My first baguette! I baked this yesterday afternoon. I used the poolish recipe from the new book by Ken Forkish (which I love incidentally), did the final mix on Thursday morning and baked a delicious loaf that afternoon for Thanksgiving dinner. That was a typical boule, baked in a Dutch oven. However, I had made a full KF batch, two large loaves, so I had a half batch of dough left over to refrigerate for later use. I had planned on using it for pizza dough but yesterday I decided to use half of it in an attempt to bake a baguette. I used instructions from a Peter Reinhart book to shape the baguette and to steam it (using water in a pre-heated cast iron skillet at the bottom of the oven). It turned out far better than expected -- beautiful and delicious to boot! I narrowly averted disaster however.... I had forgotten to worry about the size of my baking stone! Which, it turns out, is 22 inches on the diagonal and my baguette was just a tad longer than that... which caused it to droop over the edge and be somewhat misshapen on one end (somewhat visible on the left hand side in these photos). I will have to remember to limit myself to 20 inch baguettes in the future.
Nice baggie! Beautiful scoring and bloom. Isn't it great to find a dough to multi-task as well ....as the baker ?
Happy baking!
I really want to try Baguettes. Yours looks amazing!
Just ran across this post. Lovely first attempt! I received my new linen couche and flipping board today and I have made Peter Reinhart's Pâté Fermente in anticipation of making his French Bread recipe tomorrow. I have a new lame' and am really excited to give it a go. Hope I get nice results too. I'll measure my stone and try to keep it from falling over the edge.
Lisa
And good luck!
-David
But forgot to note that my old stone was round, great for pizzas, and only allowed 16" baguette lengths and I always had 'drooping noses' at "both ends. No worry -they tasted great. My new stone is rectangular and is also 22", like yours, so I can expect to have only one drooping nose from now on :-)
Happy baking
That looks great; even more so for a 1st try. Well done!
In the interest of full disclosure I have been baking for about 5 years, almost entirely Lahey style Dutch oven loaves and pizza. This was indeed my first baguette. I have made quite a few since.. some very successful and some less so. Consistency still eludes me somewhat...
David