Levain Gosselin baguettes and batards
In a recent post David Snyder mentioned that his Hamelman pain au levain would qualify for a final four if he had only one bread he could make/eat. I suggested a few other qualifiers, including his marvelous Gosselin baguettes with an SD twist added for good measure, not to mention good flavor!
As I hadn't made these for quite some time, I figured that it was high time to get my act in gear. My issue is that a few months ago, I put aside my baguette obsession interest for my batard obsession interest. What to do, what to do, what to do.
I've now been deviating for quite a while by putting my own twist on most things baked around these parts. Most recently by turning the Hamelman pain au levain from a batard into a baguette, an especially enticing thought in that I couldn't find any prior reference on TFL of it having been done before. So this time I decided to turn the SD Gosselin baguette into a batard, also no reference to this switcheroo existing on TFL either. However, being somewhat indecisive about this scheme, I just hedged my bets and did both in the same bake.
I rescaled the whole operation for ~1500g , figuring two ~500g batards and two ~250g baguettes. And everything went dandy with minor exceptions, all pointing to the same culprit. The batard on the left was the poster boy for all the mishaps. It could have used better shaping, and although It received the same loving care and treatment as its brethren, when I removed the plastic bags covering the couche, the end of it was dried out as if the skin had been exposed to the air. Hmm. As we all should know, early mistakes are often magnified with each step down the production line. Therefore it didn't score as well, and didn't act the same during the steaming portion. Indeed, when all was said and done, the dry area looks it on the baked batard, and the bloom was just a bit weird on that one batard.
Both batards reacted with an incredible bloom and grigne, like something out of a sci-fi B-movie from the 50s. Or maybe from one of my goofy 3rd grade science projects.
Changes I made to David Snyder's formula and process:
- The obvious – batards as well as baguettes.
- I use my own stiffer than liquid levain rather than his SJSD liquid levain formula.
- No overnight retard after the initial mix – a mere 5 hours is all I gave it.
- After the bulk fermentation it went into the refrigerator for ~90 minutes before the divide and shape phase.
- Then retarded overnight on a couche. Total retard time at this step was 10 hours.
- Scored and baked directly out of the refrigerator.
Dry area in upper left batard.
Steam released and bread rotated. The Blob-like explosion on the batards is already evident.
And just for comparison, here is a shot of the Levain Gosselins from last year...
Crumb shot added. This is from the Frankenstein batard, as the other was a give-away. Not as open as the pure larger baguettes made last year, but to a large extent other than the being able to get a larger holed crumb, it really doesn't matter that much to me. As long as the crumb isn't tight and wet.
alan
Comments
Your crust looks perfect, the slight explosion not being a big deal. How did you get such a gloss on these?
Was the crumb nice and open?
but it did really open up during the steaming phase. Actually not that much out of the ordinary for the way my batards seem to open, especially for an AP flour based bread. But that one with the dry skin, boy, that dude sure was an oddball with a craggy grigne - it must have had a bad dentist! ;-).
As far as the gloss/gelatinization goes - I try to keep minimal to no raw flour on the majority of the surface. Especially easy as I couche them seam side down, so the bottom picks up a little raw flour, but not typically the top. Add to that the old 1-2 punch of Sylvia's Steaming Towels followed by a healthy dose of hot water on lava rocks just after the dough is loaded. These took 13-14 minutes of steam. I'll add that snapping photos within minutes of the bread coming out of the oven helps, before any oxidation of the crust starts to fade away some of that wonderful shine.
I haven't sliced into the batards yet, merely working my way slowly through the first mini-baguette. At ~250g pre-baked each they are pretty petite, so while there is some minor open crumb, there's nothing large enough for a hamster to fall through. Besides I'd rather slather my bread with some butter and leave Shotzy on her wheel in the cage!
will take some butter ans strawberry jam with hers. These are exceptional,as well as, classic breads. .Well done Alan and
Happy baking
Maybe one less layer of shellac ... ? ;-)
Waiting for crumb photos and, especially tasting notes.
David
Flavor-wise, they are quite tasty. My wife immediately said that they have a nutty kind of taste, and I think that does about sum it up. With a considerable amount of whole grain incorporated via the rather large quantity of levain in this bread, the flavor notes also tend to lean toward a less AP white bread and more to a whole grain bread.
It will make an excellent toast, the baker says.
I will say, as an aside, that I'm quite happy with the scoring that I've been getting on the handful of baguettes that I've made recently. After a few months away from them to play around with batards, I was a bit concerned that I'd lost an edge (not a pun!) on my baguette scoring skills. But it seems that I have not.
alan
BTW, what brand of polyurethane do you use? I just ran out with this bake :-0
It gives that "bold baked look" to the palest crusts! And a tamenuri technique provides a nice color variation to the bloom.
David
you had me running to the Google machine to see what red urushi is. Learn sumpin' new every day...
You wouldn't want to confuse sap from an urushi tree with that from a sugar maple!
David
The traces of my most recent contact with urushiol are fading. There must have been traces of poison ivy in some mulch that I handled recently because I haven't been in contact with it otherwise. Now I know the source of the name for the compound. And I'm really baffled that anyone would want to gather and then use urushi, no matter how pretty it is.
Paul
IT clinics vs. Pediatric clinics: It's clear that the clinics I attended didn't deal much with exposure to urushiol, but I'm pretty certain yours did.
I had my run-in with shingles about 9 years ago, and that was enough for me!
alan
PS I think that I'll stick with getting a good gelatinization on the breads (oh yeah, that's how this all began) with good steaming technique. Ixnay on the ushioluray. I was never very good at pig latin anyway...
I've been meaning to ask you this, but thought I'd search on previous posts before, with no success...
So you bake your baguettes and batards together? I'm told that baguettes take less time to bake. Do you take any special care with that?
The baguettes do indeed take less time to bake. And so they come out of the oven several minutes prior to the batard. As I hardly ever temp. the bread, it is considered "done" just by feeling and experience. A sample time frame might be ~26 minutes for baguettes and an additional 4-5 minutes for the batard. The one disadvantage to doing this is that I can't vent the baguettes for the final 2 minutes when the batard is still baking. Other than that, I have no problems with a mixed shape bake. Thanks for asking. alan