Solutions for successfully scoring high hydration dough

I’m far from an expert being such a newbie, but cold dough right out of the fridge done its final proof seems to help the scoring.

Just confirming and amplifying one of your points: A fresh, factory-sharpened disposable razor blade is far FAR sharper than all but the top .00001% of professionally-sharpened super-fancy kitchen knives. (Remembering that a great many professional sharpening services are not even very good, and home sharpening can be good but almost never THAT good.) If you suspect your kitchen knives might not be quite as sharp as those of the ten or twenty wealthiest and luckiest knife owners on earth, do yourself a favour and spend $2.50 on a pack of razor blades. ?

Note: even with the very best of skill and materials plus extremely good luck, no kitchen knife is as sharp as a factory-fresh disposable razor. It's just that the best are less far off.

(EDIT) Success is success; if you always score your bread with a sharp kitchen knife and it works just fine, then there's no reason to buy extra gear.

Those are spot on.  I like using lubricant myself.  Either water or my cornstarch wash.  I dip the blade in before making any new cuts.  

• Good surface tension on the dough skin.
• Sharp shaving razor blade.  I get four corners on a single double edged blade.  Each corner tip may last me as much as 100 individual scores or more.
• The higher the hydration, the more "severe" the angle.  The weight of the high hydration dough (% water vs. % flours) plays a role in allowing the flap of scored dough to settle back down again.  Also dough with additives like fruit and nuts on or near the surface affects the weight of the scored flap.  
• If the angle of the blade is normally at ~45 degrees for 65%-68% hydration doughs, then shift to as little as 30 degrees.
• Proper oven steaming to inhibit the dough from setting too quickly and provide some lovely surface caramelization - the Maillard reaction.
• Read dmsnyder's tutorial on TFL.
• Also:  http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/45299/getting-feel-double-score#comment-347920

 For some homemade encouragement: 

• https://youtu.be/TGF3ApIXn6U  - 68% hydration
• https://youtu.be/9d6gXUr9n2Q?t=416 - 70% hydration

Your posted pics of baguettes here seem to clearly be under steamed, indicative of the dull crust color, and also a likely culprit in any oven spring that you might have otherwise gained.

Baguettes, for most of us, including yours truly, are usually a tough road to hoe.  Time invested, paying attention to details and practice are one sure fire way to cure the baguette baking blues (as played by Bread).

alan

Generally a razor blade is OK, but I know what you mean about the dough pulling with high hydration loaves.

When this starts to happen, I change over to my serrated ceramic knife. It's also good for loaves with seeds or "bits" in.

Lance

Hi Will,

Perhaps starting out baguettes at the 65% hydration range and working up from there.  Everything about them is easier for the initial slog through getting your chops down.  

I'd suggest starting out with something like the Hamelman Vermont SD which makes for a really easy great baguette.  90% KA AP type flour  @11.7% protein, plus 10% rye.  It uses a very liquid 125% hydr. levain, although you can decide on the % of hydration by making the appropriate adjustments, but keeping the pre-fermented flour % the same. 

This is it, and just came out of the oven 10 minutes ago.  You can do it too!

especially after dipping them in the Kociuzko mustard jar ;-) .

The final post-bake shape is really good as evidenced by the barrel of the baguettes.

Observations, some of which I touched on in the PM:

Bulk Ferment:

• my kitchen is always 78-80 degrees, hence my bulk ferment times are shorter than many others. 
• Because of this and having done it numerous times before, I do watch the clock and not the dough. My iterations are sufficient enough to warrant the clock, but I can’t/won’t speak for anyone else. 

Pre Shape:  

• Just a loosely placed towel or cloth over the dough after pre-shape is, to me, a better choice than tightly covered plastic-crap (kudos to David Snyder for coining that term on TFL).  All we are looking for here, is to protect the surface of the pre-shaped dough from beginning to dry out.  The same is true with he final shaped dough.
• Consider a pre-shape with the least amount of tension possible so as not to degas or stress the dough.
• The pre-shape is to get the dough “comfortable and relaxed“ from bulk in its post bulk stage and not really to begin truly shaping it.  
• However, getting a good pre shape will mostly dictate how good the final shaping will be.  Early mistakes and errors have a strong influence on the downstream results and are often harder to correct.  Anyone who has ever worked in IT can attest to this.

Method execution:

• Once you do this a very few times the steps become rote. Overthinking it is not needed. 
• Your hands will quickly become accustomed to the final roll length.

Final results:

• The sidewalls of the baguettes are pale.  Mostly the result of being baked too close together as they will create a "cool zones" shielding each other from the full oven heat. 
• The color throughout from front to back is inconsistent with the tips and parts of the tops being much darker than the general coloration.  If you don't already do it, then make a note to rotate the loaves in the oven when you release the team.  Left to right, front to back - at least once.  This will mitigate the effect of hot spots in the oven.
• Still lacking the caramelized sheen from a sufficiently steamed oven.  But far better than the previous post.  You could always put a glaze of some sort on the surface after it emerges from the oven, but that is unnecessary if the oven can maintain sufficient steam.
• The scores on your previous baguettes were more consistent with what baguette scoring should be.  A thin "median" of dough between the scores down the length of the dough are what you are aiming for.  Review the "training videos" and material.
• Until you get it down, your visualization should include the scoring, even with just the hand and blade above the dough before execution, somewhat akin to golfers practicing their putts alongside the ball before the actual stroke.
• Your scores fall closely into the category of what are called "sausage cuts".  They inhibit the bread from getting a better bloom and oven spring and can create a "bubbled" effect on the baked bread.
• A lack of oven spring and tightness of the crumb structure may be an indicator of one of two things.  An overly aggressive shaping that compromises the gas within the dough and creates a tight dough, or an over proofing/too long bulk rise.
• While we want good surface tension on the dough, we also want to avoid that compromising.

I still think that this is a successful bake and a really good step forward.  With the exception of the gifted few, this is a two steps forward, one step backward exercise.  But keeping with it, diligence, taking note of plusses and minuses and most of all practice will yield significant better results over time.

Remember - the first 10,000 are the hardest!

Scissors.

Take a large, sharp-tipped pair of scissors. Stick the bottom blade into the dough at a shallow angle and start cutting. You can't do any fancy designs this way, of course, but for very high-hydration dough (80%), it works much better than a razor blade or *shudder* a serrated knife. Trying to score 80% dough with a single blade will compress and deflate it.