Bouabsa Batards - Against the tide
Reversing direction from my recent thang to make baguettes from boule/batard formulae. I searched TFL and found minor but inconclusive evidence that anyone had published their results for creating batards from the Bouabsa baguette format. So it was high time that some silly goose decided to do it. I waddled into the tide with both webbed feet.
As I'd mentioned earlier when I made a batch of Bouabsa baguettes for the first time in a long time, this is the baguette that "put me on the board", so to speak. The simplest of them all, by the clock the quickest way to bulk fermentation fame and fortune, and the longest retard period. Since I got on the levain bandwagon quite a ways back now, I hardly ever bake anything that is purely a commercial yeast product. Neither political statement nor religious conviction nor an us vs. them confrontation. It just happens that basically everything else I decide on baking contains either no or scant amounts of IDY. Fine by me either way.
A roll in the sesame seeds for 2 of the boys because I love the look as well as the taste of them. These should have been handled with a bit more kid gloves than I did, and I think that perhaps the lovely open crumb structure on these suffered due to that.
I should have paid attention to my own heed from that recent bake. With no out-of-the-retarder warm up and proof, as I bake directly from the refrigerator, I neglected to give the bulk dough an additional 30 minutes of bench rest after the 3rd letter fold. And of course, my old war cry of "I should have let them take on a half shade more color", was forgotten.
Oh well, they are still nice. Can't hit a home run every time.
I was a bit too aggressive on shaping the center and right batards, particularly the "nude" batard. Notice the tear in the skin on the lower left portion of this one. That means trouble ahead. Indeed!
And as evidenced by the final product, the tear in the skin did in fact affect the bloom and shape of the center batard. The bloom and shape of the left batard was also affected by aggressive shaping, although less so. The right batard is just dandy.
The two seeded bookends.
The crumb suffered from the aggressive shaping. This is the innards of the nudie. The other two had destinations beyond my own kitchen and gullet.
Comments
only time I make a yeast bread is if i need bread for Thanksgiving stuffing and need it to go hard and stale fast so it can soak up the chicken stock with out having to dry it out in the mini oven. If I'm in big hurry with no time i might put a poolish kicker in the dough during the last lap and fold but sine i have nothing but time it usually isn't necessary:-)
I think you are too hard on your bread results now that your skills are so much better. You can't buy that bread at most places. Well done and Happy baking Alan
once in a while a formula will call for a boost of a gram or two of IDY, to which I comply.
Yes, I realize that I am pretty hard on myself, that goes back decades. For the overwhelming part, I'm quite content with where my baking skills have taken me, always something new to learn or try out. But if I don't get that consistency, which I think is so important and which is an indicator that I have a handle on what I'm doing, especially across a single bake, then I have to scratch my head and wonder why. And what I could do better the next time.
A never ending battle for truth, justice and the tasty baguette!
alan
Agreed, they look really good. Could I feature them on the homepage for a bit?
Thanks for the thought!
And just for the record, as long as I have the opportunity to promote this thought too:
The following is neither a paid nor a suggested statement. Floyd operates this website out of his interest and the desire for all of us Loafians to exchange ideas, etc. I can't find a place on the website where we can contribute to the upkeep of TFL, but perhaps Floyd could provide it here. Closing in on the Holiday Season, please consider contributing to keeping the website active and healthy.
(as long as I'll have top billing for a short while, I thought that a nudge would be okay).
Thanks, Alan. I don't have any donation solution in place currently, but I will try to take a look at what is available now.
my first full year on TFL, but can't find the email exchange with you any longer.
the first loaves to bake when I try out my WFO. Those loaves look like heaven in bread format.
Thank you so very much!
As mentioned, these are about as easy as they come, formula-wise. And just about as fast as anything else to go from mix to retard. The trickiest part is the initial folding after adding the remaining hydration, where the dough get really goopy until the additional water is incorporated. By machine, I haven't a clue how that would go as I do French Folds on just about everything. If you do FFs also, or knead by hand, be careful as the first ten FFs will offer your kitchen a chance for a gloppy white-out! After those first 10 folds, the dough comes together quite rapidly.
