Yorkville Sourdough Baguettes
I continue to tweak my bakes even if the formula largely stays the same. In the case of my SD baguettes, I have gradually (very slowly since I don’t bake baguettes all that often) been working on the idea that with greater gluten development I can allow more fermentation. When we did the baguette community bake ages ago we came to the conclusion that less gluten development and less overall fermentation gave us a great baguette with open crumb and good ears/grigne. In fact, back then I believe it would try to get the baguettes baked once the overall rise from the time the levain was added to baking was only 30%. Now I have been inching up the overall rise at time of bake. I now more fully develop the gluten and for this bake targeted 60% rise in the dough. This happened to correspond to a pH drop of 1.05. Based on the good ears/grigne that this bake achieved I think I could still push further.
I also finally trimmed the excess metal off the razor blade I use to score. I can’t believe I hadn’t done this before. This greatly reduces the drag through the dough as you score giving you much cleaner scores. Should have done this ages ago but better late than never.
Overnight Levain build ferment 75°F 10-12 hours
78°F 9 hours to peak
In the morning, to your mixing bowl add water and diastatic malt to dissolve, then add levain. Use your spatula to cut the levain into small pieces. Next add AP flour and mix to combine. Allow to fermentolyse for 10 mins. Slap and fold x 100 then add salt and hold back water gradually working in until fully absorbed by massaging and then Rubaud kneading the dough, then slap and fold x 200. Can also use your stand mixer.
Bulk Fermentation 82*F until aliquot jar shows 20% rise.
Do folds every 20 mins doing 3 folds
Could do cold retard at this point for up to overnight. (Aliquot jar 20% rise)
Divide and pre-shape rest for 15 mins
Shape en couche with final proof until aliquot jar shows 60% rise then (optional) cold retard shaped baguettes en couche for at least 15 minutes for easier scoring. I often do this for convenience as the oven is pre-heating.
Pre-heat oven 500*F after 30 mins add Silvia towel in pan with boiling water.
Transfer baguettes from couche to peel on parchment
Score each baguette and transfer to oven, bake on steel.
Bake with steam pouring 1 cup of boiling water to cast iron skillet dropping temperature to 480*F.
The baguettes are baked with steam for 13 mins. The steam equipment is removed venting the oven of steam. Transfer the baguettes from the baking steel to next rack completing baking directly on a rack to minimize the browning and thickening of the bottom crust. The oven is dropped to 450ºF but convection is turned on and the baguettes bake for 10 mins rotating them halfway. The baguettes are rotated again if needed and baked for another 3 mins to achieve a rich colour crust.
Comments
but you continue to be my gold standard most of the time. A more pronounced grigne and some of your fabulous open crumb and you'd be back to old tricks again.
Alan
Yes one of the baguettes, usually the first one I score when I haven’t done baguettes in a long time (last time was early January), didn’t get the grigne that I was hoping for. However, the other two were good. Here’s the crumb. We had one baguette as a ham and cheese sandwich for dinner. Nice thin crisp crust on these and great flavour without excessive sour tang.
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What lovely crumb Benny!
Thank you very much Jon, I appreciate your comments.
Happy Baking
Benny
As usual, very nice results and inspiring work! Would it be possible to see a picture of the trimed blade you are now using?
Many thanks, Michel
Thank you very much Michel, I appreciate your comments. Here is my modification on the razor blade to reduce drag.
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Many thanks for the photo Benny. I will try using a trimmed blade, hoping it will help in improving my scoring.
Michel
You’re welcome Michel, let me know how it works for you. It certainly made scoring these baguettes smoother than usual for me.
Benny
They look so good, Benny! Crumb, crust, appearance, all very desirable.
I wasn't here for that CB, and it's only recently I've started to work on my baguette-fu. One thing I've been thinking is that what one wants is not so much restricted gluten development as a gluten with more extensibility when developed. Withholding salt from the initial mix helps with that and so does higher hydration, and you've been doing both. My latest notion is to add some flour known for being highly extensible, like emmer or spelt. I've tried 5% (sifted) emmer with AP and I think it's been useful. I should go to 10% and see if it's better.
Right now I'm waiting for my real French imported flour to arrive ...
TomP
Tom, thank you for your appraisal of my baguettes, I appreciate it. I have also done what you are planning to do and with 9% spelt the results were quite good, even more open than these baguettes. I think you will find that you’ll get more open crumb by adding either emmer or spelt even with the small addition of the bran from the whole spelt. For some reason, I still prefer my baguettes 100% white flour but 9% whole spelt was certainly good too.
The flour I use for baguettes is a lower protein all purpose from a mill in Quebec. I am told that this is essentially a T55. One day I’d love to try making baguettes with fine French flour, but for now the flour I can get locally is excellent in my mind.
Benny
Ahead of me as usual, Benny!
Sorry I didn’t mean it that way, more like great minds think alike or fools seldom differ 😜
I wasn't being sarcastic, I meant it ... all cool.