Community Bake - Baguettes by Alfanso

Profile picture for user DanAyo
DanAyo on

This Community Bake will be featuring one of our very own; the "Baguette Baker Extraordinaire", Alan, aka alfanso. He is among a handful of fine baguette bakers on TFL who have spent years concentrating on baguettes, alfanso's favored craft, and his baguettes are consistently outstanding and consistently consistent.. Consistence and repeatability, coupled with breads that visually signify a particular baker are the hallmark of excellence. When viewing an image of any of Alan's baguettes, those that have been around for a while know exactly who baked the bread. We are fortunate to have him on the forum.

We have extracted the bakes of 4 participating bakers and present it in PDF form

Attention New Readers:
Although the Community Bake started some time back, it is still active. New participants are welcomed to join in at any time! It's constantly monitored and help of any kind is still available.

For those that are not familiar with Alan and his baguettes check out his blog.
 
   

    

Since the Covid Pandemic many new bakers have joined the forum. For those that are not familiar with our Community Bakes (CB) see THIS LINK. It should give you an idea of the concept and how things work.

Alan supplied the following information as a guide line to the bake. There are links below with additional resources. Alan's choice of baguette for the CB is Pain au Levain with Whole Wheat, by Jeffrey Hamelman. Jeffrey Hamelman recently retired as Head Baker at the King Arthur Flour Company. His book, "Bread: A Baker's Book of Techniques and Recipes, 2nd Edition" is considered a "must have" by most of the bakers on this forum.

Alan writes:

I’ve attached the formula and some photos of my most recent bake of this bread.  It is another really easy to manipulate bread that has a fantastic taste, but is not too heavy on the whole grain side. 1250g is a nice amount to create 4 "comfortable sized" baguettes.

I’ve simplified the formula a little by converting it from a 60% hydration to a 100% hydration levain.

Mr. Hamelman uses the term “Bread Flour” but in our realm this really means a standard AP flour with a similar protein profile to King Arthur AP flour, 11.7% protein.

This dough can also be mixed mechanically if you have neither developed the skills nor have the desire to mix by hand."

NOTE - for those using home milled flour a tweak may be necessary.  Whole grain (100% extraction) will absorb quite a bit more water than white flour as well as commercial whole wheat flour. Since I used home milled grain, it was necessary to add more water before the dough became extensible enough to slap and fold. I estimate the water added was approximately 28 grams which brought the hydration to ~72%. I should have taken my own advice and measured the additional water, but I didn’t. For those using home milled grains, if would be helpful if you reported the extra water necessary to do the Slap & Folds. See THIS TECHNIQUE.

   Additional Resources

 

Everyone is welcomed. Both expert and novice can learn and improve their baking skills by participating and sharing their experience. Make sure to post your good, bad, and ugly breads. We learn much more from our failures, than we do from our successes.  

Danny 

A late addition -

In Alan’s reply below he reminded us that this is not a competition. The goal of every Community Bake is to learn from one another. There are no losers, only winners. Each and every participant should become a better baguette baker with the help of others.

Baking baguettes is like a drug for me. Once I start making them, it is hard to stop! See my reply to Alan in a moment. It will explain the major malfunction of this bake. Smile...

Good oven spring.  As far as pre-shape snafus, check out this short video posted by Lance a few days ago, a clear pre-shape and shape demonstrated.  video made by Grands Moulins de Paris .  You'll find that with more and regular repetition, your muscle memory will improve and there will be very little other than to do the steps almost without thinking through them very much.  And eventually, you'll try the Bouabsa formula again.

I did see that video, very helpful. The snafu, however, was unrelated. I forgot there was an appointment to have the pups' nails trimmed. The pre-shaped dough sat much longer than it should have. because of that, I was worried about over proofing. I was fooled by the cold dough poke test, which led me to believe the dough was at full proof. That all being said I am way out of practice. (That's the easy part) So happy I can replicate the important stuff!

Cordially,

Will F.

 

I shaved about three minutes off my bake time. Fresh they were nice and crisp but soft. (these were from frozen) Instead of defrosting in the oven. I let them defrost on the counter, still wrapped in aluminum foil. It worked a treat! 

Edited, to add another trick, I just remembered.

I have a formula for soft dinner rolls that calls for cooling under a slightly damp tea towel (I use flour sack cloth) Straight out of the oven for a few minutes. I will have to try this next time.

