Simple Baguette
After a few days of a couple of bad bakes (100% rye sour was a pure brick, the recipe had to have been wrong), I decided to get on with trying to make some simple baguettes. Finding txfarmers page and his excellent recipes I decided to give baguettes a go
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/31945/straight-method-baguette-good-starter-baguette-practice
I was worried the taste would be too plain, so added rye flour to end up with an 80% plain and 20% rye baguette.
Shaping my first baguettes was interesting, 2 were kind of round and 2 were a little flatter and baked a little harder In the end. They had a great crust, sprung nicely in the oven and were crisp on the outside and smooth and moist inside.
Crumb Shot
However, the crumb was not as airy as it should have been and would that be because of the rye flour? Should I have added more water to increase hydration? This was a wet dough and I did stretch and folds for the first time.
Again, I tried something fairly basic but ended up learning a thing or two about dough and myself as a baker
All the best
Andy
bad for 20% rye, Had to taste better than white bread too! Well done
Very nice words as usual from you, thank you. The rye did give an extra taste (that is what my parents said as I am unable to taste), but I was very relieved they went down well. I made a delicious spaghetti carbonara to go with them, so they were very content in the end. A good endorsement I suppose.
Still would have liked more air in the crumb though and maybe more water was needed because of the rye?
All the best
Andy
Hi Andy.
Sorry, I can not help with the hydration query but I can sure comment on the crumb. I love it! I think baguettes with more whole grain flour in them are beauties. To be honest, I wouldn't care if the crumb turned out like this. The fact that you attempted a baguette with rye and this much rye, deserves a pat on the back.
Thank for this post.
John
There is definitely a place for basic white bread, but my heart does rest with darker flours like wholemeal and rye and hopefully in the end spelt and others. They provide more taste and easier to digest.
Thanks for your kind words on my crumb. I thought it was more than ok, but was expecting more because of the pictures from the original recipe, but this worked too.
All the best
Andy
Nice healthy twist on those beautiful baguettes!
Open crumb is a function of dough handling during preshaping and shaping stages. There is a technique for dough handling and shaping that retains most of the gas pockets in dough. In short, quick handling, gentle , and loose shaping will do the job. The dough will look like a dissapointg deflated baloon-like baguettes, but will inflate gloriously when it hits the hot oven stone.
-Khalid
Thanks for the tips on handling the dough. I am very new and a novice to all of this, but I tried hard to handle as little as possible as I was aware that would affect the crumb in this bread. I found the shaping very hard, but the stretch and folds were surprisingly easy in the end and gave me a substantially more workable dough each time.
To a novice baker, the S&Fs seem like magic, it was good fun to see the dough rise and develop between the folds.
All the best
Andy