I'd never made these as batards before, and looking to get a more tapered end on two of these, I'd made the mistake of applying too much pressure in trying to do so and tighten up the skin. I use KA's Martin Philip's technique for shaping batards.
When the baguettes are done right, the dough has an explosive nature in terms of oven spring and open crumb. There's plenty of evidence on TFL via the search window. to support that.
Best of luck getting the WFO completed and fired up.
alan
Anybody know how to pronounce this gentleman's name? Is it Bwab-sah, or Boo-ahb-sah, or some other way entirely?
I say Boo-ahb-sah, but that doesn't mean I know what I'm talking about one whit. Being from the Bronx, all bets are off when it comes to linguistics, tense usage, pronunciation and grammar ;-) .
Another nice bake! Congrats on the cover! I love your idea of rolling the loaves in sesame seeds and will be trying this.
I have not tried Boubsa's formula yet and will give a go, but will use levain, rather than yeast. Well, just because I like my levain breads.
Happy baking, Ski
I'll take credit where due, but the method for the sesame seeds belongs to Dr. Snyder (and probably countless others who preceded him!). It's a simple task to get the sesame seeds to attach. I follow David's method as outlined in his Sourdough Italian Baguettes posting, method item #11. I do the "roll on wet paper towel" way which completely blankets the dough. I'd guess that spraying water and sprinkling seeds over the dough gives an effect similar to the bags in his posting.
Some folks proof seam side up, I just about always do seam side down, as does David in this case.
I've never attempted the Bouabsa formula with a levain, but here is a Phillipe Gosselin that is similar and uses a levain:
alan
photos. That makes the post so much more helpful in terms of learning and all that.
Nice and crisp photos too.
But ya the loaves themselves look terrible, sorry you had to go through that...:P
I had never considered the thought that you could overly/aggressively shape bread...hmm.
Tearing of the skin, destroying the gluten structure underneath that skin, too much pressure on the dough and the gas bubbles may be destroyed as well. If you watch enough "trustworthy" videos out there, you can get an idea that the majority of the doughs being shaped are treated with a high level of TLC on their way to proofing or the retarder or oven.
Maybe also that the really good craftsmen and bakers out there can get away with stuff that the majority of us can't.
alan
So many variables. But in the end its looking for a needle in a haystack. Pure pedantry. Obviously these loaves are better than most proffesionals, because they dont have the time to put in so much care and love.
The more I bake, the more I get into the mind set that what I do may look different and be different than another baker, but its what happened during the bake, and its the creation of something different, not really a fault. Were all kind of making our own baking culture, with all the nuances of our location, tools, ingrdients, et cetera.
And that's a good thing. Unless we really have it mind to make exact duplicates, I like the idea that we all can have something just a little different than the next baker.
Jeffrey Hamelman (I think it was him) says that he can tell which baguettes that come out of the oven are his by the way that they are scored.
What is your method for steaming the oven?
I place one Sylvia's Steaming Towel in the oven ~15 minutes before loading the dough. Immediately after loading the dough I pour ~2 cups of near boiling water into a pan full of lava rocks which lives on the lower shelf of my oven, just below my baking deck. I'l let the oven steam for somewhere between 10 - 13 minutes before opening the oven door and releasing the steam. I'll also remove the towel pan. No need to remove the lava rock pan. All of that water will have pretty much steamed off by then.
Two words of caution: when opening the oven door after any steam has been "injected" keep your face a distance away for the first few seconds. And place a terry towel over the oven door glass to prevent any water from splashing on it when you pour into the lava rock pan. If the water hits the glass door, the glass might just shatter.
If you shape and proof your dough right, you should get some fantastic oven spring on a regular basis. Of course if you use a Dutch Oven the steaming is moot, the DO does all the work.
alan