36 hours+ sourdough baguette with 80% whole grain - water, water, everywhere
Continue to experimetn with whole grain in my baguettes (original recipe here, 3 earlier variations here, 3 more variations here, previous whole grain experiments here, with 60% whole grain here)
AP Flour, 100g
barley flour, 75g
ww flour, 250
ice water, 415g
salt, 10g
rye starter (100%) 150g
-Mix flour, ice water and autolyse for 12 hours.
-Mix in salt, starter, then follow the basic 36 hour sourdough baguette formula here.
In last post, I was encouraged to "bet all my chips" and go for 100% whole grain, luckily I didn't! :P This intermediate step is important since I learned a few things which needs to be taken account into:
1. It rose way fast. I had to preshape right out of fridge without warming up since the dough was very bubbly and expanded already. I think with so much ww flour, I will need to reduce the starter amount to 100g or even less.
2. Hydration was 98%, because I know precisely that 100% would be too much. .... WHATEVER! Honestly, I just got scared by the concept of 100% hydration. At 98%, the dough was very sticky to handle, BUT the crust was thin as you can see from the picture above. With large holes in the crumb.
3. With so much whole grain and water, baguettes rose well, cuts opened fully, but the profile was a tad flat. I think it needs more S&F. And less starter/acidity might help with volume too.
Anyway, very good results with open crumb, relatively thin and definitely crispy crust, and most importantly, deep whole grain flavor.
I will be out of town this coming weekend, so the experiment will have to pause, but I will continue when I come back!
Submitting to Yeastspotting.
Comments
Wow, that crumb is amazing. But 98% hydration! That must have been tough to do anything with.
With so much ww flour, 98% hydration feels like a ...75-80% hydration white flour dough, maybe even a little less wet. Still wet and sticky, but not impossible.
Whew! This is like an old-fashioned cliffhanger, and now one more spectacular result! This is also some good food for thought. I don't think I can resist attempting to apply the lessons here to a larger loaf - not at 98% hydration, but perhaps close to it... Thank you again, and I'll stay tuned for the next exciting episode!
Marcus
After this series of experiments, I do indeed plan to convert the process to make a country loaves.
Haha. Good call on not "shoving the chips". I was of course... Um... KIDDING when I said that. Anyways, I just baked another batch of bread from your original formula (sourdough substituted with poolish). I had great results with one of the baguettes, fair results with another, and decent-ish results with the third. The decent-ish one looked good but was quite dense, while the best one had a nice open structure, and a dark crust. On the best one, I ended up using a different shaping method than I usually use- I tightened the preshaped dough as usual, but instead of rolling the dough with my hands, I kept picking up the dough and stretching it. The other ones, I rolled as usual. I was just wondering how you shape your baguettes, because honestly, I can't imagine shaping a 98% hydration dough into a baguette, even if it is mainly whole grain. I also had lackluster scoring but hey, that's another story. Also, in your opinion, is it necessary to keep SnF your dough even if it is above and beyond the windowpane test? I noticed this on my second SnF and decided I wouldn't risk degassing it any more. I'll post the pictures of the baguettes in my next blog, along with another project I did.
Ha, I knew you were kidding. With lean hearth breads, I don't even do windowpane test since it tells me nothing. The dough can pass windowpane right after autolyse, but it certainly needs more S&F. How many to do depends on how the dough feels. It needs to feel strong but still extensible. Hard to explain with words, my only advice is to experiment. Vary # of folds and see how the batch comes out.
My shaping and pre-shaping method couldn't be more traditional. If you search on you tube, there are a few baguette shaping videos, and that's exactly what I do. Yes, dough is wetter than what's shown, but it just means I need to handle it faster and more delicately. All the steps still need to be accomplished, with minimal touching.
You've achieved what i was promising my self to bake one day! A WholeWheat Baguette..! What a an elite bake, Txfarmer!
Thanks Mebake! Still a few steps away from a true ww baguette but the end is near!
I would love to sink my teeth into those baguettes! Me being a crust lover, that's like 95% crust! Yum!
I'm getting hung up with "whole grain" (plural? & no mention of flour) usage. I'm just looking for some clarification. Whole wheat (ww) is the only flour listed in the recipe as "whole." Which other flours are "whole" that you are referring to?
Otherwise I come out with only 50% whole grain flour.
15% whole rye in the starter, and 15% whole barley flour in addition to the 50% ww. The rye was the dark coarse kind, so I am certain it's "whole grain", barley where I got from also said it's whole, I will take their word for it. :)
Epic.
Blushing.
that your goal is to produce a baguette with no crumb at all, just a crust surrounding air.
Ha, that would just be ... crackers then. :P
Hello, just found out about your baguettes and I have some in the fridge as we speak waiting till tomorrow noon time :)..yet I am more interested in wholegrain variations cause of the fiber...I read that you were going to do some adjustments on these, did you do it? thanks for your advice and time