Consistency - you'll know it when it clicks

Something clicked for me te other week - I thought it might be interesting to describe the event. This particular quest to perfect the all mighty baguette began around March of last year, prior to that I had been spinning lots of pizzas for my kids and meat pies (a heritage food) cheese cakes etc with particular experience tossing pizzas since in high school I worked at a pizza joint pumping out a ridiculous number of pies several nights a week for years - after a while, if you've made a certain shape about a thousand or more times you eventually get to the point that you can do it with your eyes shut (literally). It always cracked me up watching someone else make the oddest of shapes when they try making pizza the first time. So pizza spinning is reference point for any dough related recipe for me...

So now comes the famous baguette, over the last year plus it had driving me bonkers trying to get a good cylinder - I watched videos religiously and just couldn't quite get the hang of the technique especially the use of the heel of you hand (I'm referring to the final fold whereby the loaf is sealed and folded just before rolling ). With failure after failure decided on a hybrid method of using fingers to create the seal. It brought an immediate improvement but still resulted in defects. So finally after using this new technique, I decided to give the heel method another shot. To my surprise I noticed that I was able to wack out a really nice cylinder without any effort - I could gauge the amount of pressure needed progressing along the loaf with little thought or concentration. This was the point that all of a sudden the muscle memory just kind of kicked in and the improvements in the bake were leaps and bounds above any other bake. This was quite a cool experience and really goes to show that it just comes down to a lot of practice. It also goes to show that the correct technique contributes to the loaf as a whole. I am sure that the recent great burst that I am seeing has more to do with more uniform taught surface - of course timing and reading the dough and having a better guage on rise times and final proofing is a big factor but all in all, ever step demands practice, understanding and muscle memory to not only