July 7, 2021 - 5:11pm
Golden Crust On Baguettes - Techniques Please
As you can see in the picture, my baguette has nice ears but does not have a golden crust.
Pretty standard recipe of 68% with hi gluten flour, biga, starter, a little malt.
Baking at 475 in a gas oven with a finish of convection to brown it up.
Turns brown but never golden.
Thoughts?
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Jay, did you use steam during the first part of the bake?
Not on this one.
When I do use steam, there's no change in color.
Following on from Dan's comment. I also believe it's a steam issue; there's a lot of comments on this site concerning gas ovens and lack of lustre on the finished bread. I notice you said that you finished the bake with convection. Is it possible to do the whole bake on convention with your oven with steam for the first 10 minutes?
Cheers,
Gavin
Good thought, I'll try all convection and see.
Other ideas?
I've read the recipe should have a proportion of AP flour. Does that make any difference?
Also, considering baking with all King Arthur flour. If the results are the same, I'll email them the same question.
I think it may be because of your gas oven. Gas ovens by their nature for safety vent during baking. Baguettes in particular really need steam in order to bake well and get a shiny golden crust. You may have to devise some sort of cover to bake your baguettes under to trap the steam and perhaps add an ice cube or two on the baking stone/steel under the tray to generate more steam. But I do think you’re having a lack of steam problem.
Some bakers here have used big metal pans to place over their baguettes and have had good success doing that.
Benny
Just ordered a stainless steel "kitty litter" pan on Amazon.
It is 6 inches deep and big enough to completely cover my baguette pan.
Now it's a bit of guess work to know how long to leave it on, or how much water to use for steam.
I'm guessing that this idea should trap the steam right on the loaves and keep them somewhat protected from the gas oven venting.
This is kind of like the dutch oven bake technique.
Thanks again for the idea.
Well I’d keep it on for the same amount of time you were steaming your oven for. You could consider brushing water on the baguettes before loading them, or spraying them with extra water and placing an ice cube or two on the baking steel or stone so long as you think the thermal shock won’t break the stone if that is what you have.
Benny
That will absolutely work in a gas oven. If it is big enough to encompass the loaves plus a small container (Pyrex) of boiling water even better. Keep the cover and container of water in for the initial 10 minutes of your bake, then remove them to allow the baguettes both to take on color and dry out. This is how I do it in my home gas oven now that I no longer have a $50K steam-injection deck oven to bake them in.
At first I thought to put the pan over the baguettes, then it occured to me to put the entire baguette pan (4 loaves) into the pan and put a sheet pan on top for the lid. Just like the dutch oven idea. Thanks so much for the idea, looking forward to it. BTW, when my daugher lived in DC we had good times at Le Diplomat. The gougeres! Was that your creation?
If the "lid" doesn't fit tight, the rising steam will escape.
If the pan is inverted, it won't matter if there is a gap between the pan and the stone, because the steam will rise into, and be contained by, the cavity of the pan. Then it will be only excess air pressure (of water being turned to steam) that will force air/Steam out of the gap between the inverted pan and stone.
Does this make sense? I don't know if I explained it right.
Yes, makes total sense.
Can't wait.
I agree with Dave, I’d go with the pan inverted over the baguettes, you should maximize the steam this way and lose much less of it. Good luck.
Benny
My “experience” is that you need a tight lid.
Wish it were so. That was the Executive Pastry Chef. I was the bread guy.
Jay, In case you missed it, there was a big community effort here to learn baguettes starting in June 2020.
https://www.thefreshloaf.com/node/64622/community-bake-baguettes-alfanso
It lasted months, and has over 2200 comments. There are still on-going contributions, as Community Bake posts always remain open.
Alfanso took the best-of-the-best and made a more manageable PDF flle:
http://www.thefreshloaf.com/up/tfl-baguette-community-bake.pdf
There's a lot of good info to learn from there. Even baguette-beginners attained professional level results in that Community Bake.
So cool! Thanks.
Here's my baguette rig.
Two loaf baguette pan.
Sheet pan for boiling water.
Kitty litter pan to go on top to hold in steam.
How tightly does the inverted pan fit over the sheet pan? If it is tight you could place a wire rack in the sheet pan, pour some boiling water into it and then place your baguettes in the baguette pan on the wire rack then place the inverted pan on top with a good seal. You wouldn’t need to use much boiling water and you wouldn’t want too much otherwise your dough might actually get too wet. Anyhow, whatever you end up doing I hope you post your baguettes after baking with your new setup.
Benny
The kitty litter pan sits on top of the rim of the sheet pan so, too wonky but I get it, good thought.
The plan is to put the boiling water in the sheet pan, just above that rack is the perforated baguette pan, (I'm thinking 400g loaves) and on top of that is the kitty litter pan. Bake for some time and remove the top.
I haven't used this 2 loaf pan for a long time so I'm guessing at the loaf size and baking time.
Here are the variables and keep in mind this is a gas oven, hence the Rube Goldberg baking apparatus.
Convection or not
Temp
How long to keep the lid on and how long to bake after
Loaf size
Thoughts?
Jay, you’re going to have to experiment with your oven to find what is optimal. It took me quite a few bakes with baguettes to find what worked for my oven.
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The set up is with the baking steel on the lowest rack and under it the broiling rack stuffed with crumpled aluminum foil. 2 levels above is the Sylvia towel in an old pan and a cast iron skillet. 30 mins into preheat I pour boiling water into the Sylvia towel pan and place it into the oven, the cast iron skillet is in for the whole preheat. When the baguettes are loaded, 250 mL of boiling water are added to the skillet. The temperature is dropped to 480ºF and baked with steam for 13 mins. After 13 mins both the Sylvia towel pan and cast iron skillet are removed.
So you could try steaming for 13 mins as a starting point.
Loaf size will depend on the length of that baguette tray, again, you’ll have to adjust based on your experience with baguette shaping. I have always aimed to have about 290 g per baguette, but my next bake I will increase to 330 g to try to get them girthier and longer.
Thanks to all who chimed in on this project.
As you can see from the pictures the baguettes turned out ok.
And a heck of a lot nicer looking than the gas oven alone turned out.
I used a cast iron skillet directly below the rack holding the perforated baguette pans.
These were covered by a stainless steel pan sold as a "Kitty Litter" pan on Amazon.
15 minutes later at 475f the cover came off and cast iron pan of water removed. (The cast iron pan was still producing steam)
The rack was moved up to the high position for another 10 minutes. Then 4 minutes with the fan to brown the loaves.
I have half the dough left in the fridge that I'll bake tomorrow.
Thanks again to all. Let me know your thoughts.
Nice job. That's a big improvement.
Cheers,
Gavin
I agree with Gavin, huge improvement, well done. The inverted pan approach along with extra steam from below works really well with your perforated pan.
Benny