Hedging my bets - again

Still converting boule and batard formulae to baguettes.  This time it is Jefrey Hamelman's Pain au Levain with mixed SD starters.  I'd made this once before, when I first started doing batards and had just then recently created a rye starter.  And now its number came up to make some baguettes - and one batard (just for old time's sake).

A recent discussion by EKMEK  / David entitled Too Much Steam? drew me into the conversation.  David's concern was about his baguettes being too wet, and from there the discussion grew.  And so I dedicate this blog entry to that conversation.

I don't recall where I found the formula, so I have no point to refer back to, except for my own crib sheet.  It calls for the creation of a 125% bread flour liquid levain as also an 82% stiff rye levain.  Being the upstart that I am, instead of beginning from scratch with stiff starters the way he outlines them, I converted my mixed flour 75% starter to the 125% liquid levain and my 100% rye starter to the 82%, each in a single build.  The rye took the better part of 12 hours and the liquid took less than 3 hours.

Overall this is a low hydration dough for me, coming in at ~70%.  After a sticky initial mix, the dough tightened up considerably but never fought back.  Another in my "compendium" of 2 Hamelman formulae where the dough is a cinch to work with and almost wants to shape itself.

One difference to my standard shaping schedule is that the dough completed its bulk rise at midnight, and I didn't feel as though I wanted to wait unto 2 AM to start the divide, etc. process.  I usually retard for anywhere from 1-3 hours before the divide and shape phase.  Instead I waited until ~ 6 AM this morning, completed shaping and back into the refrigerator by 6:30 AM, all couched up and back to another 6-7 hour retard.  This provides further evidence, as I've stated before, that once retarded, the bulk dough can meet your schedule instead of the other way around.

Back to EKMEK: discussion centered around steaming, timing, and also whether baking on a too hot deck tile will burn or scorch the bottom.  So here are the particulars for you David:

• preheat to 480dF for 45 minutes
• at ~30 minutes put in a pan with Sylvia's Steaming Towel
• at ~45 minutes score the dough straight from the refrigerator, load them into the oven, and then 2 cups of water on 480dF lava rocks.
• turn oven down to 465dF, the desried baking temperature
• 12 minutes later, release the steam, rotate the dough in the oven.
• 15 minutes later, remove the three baguettes
• 6-8 minutes later remove the batard.

Every time that I open the oven door, I reset my oven back to 465dF to make sure that it re-fires again.  Opening that door will cause a lot of heat to immediately escape.  Can't have that!

3 x 300g baguettes and 1 x 600g batard.

And these are the results.  You can do this David, it just takes practice and more practice.

And to underscore my point that the preheated deck tile does not scorch the bread (at least in my oven):

And finally got around to slicing one open

alan