With my freezer now emptied out of rye made during the current Rye Bread CB, and looking elsewhere, I returned home to a comfortable place.  The Hamelman Pain au Levain with Whole Wheat - the same bread I suggested to Dan to kick off the baguette CB. I quickly became somewhat enamored with the 200g version of this bread.  As The Great One Jackie Geason said "and away we go".

400g x 1, 200g x 3.  

The fella hanging out in the upper right corner of the last photo is my version of the Richard Bertinet Stollen.  A second run, I eliminated the two marzipan bars and slipped in a little more filling, composed of: dried cherries, sultanas, dried cranberries, slivered almonds, dried coconut strips and orange peel.  The star of the show is the layer of frangipane, an almond creme custard. 

Last week in my "final" entry into the Rye Bread CB was another that I put forth when setting it up, my faux NY deli rye bread at 25% rye.   As this is the baguette bake, I'll slip a few photos from that in here as well.

400g x 1, 300g x 1, 200g x 1, 300g braid x 1 

Baking is fun.

Alan do they have that incredible sheen in real life or is this a camera thing.  I dont know how you get that gloss - its amazing. 

coated with a cornstarch glaze to give the a sheen.  This is David Snyder's version.  1/2 TBS cornstarch mixed into 1/8 cup water.  Add that to 1/2 cup boiling water and stir to mix.  I applied it once before the bake, once after the bake and once more after the caraway seeds were added.

Stunning bakes all of them Alan.  They have your signature amazing ears, such beautiful baguettes.  I agree with Geremy the sheen is particularly attractive and something I don’t think I’ve ever achieved.

Benny

Victory is mine! 

Failure is an option. It's what you do with the failure that makes you who you are. Our failures mold us. I have failed at several things in my life. What sets some of us apart, is that when we fail, we can't sleep at night. It haunts us until we have our time at redemption.

 

Follow the bake here:Redemption bake 12/27/2020

Thanks, to Ilya, for pointing out my mathematical skills suck! Back to ruler and eyeball. I was so careful to get close enough to 25% bulk fermentation. Only to have the dough get away from me in retard! 

I decided to close out 2020 with a set of baguettes.  Since 2020 was the year we worked together on improving our baguettes skills here on TFL I thought it would be fitting.  I’m still having to compensate for my much much much more active starter and the final proof is getting away from me somewhat so I think that is the reason for the lack of ears.  It could also be that I am out of practice with scoring these baggies and need to practice some more again.  I also did a different preshape which led to the bulbous ends, I’ll need to adjust to avoid that the next time.

These are sourdough and not hybrid baggies.

5857C1ED-9C97-40B8-AAA2-7799CC582734.jpeg
B69EB31B-05A2-444C-B9AE-48445AF3DD63.jpeg
98E1CBC7-D0E4-43E3-9E6B-390B78B32E1D.jpeg
D007A955-0B83-41E2-8979-73C92E0C22AA.jpeg
D4959631-3FAE-40DA-B3D0-B002D991E16D.jpeg
A044907B-5F2F-4BFE-8553-641D505030DA.jpeg

Thanks so much, it was time well spent.  I’m really happy that I gave in to pressure to bake baguettes.  I was intimidated to try, but once bitten I was hooked.

Happy New Year

Benny

some thing or things are lacking.  No, you don't need to do anything.  Perhaps hone the perceived "deficit" skills, but need?  These are near perfect as they are.  The snail's eye view of the final photo makes the crumb look as soft and welcoming as a pillow.

When that day comes in our post-covid world, and you're down my way, I look forward to spending a day or 3 mixing, shaping and baking with thou at chez alfanso.  I think that a home cooked dinner for four might be in the works as well.

Thanks Alan for your kind words and again for the help you gave me and all the others.  You were generous with your time and knowledge and it is appreciated.

We have booked flights to come down in February, but I think that we’ll have to cancel and do a staycation.  I will definitely take a rain check to spend some time with you in your kitchen and bake together, that would be cool to do.  I would certainly be happy to help with dinner of course as well.  I will certainly I let you know when I’m next, hopefully by next fall unless the concrete restoration on our building is going steam at that time on our side of the building.

All the best for a healthy happy new year Alan.

