The Perfect Baguette: In search of the holy grail

[danlepard]

They're rather wonderful, Devlin. Beautiful texture inside and a lovely crust.

b x

Dan

[devlin]

They're rather wonderful, Devlin. Beautiful texture inside and a lovely crust.

b x

Dan

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Golly, Dan, that's welcome praise indeed. Thank you. It's a wonderful, base formula for so many breads.

I'm celebrating today, having just yesterday gotten certified to open the business. I'm still learning, still experimenting, still figuring everything out. It's bound to be a life-long thing, I'm expecting that, but I'm happy right now.

Your own book is my next bread resource to really explore in depth. I'm liking it very much, and I love your methods which are very similar to how I approach the whole process already, having searched and studied and played on my own for a few years now. It's so heartening to see others engaged in the same sorts of things. And this forum has been a godsend.

Thank you.

[Desiderio]

Congratulations on your business Devlin.

Your baguettes are wonderfull , did you use jackal formula?

I did Jackal formula for the regular bread and it was wonderfull firts bread since I have started the sourdough , that really pleased me , very similar to the one I buy in Italy.

The best of luck to you , keep us posted please

[devlin]

Congratulations on your business Devlin.

Your baguettes are wonderfull , did you use jackal formula?

I did Jackal formula for the regular bread and it was wonderfull firts bread since I have started the sourdough , that really pleased me , very similar to the one I buy in Italy.

The best of luck to you , keep us posted please 

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Thanks so much. I did use Jack's formula, and it's a wonderful base for other breads. I don't use a mixer or food processor, just mixing briefly by hand, and the final dough the same, minus salt and then adding that about 20 minutes later (and other ingredients if I'm incorporating anything else) and then another brief mix, and then a couple of folds in the bin itself over a couple of hours.

After experimenting over the past few years shaping breads, I hardly shape this type of bread at all, merely cutting, letting rest and then very briefly, very gently sort of coaxing into the shape I want, but generally in the shape, more or less, I cut the dough, which is either shorter or longer depending on what I want. And then the proof and bake.

[Desiderio]

Thank you Devlin ( ummm I kinda feel like coming to visit you for some fresh bread now ).

I was thinking this weekend I would like to make some walnuts bread with the same formula , maybe adding some whole wheat flour ( in Italy there is a bakery that made this kinda of bread and I always wonder how he made it the way he does ) I made it once with a formula with bakers yeast , very good one but nothing compare to this sourdough , so I think I am going to try and see if I can obtain that result ( even thought I doubt it will be the same without a brick fire oven )

Thank you for you explanation again

[devlin]

Thank you Devlin ( ummm I kinda feel like coming to visit you for some  fresh bread now  ).

I was thinking this weekend I would like to make some walnuts bread with the same formula , maybe adding some whole wheat flour ( in Italy there is a bakery that made this kinda of bread and I always wonder how he made it the way he does ) I made it once with a formula with bakers yeast , very good one but nothing compare to this sourdough , so I think I am going to try and see if I can obtain that result ( even thought I doubt it will be the same without a brick fire oven  )

Thank you for you explanation again 

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Jack's formula reminds me too of a very good bread I got in a tiny very expensive restaurant in Italy a few years ago that had an attached pizzeria. I'd been making a similar thing only with commercial yeast, and theirs had commercial yeast as well, but it may have been the best bread my husband and I had found so far in Italy, having been disappointed again and again by beautiful looking breads in bakery windows that were just awful and flavorless stuff. I always use a two and three-day preferment, and have really fallen in love with the sourdoughs. It's been a huge help learning how to maintain them once they're baked as well, freezing and warming, etc. I'm amazed again and again by how fabulous they are even after freezing and warming.

Last year I went to Alan Scott's bread oven conference outside San Francisco, and somebody had brought a walnut and gorgonzola (or some variety of blue cheese) bread that was out of this world. That's my next experiment.

I've gotten really good results in my electric oven, though. And with some tinkering around with process, they've been better than I thought they would be. You may be doing all these things already, but I use a square stone, heat the oven at its highest level for an hour before the bake, and then put the bread in the oven at that heat to start, throw a cup of water in a pan that's also been heating along at the bottom of the oven, close the door, wait a minute, and then turn the heat down to the required level. The loaves usually bake more quickly, but beautifully.

Oh, and roast your walnuts first.

[Desiderio]

Ohhh Great , I will roast the walnuts for sure thank you for the tip as well as for the fed back about the bread ). Keep you posted

[devlin]

Ohhh Great , I will roast the walnuts for sure thank you for the tip as well as for the fed back about the bread ). Keep you posted 

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Des, I meant to say too that those baguettes pictured above were baked in my electric oven not the brick oven. I do all my experimental stuff in the electric oven in my kitchen first.

