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I don't know how many different formula's for baguettes I've tried, but the one with the best flavor was that for the Pain à l'Anciènne of Phillip Gosselin. (See: http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/8524/philippe-gosselin039s-pain-à-l039ancienne-according-peter-reinhart-interpretted-dmsnyder-m).

During our recent visit to Paris, one of the breads we had was Gosselin's Baguette Tradition, and it was very similar to the Pain à l'Anciènne I had made. The differences were that the crumb was more open, chewier and had a mild sourdough tang. I don't know whether Gosselin makes his Baguette Tradition using the same long cold retardation as employed in his Pain à l'Anciènne, but I suspect he does.

Gosselin's Baguette Tradition from the bakery on Rue Caumartin

Gosselin's Baguette Tradition crumb

Today, I made baguettes using the Gosselin technique, but I substituted a liquid levain for the yeast … well, I did also spike the dough with a little instant yeast to better control the fermentation time.

Note: Accounting for the flour and water in the levain, the total flour is 500 g and the total water is 375 g, making the actual dough hydration 75%. The actual salt percentage is 1.75%.

Method

1. The night before baking, mix the flour and levain with 225 g of ice water and immediately refrigerate.

2. The next morning, add the salt, yeast and 50 g of ice water to the dough and mix thoroughly. (I did this by hand by squishing the dough between my fingers until the water was fully incorporated.)

3. Place the dough in a lightly greased bowl with a tight cover.

4. Ferment at room temperature until the dough has about doubled in volume. (3 hours for me) Do stretch and folds in the bowl every 30 minutes for the first two hours.

5. An hour before baking, pre-heat the oven to 500ºF, with baking stone and steaming apparatus in place.

6. Divide the dough into 4 more or less equal pieces and stretch each into a 12-14 inch long “baguette.”

7. Score and bake immediately at 460ºF, with steam for 10 minutes, and for about 20 minutes total.

8. Cool on a rack before eating.

Baguettes Tradition

Baguette Tradition crumb

The crust was crunchy and the crumb was nicely open and chewy. It was moderately sour but with nice sweet flavors as well. All in all, it was quite similar to the baguette tradition we had from Gosselin's bakery. The loaves are smaller with proportionately more crust than crumb. The crust was a bit thinner, and the crumb a bit chewier. My totally unbiased, super taster spouse declared it “much better” than what we had in Paris. I don't know about that, but it is quite good – close to my notion of a perfect sourdough baguette - and I expect to make it again and again.

David

Submitted to YeastSpotting

Decided to do another easy sourdough post - did one a while back on my own site, but after some discussion here where I posted a recipe which the person who started that thread had a bit of a disaster with, decided to give it a go with photos as I went.

So... Sourdough - I do not think there is any magic to it. I see and read many articles on how you need to look after the starter, nurture it like a child or pet, feed it, and so on. Continuing on, I see techniques for "building the starter" - extra feeds and discards at fixed time and temperature intervals, then continuing on, kneading, wetting, stretching, folding with again, more regimented intervals before shaping, proofing, scoring to a set of rules and baking it using a dutch oven, cloche, baking stone, etc. before leaving it 6 hours to cool and fully set before daring to take a knife to your item of beauty that you've sweated blood and tears over...

Here's my take; It's just bread. Get over it and just do it.

Sure - you can apply rules, you can take far more care with it that I appear to do, you can regiment the process and create rules - if what you're after is something extra special. The one loaf a week you make and you want to take pride in it and make sure its the best there is. And that's fine. I'm making basic daily sourdough bread here and for that, there is nothing special. No tricky processes, no strict timings or (within reason) temperatures.

OK - The starter. This will take you a week or so to get going from scratch and make sure it's working for you. My starters are well established and they live in the fridge. I have separate wheat and spelt (made with white flour, kept at 100% hydration) and rye (made with whatever rye I have to hand and kept at 150% hydration). I take them out of the fridge, use some directly from the jar, or use some from the jar into a bowl when I add more flour & water to make a "production" starter. Some days I need 3Kg of starter, so I have no choice...

Last night I needed 150g, so I used some directly from the jar. The jar was then topped up (75g flour, 75g water) and left in the bakehouse while I prepared the dough then put in the fridge.

This is the recipe for my Buckfastleigh Sourdough. It's a daily bread which I bake five days a week and make and sell about 25 of them a week in local shops.

• 100g stoneground wholemeal flour (organic; Marriages)
• 400g strong white flour (organic; Shipton Mill No. 4)
• 150g starter at 100% hydration
• 285g water
• 8g salt

It's Sunday evening about 9pm.

I used the starter from the jar out of the fridge. If I didn't have enough, then I'd have started with 30g starter from the fridge, added 60g flour and 60g water and left it for a few hours.

This is the dry stuff in the mixing bowl. I just separated them so you could see - wholemeal on the right, white on the left and salt in the middle. (500g flour + 8g salt) Mix these up and measure out the starter:

Add the water:

Maybe not exactly 285g but close enough. The water was directly out of the tap - my water here is chlorinated but that's fine. It was a little chilled so I added some hot to it (from the tap) I didn't check the temperature, but it felt slightly warm. (Oh look, the starter isn't floating, oh well)

Mix that up and tip it onto the bench and push it about a little more to make sure it's properly mixed and use a scraper to pull it into one shaggy blob:

This is then left, covered with the bowl for 30 minutes. Note: No kneading has happened yet.