Benny

 

Thanks Gavin, nice of you to say.  I’m guess I’m too hard on myself, I’m too much of a perfectionist so always see the things that could be better.

Happy New Year to you and your family Gavin.

Benny

I was planning to make baguettes for NYE, but as I posted elsewhere I wasn't quite sure about my starter being in the right mood on the 30th, so I had to plan a one-day baguette bake on the 31st, on top of all the other cooking (lamb biryani and Russian salad, from my side). So while I had issues, I am surprised they came out OK in the end - with not that much baguette experience and a variation to my previous process. What's more, I actually think now I made a big mistake in the formula (which I discovered just now when writing this post!) which led to 60% hydration, instead of 70%! That's what happens when you are in a rush... Unless actually I did it right, but wrote down wrong numbers?

I made semolina baguettes, with 50% semola rimacinata, and 50% bread flour, and I was altering the formula from using pasta flour, which is a mix of durum and regular wheat flours, and made an error when halving the amount. So stupid.

Anyway, I bulked them until ~20% increase, then refrigerated to cool down the dough for shaping. Shaping was a mess, when preshaping into rough tubes the dough was too extensible, and already reached the length of my steel. Maybe it wasn't cold enough? So for shaping I had to cut it in half, combine the halves alongside each other, flatten them together, and then shape. They ended up just a little too long for the steel, but luckily they shrank a bit and fitted it exactly in the end.

Anyway, they ended up a little flat, but just-baked for the dinner table two out of three disappeared instantly, and one we almost finished with breakfast.

[url=https://ibb.co/G3Cmx5D][/url]
[url=https://ibb.co/VNg8kKg][/url]

Some strange dense areas in the crumb, I blame the shaping problems.

[url=https://ibb.co/hF3bRDY][/url]

Happy New Year everyone!

I have a 55% fancy durum flour Filone proofing as we speak! I hope my New Years' bake is as successful as yours! They look great!

RPK

Ilya, Happy New Year, I think baguettes are a good way to celebrate don’t you?  Shaping challenges do sometimes lead to closed crumb.  With the semolina I’ve also found when I used lower hydration that the crumb wasn’t as open as when using higher hydration >70%.  My most recent iteration I forgot to read through my notes and went back to the original 67% hydration and I think that the crumb wasn’t as good as when I used 71% hydration.

Your shaping looks good to me and your scoring certainly looks great with good overlap and staying in the middle lane.

Thank you Benny, and happy New Year! Baguettes are a perfect bread for a special occasion, I agree. The more I think about it, the less likely it is that it was 60% hydrated dough, didn't feel that stiff. But then it would mean I used more than 50% semola... Anyway, one way or another I made a mistake of some sort, which luckily wasn't disastrous.

Yeah, I think I mostly saved the shaping, and outside they look good (and the crust is perfectly crispy), but the crumb could be better.

The Baguette Brigade must be of the same mind. Commemorating the calendar change with baguettes just felt like the right thing to do. I still have some of the amazing French T65 left so that is how I chose to roll in the New Year.

burnt ends

The burnt ends are the best thing I have eaten all year.

Alfanso angle

The Alfanso shot is compulsory for displaying  baguette ears

baguette crumb

Saying goodbye to a crummy year and welcoming better days to come.

 

Perfect way to celebrate the end of the crummy year Don.  If the new year is as amazing as the crumb and ears on your baguettes then we can all be looking forward to a wonderful 2021.  Happy New Year.

Benny

This bread is show-stopping! The judges just declared the contest over! Ladies and gentlemen, if your bread had not been judged yet, forget about it! See you next year! Happy New Year MT!

Toast

Another Girl on Sun, 01/10/2021 - 18:46

Hi everyone, here are my first baguettes. Okay, not my first baguettes, but my first submission to the baguette CB. Last one to the party. I would like to be able to make good baguettes and know I have a very long way to go. I produced these a few days ago (before I started reading the pdf from the CB) to establish my baseline. I already have some ideas now that I'm reading the pdf, but there is a lot to take in. 

To make these, I used Benny’s Yorkville Sourdough Baguette recipe, with two changes: First, I left out the diastatic malt because the flour was malted. Second, I left them unseeded so you can see the bread to critique it. The flavor was excellent, but going forward, I’ll probably use the Bouabsa IDY formula because my baguette eaters prefer their baguettes without any sourness. The flour used was Central Milling's ABC Plus, but a small bag of lower protein Beehive should be here by mid-week. I also have KAF AP and bread flours on hand and my local grocer sells Ceresota (known elsewhere as Hecker's, I believe?).