[devlin]

I've seen it referred to as T55 or baguette flour, and because I really don't want to buy flour from France, does anybody know whether it could be more or less replicated by mixing percentages of all purpose and bread flour or something?

[Baggy]

I wish I could help – it was a question often asked in the UK before a couple of mail order suppliers became better known.

I tried mixtures of strong and all-purpose flour (50:50). It does give a dough which behaves like true T55 flour, but the taste is way off the real thing. There are a number of tricks used to get the texture the same – mostly involving over-hydrating the dough and the use of a starter (poolish seems very popular) to produce a soft, slack dough. With a high gluten flour this tends to produce a lighter, more open structure to the bread.

You might try looking at the books by Peter Reinhart (readily available) or Jeffry Hamelman (more technical) for some specific guidance on making baguettes with US flours.

As for taste, to hide the slightly metallic flavour of high gluten flour, sourdough baguettes seem to be popular. Sourdough (its equivalent) is also used in France but, unlike the way in which sourdoughs are used in the US where a sour taste is appreciated, should taste neutral even though they have much larger holes, less height etc (typically known as the baguette de tradition, although this may be a trademark of the Retrodor franchise).

The baguettes made using sourdough (natural levain) by the best French bakers are indistinguishable in structure, volume, shape and taste from that made by using commercial yeast, so personal taste is everything

For the authentic taste, you might try contacting some of your (authentic) French restaurants and asking them who is their supplier for bread flour. If not locally, then NY would be a good place to try. And, of course, there are better (and less good) T55s as well…

(I assumed you're based in the US - if that's not the case, I can make a list of UK suppliers.)

Please keep us posted as to what you choose to do.

[gfron1]

In a recent Art of Eating (#73-74) there was a whole section on how to replicate French baguettes at home and talked about flours and subsitutions. The article (as you would expect from that magazine) is quite extensive, but here are some snippets:

-9.7 to 10% protein

-Type 55 flour by French standards for the level of ash

-Flours grown in the upper mid-west/Northern plains

-The recipe he provides uses King Arthur All-Purpose which he specifies,

because it may be the best available and because the flour you use closely determines the amount of water needed.  Not that its the best (in flour there is no such thing), although I know it well, it works beautifully, and it is available in the US.

[jackal10]

Use soft flour such as AP about 9% protein, and long ferment times

[Peter Green]

Jeffrey Steingarten gives the subject his usual fun overview in The Loaf That Nearly Died collected in It Must've Been Something I Ate.

He's also saying that American flours are too high in protein for the French baguette, so you'd want that 9 to 10% level quoted above.

[devlin]

Thank you all for your responses. Very helpful explanations and confirmed my suspicion that the bread flour I use for sourdoughs is too high in protein for what I'm looking for. I am in the U.S., by the way, and buy my flour from a mill locally, although it's not grown here locally.

I'm disinclined to buy King Arthur flour or any flour I would have to have shipped as the costs are so prohibitive with shipping. So, the best alternative is probably to experiment with the flours I have access to right here.

I'm a little skeptical, though, that any one flour from one particular distributer here in the states (King Arthur, for example) would be the absolute best flour for this sort of thing, frankly. Unless they buy the stuff themselves from overseas and market it as their own product. Where does the wheat in their flour come from?

edit to say, I have worked with both Reinhart's and Hamelman's books, among others, such as Julia Child's book which includes a primer on the baguette with Danielle Forestier, and also the Acme rustic baguette outlined in Artisan Baker's Across America a few years ago as well. Hamelman's couple of baguette formula's use bread flour, though, and I'm not aware of any other directions from him in any other source that regard. And I've used both commercial yeast and a sourdough starter. My own sourdough starter is kept and refreshed in such a way that it has what I consider a lovely soft flavor, not "sour." I'm thinking I need to experiment with blends of flours and variations with leavens (commercial yeast vs. sourdough starter), water temps and fermentation times.

Anyway, thanks again.

Edited July 7, 2007 by devlin (log)

[gfron1]

Since I'm speaking on behalf of Edward Behr (and he doesn't even know it ), my assumption about his King Arthur recommendation is that its the best readily available option. So for those who don't have a local mill, nor who live in France, it would be a good starting point.

[Joe Blowe]

Don't have the time to post all of my thoughts, but do give Gold Medal Unbleached All-Purpose flour a shot -- the formulation in my area (So. California) is 10% protein, but that number is rumored to vary across the nation. It's become our house flour (I'm not a commercial baker, this is actually for home use!).

http://www.theartisan.net/flour_classification_of.htm

http://home.earthlink.net/~ggda/flour_test.htm

http://www.sourdoughhome.com/flourtest.html

[devlin]

Thanks to both gfron and joe for the suggestions. I'm going to try both King Arthur and Gold Medal (separately) and see what I come up with.

