g of water from this amount)

1.Mix and leave at room temp for 12 hours.

-Main dough

Bread Flour (KA AP), 330g

water, 173g (I used 207 to bring the hydration to 75%)

yeast, 1g

salt, 10g

toasted sunflower seeds, 59g

malt extract, 2.5g (I used barley malt syrup)

poolish from above

2.Mix water, flour, malt, and poolish,autolyse for 20mins

3.Add salt and sunflower seeds, hand mix to combine

4.bulk rise for 3 hours, with 3 folds at 45, 90, 135min.

5.divide into 4x220g, preshape, shape into baguettes

6.proof for about 45min

7.bake with steam at 460F.

Sunflower seeds don't absort that much water, so it was a very wet dough. Scoring is tough, no ears to speak of.

Nice open crumb though

The taste is incredibly nutty and fragrant from the sunflower seeds, can't stop eating those!

txfarmer's Blog
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what can I say... theyre beautiful!!!

Thanks!

One can get lost in those holes.

Thanks! I am sure the higher hydration helped, but then it made scoring harder, always a balance act.

I don't know if it gets any better than that!

Thanks! Means a lot coming from you!

Nice job, and the sunflower seeds look great and tasty.

Larry

I kept hydration high expecting sunflower seeds would suck away some water, not so much, but it did help with the crumb.

Absolutely gorgeous bread!

Well, not that I would expect anything less from you!

Thanks Sally!

nice use of the sunflower seed... what a good idea!

ben

Sunflower seed is on eof my favorite add-ins to bread dough. So nutty.

Fantastic crumb. And a very interesting way of handling the yeast in the poolish.

Learned that trick from "Artisan Baking", pretty cool huh?

I keep looking at the pictures and the recipe over and over. So beautiful, unfortunately, cannot take a bite. Have to try it with probably less water, to be able to handle it the first time. Sunflower seeds must make them scrumptuous. Great job!

Salma

....you'd better wear a bib. :)

Great job, beautiful bread.

above?? Not much, WOW. Your photography and bread making skills are outstanding,

PERIOD!

Betty

To Tyfarmer,

Thank you for sharing your recipe that I tried today. It was very flavorerul and nice texuture. Unfortunatly, I couldn't make as same as you did. The bread was 75% hydration. I will try again! Thank you so much.

USE: King Arthur All purpose flour

I can't use water to pour in a pan or preheat 500F because I broke the inner glass of my oven, also it's element too while I was baking french bread. I don't know how to make steam without breaking my oven anymore...

Can you explain the yest method of your poolish...not sure I understand it. Did you dissolve yeast in 150g water and use that?

Thanks

If you can measure 0.12g of yeast accurately, use that. I can't, my scale doesn't get to that level of accuracy, so my workaround is:

I mixed 1/2tsp of yeast (which is about 1.5g), in 150g of water, then took 12g of yeast water. In that 12g of yeast water, there's about 0.12g of yeast. Use that, rather than having to measure out 0.12g of yeast.

I am going to give this a try..still learning to work with highly hydrated doughs..Thanks. Sitka Baker