It will be a long winter so I'll have some time to spend on this. I would deeply appreciate your candid thoughts to light the way. Thanks, all!

–AG

Wow AG, those are quite impressive you have definitely baked baguettes before.  I like the tapered shaping and your crumb is already really open.  The scores on the one on the left have good overlap and do stay in the middle lane the one on the right could overlap more, aim for about ⅓.  As you know from looking at my formula I add 1% diastatic malt to my baguette dough, I’d say that even if your flour has some malt added to it, I too would still consider adding some maybe 0.5% to improve browning.  As Doc has said, it is helpful to speed up the browning so that the crumb doesn’t get dried out before the crust evenly browns.  I have always found it a challenge to get all three baguettes evenly browned in my home oven. 

Very impressive baguettes AG.

Benny

I like the shape and it looks like the fermentation was spot on. The scores may need to be deeper or cut at more of an angle. Are you pleased with the crumb? It's not easy to make sourdough baguettes look like anything other than sourdough bread in baguette form. I look forward to seeing what you can do do with the IDY Bouabsa. I have heard good things about the Heckers flour. I would suggest you stay with one flour for a while to work through the fine points of the ideal hydration. If your never quite pleased with how they turn out, that's normal for baguettes.

Thanks for twirling the batons and keeping this thread rolling. 

Don

Very nice. Many of us struggled for weeks to get to where you are. Now to work on repeatability. You get a whole bag of bonus points if you can do two in a row ?

I don't know what color you prefer for your baguettes, but the balance you have to strike is between no additional diastatic malt and a longer oven time (which can produce a tough crumb), or add some DM and cut the oven time back to where you get both the crumb you like and the color you want.  Also a note from my file: different vendors and even different batches of DM from the same vendor can vary dramatically so always plan on a multi-loaf experiment to dial in the right amount.  I currently use 0.1% DM from Hoosier Farm and it is dramatically more active than the prior batch from a different source.  I would post a photo but the result depends on oven time and temp so it would not be comparable in any way other than to note that it is darker than yours (which may simply be preference rather than process).

AG, “ Very nice. Many of us struggled for weeks to get to where you are.”

AND some of us struggled for years... <I am laughing out loud>

I haven’t figured you out yet. Either you are what I call a ‘gifted baker’, or you’ve worked hard at bread baking for some time. Please inform us...

Great baguettes,
Danny

I read Doc's comment before I went to bed last night and laughed out loud at the part about earning bonus points for being able to do it again. Aye, there's the rub! I've been baking since the early 90's and make baguettes only rarely because I feel very inept at it. These baguettes and the rye baguettes I posted in the rye CB are the first ones I've ever produced that showed improvement due to something I intentionally did, and that is a direct result of spending a lot of time on this forum in recent months. 

So what did I do differently for my last couple baguette bakes? First, I ended bulk when the dough was only around 20%-25% risen, as Benny's recipe indicated. Normally, I would have let it go longer and probably would have over-proofed them. Second, I didn’t even try for surface tension when shaping these. Dough handling is not a strong suit of mine and I think I usually kill a lot of bubbles by over-tightening. Sometimes one loaf will come out much better than another loaf from the same batch, and sometime different parts of the same loaf will look better than others. I know that’s down to handling and it’s a matter of practice practice practice. 

As for keeping the cuts in the center lane, I've always been aware of that. But my slashes fill in and look flat after baking. (That's true for all my breads, not just baguettes.) The baking steel for my new combi oven arrived this week so my next baguettes will be about 30% longer, and I'm a little intimidated about shaping them at that length. Although the steam oven has improved the color, these baguettes are still a little too light for me. They were quite firm and I didn't want to over-bake them. I thought it was a matter of adjusting to the new oven, but after reading Doc and Benny’s comments, I now know I needed the additional DM in the formula that I omitted. Another learning to take into the next bake! So that’s kind of where I’m at in my baguette journey. Thanks for all the help along the way!

