Poolish Baguettes | The Fresh Loaf

This was my first shot at baguettes with a poolish. I feel like paying attention to the advice on this website has really accelerated my ability to generate a good product. I'm not 100% of the way there, but I think that I was able to avoid a lot of mistakes that other beginners might make. Thanks, everyone.

Here's a better picture of the crumb:

Good job nomolosca! These look fabulous. I bet they tasted great too!

They tasted pretty good. I had a few slices with brie last night. I didn't get quite the crust I wanted, and I think I could have proofed for another 15 minutes. But that's the learning process.

Great crumb and crust, well done. Not much to be improved on TBH. What would you like to be better? Couple of small things I notice: 1. Cross section is flattish rather than round. My guess is that this is to do with either your shaping or the method you used for proofing. Lot's of great Youtube vids on baguette shaping if you think that could be the issue. Practice makes perfect. I proof baguettes in metal baguette trays. So that promotes a rounded bottom side whilst the top is round naturally. Then they get baked in those same trays so there's no interference with the proofed dough. If you use a couche then of course there's a knack to transfering to a peel or baking stone. Baguette trays can be found at BakeryBits website or if you're in the UK, Sainsburys is currently selling them. 2. Hillocks. I found that a lot of my early baguettes came out with a very hilly/undulating top, the result of the bloom coming through the scores. I never really liked that look and I fixed it by not trying to put as many scores into each baguette as I was. In a typical domestic oven we don't have space for full sized baguettes so we're making half-sized usually. I would put no more than 3 scores into each one, and maybe even consider 2. Doing so gave me a better all-round look. Overall though your baggies look great. Guessing the hydration was 75-80% right?

I think that the hydration was in the neighborhood of 73%. I used this recipe: http://www.thefreshloaf.com//handbook/poolish-baguettes (and added an additional 30g of water into the final dough).

In terms of what I'd like to improve, I'd like a bit more crunch in my crust and to control the oven bloom a little bit better.

In terms of the crust, I think that I just need to experiment a little more with steaming methods. I've tried the lava rocks method and the spray bottle method. I used the spray bottle method on this one. I think this will just be a matter of trial and error before I get what I want.

As far as the oven bloom, I think that I'm probably underproofing my loaves a little bit. This is going to be an issue of just gaining more experience and learning when my loaves are where they need to be.

Shaping baguettes is difficult, but these were the best ones I've done so far. I learned a lot doing these two, and I think that my next ones will be more consistent. Generating surface tension and getting a really nice, closed seam while not completely degassing the loaf is difficult. That's good advice on the scoring. I'll try three instead of four, or maybe just a long score down the middle of the entire loaf.