2 ok looking baguettes and a funky batard. FTR after running out of my favorite flour moulin d'auguste and while waiting patiently for the next shipment I raided my pantry and used 50/50 blend of central milling t70 with bobs red mill bread and came up with this. Was kind of surprised by the extra wide open crumb which is quite pleasing. Shaping was pretty much as expected with more stretching than burst however the most apparent difference is the flavor. Once you've made enough loaves with French grown and milled flour you come to expect a certain flavor profile which was completely lacking in these loaves. The best way to explain it is 'watery' in other words void of flavor. This is an 18 hour cold retard and not saying there isn't any flavor its just that when you've come to expect a certain taste and it doesn't hit your brain says 'this tastes like water'
Other notes - the usual 2-3 minute final mix took 5 minutes which is another observation of french flour - it comes together so quick and smells incredible. Mixing American flour always seems to take more energy and final dough is tougher and not as smooth. If I were to do this again I would go with 100% central milling - its the closest so far to authentic french flour and I think bobs component took away some of the potential today :(
Per yesterdays post I am experimenting with trying to get nicely browned ears and for whatever reason waiting a bit longer to build up heat seems to have had the reverse effect. So no wonderfully presentable ears but pretty decent loaves otherwise. Scoring looked spot on before shutting the door. 6 minute check showed decent spring but not many ears and a lot of stretches instead of blooms. This is such a mutlivariable undertaking as I think thst the waiting caused the stones to cool a bit too much. My stones are only 1/2 inch thick and I remove them entirely since docking full size baguettes sideways is near impossible.
Btw these loaves are all between 55 and 57cm and weigh between 255 and 275 g. Looks like we got about 4-5 decent scores out of 20. Flavor is as usual - very creamy with acceptable crumb. Crust is a bit pale but again 'merrrrde'!
Well so far this week shaping and scoring has been good but not fantastic. A few weeks ago about 6 minutes into my bake I peeked in a saw every score line developing perfectly. At the end of the bake they came out with beautiful browned ears and could be been on a postcard. This picture above is what I consider now to be sort of average with good bloom and burst but now just trying to figure out what went right last time.
As far as I can tell one very important factor is getting as much heat into and around the loaf in the first 5 minutes. This is the time that defines the loaf and so the though is maybe letting the oven get a bit hotter. I actually remove my stones, dock the loaves, score and then re-insert the stones. This is obviously letting a lot of heat out and so perhaps its a better idea to wait after removing the stones for 5 minutes to build up more heat. There's about 1.5 kg of dough fermenting right now for tomorrow so looks like the plan is to try for better bloom in the morning :)
Here's a quick pic of today's bake. Recently I have shifted focus to all three (at least of my) important criterion in baking a great loaf that is, good flavor, a nice open crumb structure and somewhat presentable final shape. When o first started trying baguettes it seemed that only one of these was near impossible. So here's today's batch - great taste considering the bulk was only 6 hours. As a side-note, used thawed fresh yeast which I am beginning to notice is really active even more so that fresh yeast that was never frozen. It seems every time my fresh batch gets old and its time to delve into the other half that went directly to the freezer, the action of these thawed yeasties is really wild !