Agree with the chorus here.  Good shaping for this challenging shape and a good start to a more open crumb (if that is a goal).  As far as the scores flattening out during the bake, figuring out the appropriate amount of surface tension on the loaf is trickier than on a boule or batard.  Perhaps review your scoring blade angle.  The higher the hydration, the more acute the angle of the blade, even if the difference might be barely noticeable.  A practice thing.   

Also offer that staying with one formula for a while, along with the same flour, will allow you to track incremental improvements, sometime small and other times significant.  Once you have that down, it is much easier to jump from one flour or formula to another.

Good for you to trod through the pdf.  You're doing exactly what it was designed for.  

Although everyone advised me not to change horses in the middle of the stream, I ended up making the Bouabsa baguettes for Round 2 – mainly because I was short on ABC-Plus flour and, since I had to change flours anyway, I figured I might as well make a full 180° turn, starting afresh with both formula and flour. 

I made the Bouabsa recipe once before and I think they were the first baguettes I ever made that came out with an open crumb, so I chose that recipe again. I used Central Milling Beehive (selected for its 10% - 10.5% protein) and it made a soft, strong, lovely dough. Shaping was So. Much. Easier. with this flour; however, I wanted them to have a rounder belly with tapered ends, but that didn’t happen. Scoring shows a slight improvement over prior attempts, but there’s no bloom and only slight ears on some of the cuts. Every bread I make, the blade just drags in the dough. I’ve tried flour, oil, and pan spray to help it glide more readily, but I can’t get the the knack of scoring. I can't complain about the way they turned out. I just wish I felt like the result was more than a happy coincidence.

They look good especially the crumb. When I suggested one flour I also intended to say use one recipe and the Bouabsa is as reliable as they come. I like how the bake came out and am interested in hearing more about the oven and steaming apparatus.

I have always scored RT because it would be difficult for me to make room for them in the refrigerator. A sharp blade and a swift stroke with the other hand following behind holding the baton in place will make it easier. 

If you want to take the eating quality to the next level you should try to get your hands on some of the French T65 that was mentioned earlier in this thread.

I'm really happy with the way they came out. It's a great recipe, they basically make themselves. I'll be taking Doc's advice and practicing my scoring on a blank dough using all your tips. Sounds like I'll be on the hunt for some fancy French flour as well. In for a penny, in for a pound. 

For steam, I used an Anova countertop combi oven. It's brand new so I'm still learning, but it seems to be a little wonky (first generation technology...). That said, all the loaves I've baked in it so far have come out pretty good. I baked these at 482°F for 17 minutes with 100% steam for I'm not sure how long. Maybe about 10 minutes. Even with a lava-rocks-and-Sylvia's-towel setup, loaves were coming out of our 20-year old GE gas oven all pale and sickly. It's nice to see color in my bread again. 

Your crumb looks great!

Chilling the dough to somewhere around 50°F/10°C (or less, I try to get down to 40°F) goes a long ways to stiffen it up so that you can slash it.  You still have to be fast and some people find that it helps to dip the edge of the blade in olive oil just before the stroke.

Just mix up a batch of flour and water to the same hydration as your intended target dough with no yeast (include the salt).  Develop the gluten and divide the dough.  Let it rest 20 min then shape it.  Let it rest 15 min to come out of gluten tension and slash the loaf, turn it over and slash it again, then knead it, shape it, and repeat the slashing until you are tired or satisfied.  You should be able to go perhaps 10 rounds for a batch of dough, maybe more. 

When you are ready, add about 3X as much yeast as it would normally take just to speed things up, then repeat the drill again, and again, and again.  It will rise and you will get more chances to try it with a poofy dough (and as wet as you want).  This could go on all day. But after perhaps 100 trials you will feel ready to try it on real bread.

Doc

Chilled dough is definitely easier to score.  After you’ve done it enough, and then made a mistake like loading the baguettes unscored into the oven where they warmed up and have to take them out again to score.  Then you’ll feel more comfortable with scoring room temperature baguettes.  

You have that beautiful Bouabsa open crumb that I love seeing AG, really beautiful. You’ll get the scoring with more practice, the Bouabsa formula is great to get lots of practice on since it can be so fast.

I make no secret that a good part of my scoring success is that I bake directly from retard, meaning that I score when the dough is chilled and much more "blade friendly".

Your crumb is super and you've already come to grips with shaping.  There are some score lines that are just dandy, and further practice will have those marching to the beat of your blade in short order!