Edited July 8, 2007 by devlin (log)

[beccaboo]

Thanks to both gfron and joe for the suggestions. I'm going to try both King Arthur and Gold Medal (separately) and see what I come up with.

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I've read somewhere that King Arthur's organic 'artisan' flour is even better for baguettes, but I haven't tried it as I already have too many different flours taking up too much room.

[devlin]

Thanks to both gfron and joe for the suggestions. I'm going to try both King Arthur and Gold Medal (separately) and see what I come up with.

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I've read somewhere that King Arthur's organic 'artisan' flour is even better for baguettes, but I haven't tried it as I already have too many different flours taking up too much room.

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I noticed that on their web site, and it's another one on my list to explore.

[devlin]

A short couple of days later, having experimented with at least a couple of highly recommended and regarded (by me as well) methods by highly regarded bread bakers, I'm thinking Jack's sounds the likeliest thing. What I've ended up with aren't nearly what I'm going for, and the further I get from sourdough, the less I like the resulting flavor. The increased fermentation has got to help, I'm thinking. The King Arthur flour?... Um, sadly, at least in terms of what I was hoping, considering everything I've read and heard, kind of a shrug. The flavor doesn't come close to what I'm used to producing with my local flour with a sourdough starter. It looked okay, although not quite there, but the flavor was blandish with a sort of metallic aftertaste.

So, I'm off to play with Jack's method. I'll try both the local flour and King Arthur, same method, and see where that takes me.

[sugarseattle]

Having just come back from Paris, which I just love to brag about since I was very lucky to go, it was my impression that the baguettes, and the croissants for that matter, were made with a slightly softer flour than APF here in the states. I'm almost tempted to say it reminded me of cake flour because I detected an almost pasty quality. So that leads me to concur that the T55 is a lower protein flour.

I've been working on perfecting my baguette technique with fairly inconsistent results. Although I did notice the flavor was better with regular old Western Family APF than with organic. I really want to use organic, though, so I'm a bit stuck. I'm going to try the baguette method outlined in Baking Illlustrated, which has pretty detailed instructions. I'm pretty sure since baguette making is all about technique, I just need practice to get the flavor & texture I want.

[papalolo]

I have had excellent succes with King Arthur Artisan flour. The gluten problem can be solved by simply not kneading it as much as you think you need to. If you just let the dough hydrate on its own, gently...your gluten content shouldnt be too excessive. Remember that gluten is not necessarily inherent in the flour, It has to be developed through kneading, so if you take it easy on your dough you should have great results.

What I do it I just let my somewhat clumpy dough rest for 20 minutes or more so that it can absorb the water from the formula, when its hydrated you dont really knead it so much as fold it a couple of times...you should see it already has some nice elasticity, but the gluten at that point isnt developed to the point where it tears your dough when you roll it in to batards...it also produces a wetter dough, so you need to get used to that for good results (don't overflour you bench)

[gfron1]

Reviving an old topic that is particularly relevant for me right now. Does anyone bake their baguettes on a baguette pan v. free form on a stone? I'm placing my baguette pan on the stone as I bake to keep the shape perfect. I also don't know if this has anything to do with my eruption issues. BTW, about 3/4 through baking, I pull them off the pan and finish directly on the stone.

[jackal10]

Use of a baguette pan is disapproved by some bakers, as it leaves a characterisitc pattern on the bottom of the loaf.

More seriously the intermediate layer reduces the heat transfer to the dough and hence reduces the expansion and lightness of the crumb. The bread will have a denser, less open texture.

Use a "flipping board". Cut a thin piece of ply the depth of your oven, or the length of you baguette, plus a handle. Mine is 18 inches (plus 6 inches for the handle) by 3 inches. You can then roll the dough from the couche (folded linen, such as a floured tea towel) onto the the board, slash, take it to the oven and off onto the stone. Demi batard shown

Eruption (called a "cripple") can be due to a number of issues:

a) Under proof

b) Poor slash

c) Poor moulding

d) Too much top heat or not enough steam so that the crust forms, dries and tears before the loaf finishes expanding

Edited May 25, 2008 by jackal10 (log)

[gfron1]

Great - thanks. (Why not just come visit for a weekend and let's get this troubleshooting done with ). Today I'm going to proof longer than I have been. My slashes are deeper than they have been. I hopefully have resolved my seem issue from before. I don't have the mould marks that you mention because I lined my mould with parchment (it was leaving ugly coloration on the bottom). The steam is a bit trickier since I'm using a home oven. I have a tray of water on my bottom shelf and spritz the heck out of it (watching not to lose too much heat when I open). Results in a bit.

I'll work on the flipping board. But let me get this straight. I'll slash in the mould. Then flip upside down on the board. So when I turn the loaf onto the stone in the oven, the slashes will alredy be on top. Correct?