Next up was making baguettes based on Ken's Artisan Bakery's Country Brown batards and boules. The other day I did the same to his bakery's Country Blonde. Not much to add except that I'm in the midst of a tear for getting batard and boule formats squeezed into baguettes. Must be an affliction, Doc.
Continuing on my quest to reverse boule and batard formulae to baguettes, here is my take on Ken's Artisan Bakery's country blonde. But instead of as boules or batards, which is what he sells them as, I fashioned them into baguettes (and a batard).
Almost, but not quite as compliant as my take on the Hamelman WW levain baguettes and batards, it falls short on both looks and shaping. But only by a few fat hairs. The Hamelman's have an incredible delicate finish to them.
To anyone even casually glancing at the most bookmarked pages on TFL, Jason’s Quick “Coccodrillo” (sp.) Ciabatta Bread is akin to the great thoroughbred Secretariat running against all puny comers. I’d been avoiding trying it out, for who knows why, but just this week adrianjm added to the list of those posting their version of the bread. So, I guess it was gravity that brought me to try it out too. And I did. Twice in one day.
I'd mentioned that I was probably going to bake a batch of SJSD (or as I use my own levain mix, soSJSD) baguettes for my wife to feed to the hungry in-laws up north later this week.
The trio are the Hameleman Pain au Levain, the (soSJSD) David Snyder Italian sesame, and these. Once more the explosive nature of the bloom on these baguettes, as with the Pain au Levain, is really quite something.
Another trip up north, but this time I'm staying home to tend to the dog. However some baguettes will be accompanying my wife on the journey - destination in-laws, as usual. The recent bake of Hamelman's Pain au Levain are scheduled to travel, and now these baguettes based on David Snyder's SJSD Italian Baguettes. Next up will probably be my take on his SJSD baguettes.
I've loved the feel of the Hamelman Pain au Levain dough during every phase of the prep. French Folds, Letter Folds, shaping, couching, scoring. And, of course, seeing what comes out of the oven as bread.
And so it was time for another indecisive bake. Batards or baguettes. Hmm, why not both. Again, I've not seen this bread done as baguettes anywhere on this site before, so maybe I can start a movement.
Always up for a challenge (except when I’m not) I recently came across TxFarmer’s fantastic Laminated Sandwich Loaf blog entry from Dec. 2011. As I am now a new inductee into the Lamination Game via my two recent forays into croissant making, I though that I’d give this a whirl as well. I'm also a sucker for trying other things that she's displayed on TFL.
In a recent post David Snyder mentioned that his Hamelman pain au levain would qualify for a final four if he had only one bread he could make/eat. I suggested a few other qualifiers, including his marvelous Gosselin baguettes with an SD twist added for good measure, not to mention good flavor!
As this August has unofficially turned into the Hamelman Pain au Levain batard month, I thought that I'd submit one more entry to the mix. I did a TFL search for hamelman pain au levain baguette after baking my version as a batard. And in the vast compendium of our website here I could not find a single reference to anyone ever having done his batard as a baguette .
My tendencies are to find and try to duplicate interesting breads coming from our talented lot of bakers on TFL. But over time, especially quite recently, it is hard to not notice that there are a lot of folks who love to bake Jeffrey Hamelman's Pain au Levain. So the carrot was placed before the donkey and I took the bait too.