[Disclaimer] 

All of what I relate here I learned from everybody's favorite baker Alfonso.

When we last visited with our hero, Slow-Mo, at 6:00 PM last night, the mother sourdough was active and ripe. The formula we are using for this bake is not specifically Italian bread. (Hamelman's Vermont sourdough) That being said, the lean sourdough makes a nice crusty "Italian/French style" baguette. The traditional shape Hamelman uses is a boule, (round loaf.) This formula calls for two levian builds at 125% hydration, (Think pancake batter.) At 6:00 AM this morning (12Hrs.) the first levien build is definitely ready. The ingredients for the second levian build are added to the first build levian, (140g.) We now have 280g of "liquid" levian. The second build should be ready to make the final dough at about noon today, (6 hrs.) The plot thickens, the anticipation in the air can be cut with a knife!

 

The final dough is mixed and into the bulk ferment. Once the dough ball reaches 25% of double the volume, I will move to preshape and shape. It's important to remember the dough will continue to ferment through the preshape, shape, and even the cold retard. That is why we stop the bulk at a very rough 25%. This will ensure we don't over ferment and get a really good oven spring. Later alligator!

The preshape and rest.

Just slightly shy of two hours in bulk, we have reached the target 25% volume increase. 

 The dough was scaled and preshaped. Now for a 20-minute rest to relax the gluten, before the final shaping. ( I know, it's a lot of steps.) Hopefully, the outcome will be worth the effort. 

We are nearing the end game. No missteps as of yet all, is, as it should be. 

The final shaping and cold retard. The shaped baguettes are placed in the linen couche, they are then placed into the refrigerator for a slow cold-proof. Since I know my 1990's vintage refrigerator struggles to keep a temperature that will completely stop the fermentation, I will check the progress in two hours.  Catch you on the flip side!

The end game.

I have to say that aside from being out of practice with the scoring, I am very happy with this bake. Finally, even with the long break, I think I have the technical stuff sorted out. The rest is just a lot of practice (again,) and muscle memory.

The time away from the craft did you no harm, and I think that these are the best and most consistent looking baguettes you're yet shared with us.

A trio of beauties!

Alan

I agree, all things considered, these were homerun. while still having room for improvement. It was pretty hard in the past to nail the end game when my dough was consistently over-proofed. What I learned during this community bake, both the technical side and what I learned about my equipment is priceless! Hey, Benny. All my make-ahead frittata breakfast is missing is ... wait for it...BREAD!

Profile picture for user The Roadside Pie King

The Roadside P… on Sat, 06/05/2021 - 11:59

The fledgling, triplet, sourdough French baguettes emerge from the nest.

Notes:

Levein Build #1 - 140g @ 125% Hydration. Build #2 in T- Minus 6hrs. 

 

Hello, baguette aficionados.

As many of you know I have had great success making and freezing large batches of N.Y. Style pizza dough for later use. Today I will be freezing one of three lean dough, low hydration baguettes. The baguette will be frozen after the 25% bulk fermentation and shaping. (The same point the other two siblings will enter cold retard/proof.) 

 Be sure to look for my posting of the defrost and bake-off in a few days to one week. 

The pizza photo is strickly for attention...

Formula: Vermont Sourdough +-10% Semolina

Okay, two out of the oven, not too shabby! One experimental baguette, I think the best scoring out of the bunch, don't you just know! I changed up the timing, I froze it just before it would have gone into the oven. Fully proofed and scored. I am going to try for a bake directly from frozen no steam! We will see what results this produces.

I followed Alfanso,s recipe to the T:

https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/64322/beginning-bakers-trouble-whigh-hydration-doughs

I already posted my baguettes in the Community Bake,where's your epicenter of comfort?

but thought that here would be a more relevant place..Sorry for the double-post!

They were absolutely delicious and a "breeze" to shape compared to the higher hydration doughs 

I tried before... But why is the crumb so dense??

Thanks for this recipe Alfanso!

 

 

Don't you just love Vermont sourdough baguettes! You can try shaving a little time off of the bulk ferment to get a more open crumb. 

 

Still have my eye on you, just pulled back from commenting on most posts.  

Beautiful , and you haven't lost a step.  The linen couche should make a difference.  A few suggestions...