Lets not forget the starter, so stick the jar on the scales, zero the scales and add 75g flour:

and water:

This was then stirred up and I left it in the relative warmth of the bakehouse for the next hour just to let it warm up a little to let the yeasty beasties get to know their new food source and start to get to work before I put it back in the fridge. (Incidentally, I'm making this on Sunday evening and the last time the starter was used was on Friday afternoon when I used some to create the 3Kg I needed for the Friday night knead)

Half an hour later, I take the bowl off the shaggy lump, use the scraper to tease it out to a longer "log" then knead it for about 30 seconds. Yes, 30 seconds - it's a push away with my thumbs, then roll back with fingers operation. It takes 3 or 4 of these to turn the vertical sausage into a horizontal one. I pick this up, turn it 90° and do it again. I do it 3 times in total then chaff it into a boulle shape then plonk it back into the bowl. This really did only take 30 seconds.

I stuck the thermometer into it so you could see.

That's taken less than 45 minutes with a big half hour gap in the middle. Low impact, very easy to do. I then covered it with a shower cap and left it in a (relatively) cool place in the downstairs kitchen - which was at about 18°C.

I split this into two blog entries just to keep the size and loading time down - on to part 2!

-Gordon

The "San Joaquin Sourdough" is my own recipe. It evolved through multiple iterations from Anis Bouabsa's formula for baguettes. Most of my deviations developed in discussion here on TFL with Janedo, who first suggested adding sourdough starter and rye, and, then, leaving out the baker's yeast and making it as a "pure" pain au levain.

I got a pretty nice ear and grigne on this one.

Note: Whole Wheat flour or White Whole Wheat flour may be substituted for the Whole Rye. Each results in a noticeable difference in flavor. All are good, but you may find you prefer one over the others.

Procedures

Mixing

In a large bowl, mix the active starter with the water to dissolve it. Add the flours and stir to form a shaggy mass. Cover tightly and let rest (autolyse) for 30 minutes.

Sprinkle the salt over the dough. Using the plastic scraper, stretch and fold the dough 30 times, rotating the bowl 1/5 turn between each stroke. Cover tightly. Repeat this stretch and fold procedure 3 times more at 30 minute intervals. 

Fermentation

After the last series of stretches and folds, scape the dough into a lightly oiled 2 quart/2 liter container and cover tightly. (I use a 2 quart glass measuring pitcher with a tightly fitting plastic lid manufactured by Anchor Glass.) Ferment at room temperature for an hour, then place in the refrigerator and leave it there for 21 hours. (In this time, my dough doubles in volume and is full of bubbles. YMMV.)

Dividing and Shaping

Take the dough out of the refrigerator and scrape it gently onto a lightly floured work surface. Gently pat it into a rectangle. Divide as desired or leave in one piece to make a 980 gm loaf. To pre-shape for a bâtard, fold the near edge up just past the center of the dough and seal the edge by gently pressing the two layers together with the ulnar (little finger) edge of your hand or the heel of your hand, whichever works best for you. Then, bring the far edge of the dough gently just over the sealed edge and seal the new seam as described.

Cover the dough with plastic wrap and/or a kitchen towel and let it rest for 30-60 minutes, with the seams facing up. (The time will depend on ambient temperature and how active your starter is. The dough should have risen slightly, but not much.)

To shape a bâtard, fold the near edge of the dough and seal the edge, as before. Now, take the far edge of the dough and bring it towards you all the way to the work surface and seal the seam with the heel of your hand. Rotate the loaf gently toward you 1/4 turn so the last seam you formed is against the work surface and roll the loaf back and forth, with minimal downward pressure, to further seal the seam. Then, with the palms of both hands resting softly on the loaf, roll it back and forth to shape a bâtard. Start with both hands in the middle of the loaf and move them outward as you roll the loaf, slightly increasing the pressure as you move outward, so the bâtard ends up with the middle highest and the ends pointed .

Preheating the oven

One hour before baking, place a baking stone on the middle rack and both a cast iron skillet (Mine is filled with lava rocks.) and a metal loaf pan (or equivalent receptacles of your choosing) on the bottom shelf. Heat the oven to 500F. Put a kettle of water to boil 10 minutes before baking.

Proofing

After shaping the loaf, transfer it to parchment paper liberally dusted with semolina or a linen couche, liberally dusted with flour. Cover the loaf with plastic wrap and a kitchen towel or a fold of the linen. Proof until the loaf has expanded to about 1-1/2 times it's original size. (30-45 minutes) Do not over-proof, if you want good oven-spring and bloom!

Baking

Put about a cup full of ice cubes in the loaf pan on the bottom shelf of the oven and close the door.

Slip a peel or cookie sheet under the parchment paper holding the loaf or transfer to a peel, if you used a couche. Score the loaf. (For a bâtard, hold the blade at about a 30 degree angle to the surface of the loaf. Make one swift end-to-end cut, about 1/2 inch deep.)

Transfer the loaf and parchment paper to the baking stone, pour one cup of boiling water into the skillet, and close the oven door. Turn the oven down to 460F.

After 12-15 minutes, remove the loaf pan and the skillet from the oven. Rotate the loaf 180 degrees, if it is browning unevenly. Close the oven door.

Bake for another 12-15 minutes, then remove the loaf and place on a cooling rack. Check for doneness. (Nice crust color. Internal temperature of at least 205F. Hollow sound when you thump the bottom of the loaf.) If necessary, return to loaf to the oven to bake longer.

When the loaf is done, leave it on the baking stone with the oven turned off and the door ajar for 5-10 minutes to dry and crisp up the crust.

Cooling

Cool on a rack for two hours before slicing.

Enjoy!

David

Submitted to Wild Yeast Spotting on Wildyeastblog