OK, my husband and I are on a bread making journey starting with baguettes and after 2 tries, our results are not optimal. For bake 1 we:
- Used no poolish
- Used bread flour
- recipe called for just yeast, salt, flour
- Four 45 minute rises
Results: Too dense, but not terribly. Not good crunch or browning (after 25 minutes). Pretty meh for flavor
For bake 2 we used the King Arthur Flour recipe:
- made a poolish with 1 cup APF; 1/16 tsp yeast; 1/2 cup water; let it sit overnight
- Used APF for dough
- recipe called for yeast and flour (no salt)
- Two 45 minute rises
Results: Too dense, cakey-like, but not as dense as bake 1; good crunch; meh flavor - very sweet; definitely needs salt.
Questions:
1. How to improve the flavor - not salty or sour enough
2. What's you r advice for kneading - I slapped and stretched the air out of the first bake's dough between rises and the hubs did a stretch and fold between rises for the 2nd bake.
3. Probably more questions to come but that is it for now. Lucky you, I'm open to unsolicited advice. :)
If I'm in the wrong forum or if there are answers in another space let me know.
Thanks in advance!
Steph & Owen
Thanks!
I can fix one part of the problem:
Bread not salty enough: Add more salt. Problem solved. ?
OK OK, when to add it is a legitimate question. ?
Hi,
You need much longer fermentation times to develop flavour. This usually requires much less yeast to stretch out the time for the dough to mature. My baguettes are made with a poolish also, but it takes 12 hours to mature the poolish. After mixing the final dough, I bulk ferment for two hours, with a fold after one hour. After bench rest and shaping, the dough is left for one hour for final fermentation. I can give you the bakers percentage for the ingredients if you want.
Hi Gavinc,
Thanks! And please do send your percentages for ingredients. That would be much appreciated.
Hi,
Bread flour 100%, Water 66%, Salt 2%, Instant yeast 0.4%
So, for a 700g dough mix, overall you need Bread flour 416g, Water 274g, Salt 8.3g, Instant yeast 1.5g
Preferment 33% of the flour in a poolish = Bread flour 137g and water 137g (100% hydration) and a small pinch of yeast, then subtract these amounts (except the yeast) from the overall for the final mix.
I can PM you a link to my spreadsheet for recalculating quantities if you want.
Cheers.