  • Never wash it.
  • "season" it with some AP flour that you force into the weave, then brush/scrape off. 
  • Use a stiff brush to clear off excess flour or a dough scraper/bench knife (what I use).
  • Hang to dry.
  • Roll up rather than fold up.

Once this dang Covid stuff recedes and you can make it here, we'll be rolling them together!

Alan 

One more thing.  Those plastic sleeves for wet umbrellas make for a nice resting place for the rolled up couche.  Keeps the couche together and avoids getting flour on other things. 

Thank you for your comments and suggestions for the couche.  I had washed the cotton couche only once when the dough was so stuck to the fabric that i wasn’t going to come out otherwise.  I do use a plastic scraper that came with the couche to scrape off excess flour and will continue to use that with the flax couche as well.

Rolling is a good idea and something that I haven’t been doing, I will start.

I hope Florida’s cases don’t get much worse, but I worry that you guys are in the beginning of a fourth wave with Delta.  I am hopeful that we can travel down in November fingers crossed.  I would enjoy baking with you.

Benny

This is a nice YouTube video that Melissa over at Breadtopia.com brought to my attention.  I thought that some of you might enjoy it.

 

I haven’t baked plain sourdough baguettes in a while and I thought it would be a good way to test out my new flax linen couche.  You might recall that my old couche, sold to me as being flax linen was in fact 100% cotton and has given me tons of grief each time I’ve tried to bake ciabattas.  The dough would stick no matter how much flour I used.  So I broke down and got a new couche.  I seasoned it by sprinkling then rubbing in white flour.  It did work well and my baguette dough didn’t stick, thank goodness.  The big test will be trying ciabatta again.

I’ve updated my formula for these baguettes and used Scott McGee’s shaping.  I’m very happy with his technique.  In fact, when shaping the baguettes you never press down at all on the dough to elongate.  You press along the edge where the dough meets the table which builds tension and elongates the dough.  This time I’ve increased the hydration to 72% and increased the dough so each baguette is 330 g.  I was easily able to shape the baguettes to the maximum length of my cookie tray that fits in my fridge which is 15 inches.  The shaped baguettes sit in the couche on the cookie tray which makes it easy to give the dough a final chill to ease scoring once they are fully proofed to 30% rise by aliquot jar.  By the way, the pH of the dough at the time of baking is a relatively high 4.34.  For hearth loaves I’ve been aiming for a pH of 3.8 - 4.0 at the time of bake.

With the longer baguettes I’ve now also done five scores per baguette which I think works well for this length.  I’ve need a bit more practice to avoid overlapping them too much which I did particularly in the one baguette where the ears broke from the oven spring.

29821753-F436-463F-9EB6-818747491407.jpeg
FB9F2C59-831F-4A22-98B3-6F35CDB542F8.jpeg
A9F191B1-2262-4357-9F12-D3BCCD61E663.jpeg
46113A45-DBB5-4FD4-B6AE-5B7413A14F50.jpeg

Glad to see you like it.  That said, a small correction.  He is MeGee not McGee, if anyone wants to find him.  That said, you're a friggin' baguette freak of nature!  Another super outstanding set.

He's good, isn't he?  But doesn't show the inside of either the baguette or the ciabatta.  He scales these out at 400g which is fairly heavy for a bakery shop baguette.  His dough has to be super active to be able to grow as it does at each phase.

His croissant video is likely the best I've seen so far and I've watched a lot of them.

Just in case you missed the nuance, I'll say it again, you're a friggin' baguette freak of nature!  Take that!

Apologies to Mr. MeGee, I’ve never seen that last name before.  Now I have a lot of corrections to make in my notes LOL.  Thank you Alan for your kind words.  Strangely enough my baguettes are now much better than my recent batards.  Not sure you noticed but I was able to get a few pointy tips on these guys.

Here’s the crumb, I just polished one off by myself to go with my miso grilled vegetable salad for dinner.  My homemade miso is getting close to being ready so that’ll have to be used in a loaf of bread in the near future along with many other dishes.

E00F8B71-219B-441E-8726-E6F8C8F6D1A1.jpeg
58928FCB-18AE-4902-A167-4B51D9F4CF31.jpeg
146DD3B4-3E7C-4179-A857-E142231E0EEE.jpeg
7C6624FF-D031-4A4F-89DF-AC7647566161.jpeg