Sourdough Baguette
Quarantine baking also appears to mean you never get a good picture of the final product. This time, I was the primary heathen involved in destroying that opportunity.
I really like making baguettes, though of course nowhere near as much as I like eating them! Since I was playing with the Parisian starter anyway, seemed right to do this precious bread. You can, of course, use any sourdough starter to make this, or any bread recipe. As per usual, though, I often want to experience a regional starter as one of the region’s indigenous breads.
When I got started on these, my intention was to do a same-day bake, with a 4-hour first rise and a 2-hour second. What actually happened, however, is that I rose my bread at room temp for around 6-8 hours before I remembered I had made dough, didn’t feel up to dealing with it, and tucked it in the fridge for for cold fermentation over the next 2 days. If you didn’t know, “cold fermentation” is a technical term for “I rose my dough in the fridge.” Know that you can do this however you want, and that you can let that dough do its first rise start-to-finish in the fridge for up to 5 days. When I’m busy, I often make double or triple batches of dough, rise in the fridge, and pull what I want to bake that day while the rest keeps fermenting. Other times, I rise my dough (wherever) and then freeze portions so I can skip straight to thaw, shape, and second rise when I don’t have enough time to devote to the full process!
Anyway, I really need to move on from this starter for a little while, so I’m probably going to make some beignets before I put it up in favor of new experiments, in addition to the baguette that just had to happen. Although I’ve made hundreds of baguettes, I’ve never made these with sourdough before. I can tell you with certainty that I will never make them with commercial yeast again, after having done these loaves.
A few notes:
This recipe is developed with regular, all-purpose flour. I wanted to make sure it worked before I did it with the last of my T55 flour. I assume I will never see that flour again any time soon, since it’s not like anyone can go to France and bring some back for me now, so this was also its best send off. If you want to use a different flour, do so! Just check what baking adjustments you need, just in case there are some.
I had some scoring issues on those middle loaves. You will do better, I’m sure.
Baguette shaping is different from normal shaping. There will be a video below, so please make sure you watch it if you haven’t done this kind of bread before. I shaped baguette incorrectly for years, and I’m pretty sure I learnt how to do it correctly on YouTube. You really can learn just about anything on YouTube! How you shape really makes a huge difference in the final product, though, so use the traditional method if you can.
A traditional-length baguette has 5 slashes. Yours should have 3, as the size of loaf you can get in a personal oven will pretty much never be 5-slash length. Your slashes should happen at a 45 degree angle. Make sure you use a really sharp razor, and make sure you rotate it to use a different corner with each loaf. My failure to rotate is what happened to those middle loaves - without the razor being sharp, it tears rather than slashes your dough. Still tastes good, but not as pretty or as polished.
You can do this on your baking stone (this is what I did) or you can do it on a sheet pan on the rack.
Although I really dislike using this method of replicating a steam oven, mostly because it warps my pans over time due to never remembering to heat the water first, you should be a better planner than me and do it. You will not get your crust right if you don’t.
That cloth those loaves are in is called a couche. It’s basically a little linen bed for baguettes (literally the only kind of dough I use it for), and you fold it in between your loaves so they grow up instead of out. Baguette dough is really wet, so it will grow out instead of up if you let it. I’m assuming most of you won’t have a couch, so get a big kitchen towel and make sure it’s insanely well floured before you start putting your loaves in there. Seriously: if the amount of flour isn’t making you think about how much flour you’re “wasting,” you didn’t use enough and your loaves are likely to stick. You can avoid wasting the flour by using it for something else. Most of the time, I use it for breadings of whatever I want to fry, but often I will just stick the flour right into my next recipe! I do not, however, feed my starters with it, because I’m always worried that somehow they’ll get salt in them. Irrational worry, but nonetheless.
If you broke your paddle or otherwise don’t have one, please exercise caution when removing these bad boys from the oven. I took a nasty burn on my hand over these, though it will result in an awesome scar. The burn also got me out of doing dishes for a week, so bonus!
You can see the scoring issue in those middle loaves, I’m sure. Thus the importance of a sharp razor has been revealed!
Here’s what you’ll need
900 grams/31.75 oz/7.25 cups all-purpose flour
1 tablespoon salt
550mL/2.32 cups water
200 grams (there’s a lot of variability in volume here, so I’m going to guess that it’s somewhere between 3/4-1c) 100% hydration starter
Let’s make the dough!
Mix together your flour and salt, then add the starter and water. I knead this by hand, and I honestly have no idea how long this should take in a mixer. By hand, as a pretty tiny human who’s not supremely strong, it takes me usually 40-50 minutes before it’s really hitting the windowpane stage. How long this will take just depends on the level of vigor you use in kneading (I’m low vigor) and your general strength DO NOT add more flour, or any oil, while kneading. It’s a sticky, sticky mess for a while, and you just have to deal with that until the dough smooths our and becomes mostly just tacky. I knead directly in my mixing bowl to contain it, and I generally watch TV while doing so. I also sit on the floor with my bowl, because I can get more force if the bowl is sitting on the floor and my arm can really straighten out during each turn.
Oil a tall square or rectangular, oiled container, then tuck your dough in. Cover and rise for 3-4 hours at room temperature or up to 5 days in the fridge.
Shaping
Put some flour on your counter or board (I normally do this on a big cutting board, though not always), and then invert the container onto it so your square/rectangle of dough sort of tumps out. Grab your bench scraper (or knife, or whatever) and cut your dough, lengthwise, into 4-6 loaves (you can totally do 6 with this recipe; I just usually do 4 anyway). Shape per video below. It can take a little while to learn this, so don’t freak out if you’re not awesome at it at first.
Bake time!
After your shaped baguettes have risen for about an hour (maybe two, depending on how you feel about it all), go on ahead and get a pan set up on the bottom rack to pour water into, and set up your other rack one notch above. If using a stone, go on ahead and put that up there. Then you can preheat your oven to 500-550F/260-287C/Gas Mark 10 (basically put it as high as your oven will go) before moving your loaves to a tray.
If you’re baking on a stone, you’ll use that tray in place of a peel. Or you could just use a peel. If you’re not, then that’s what you’re baking on, which is also ducky.
Heat up some water! No, for real. Do it before you forget. I always forget, and it’s a real issue in terms of the longevity of the steam pan in there.
How I do the rest is kind of ridiculous, but it’s the safest way I know how. As soon as the oven is hot, I bring my tray of loaves over and set it on the stove (I guess you’ll do it differently if you have built in ovens), open the door, and quickly pull out the bottom rack with the pre-heated pan. I slide my baguettes on the top rack, pour water into the pan on the bottom, carefully get it back in as fast as I can, slam the door to the oven shut (because I still always feel like that’s faster, despite how silly that is), and set the timer for 25 minutes. You can drop the heat in your oven as low as 450F/230C, but I never do. Do not open your oven, no matter what silly business you see in cooking competitions and the like. After your timer goes off, pull a loaf and check to see if they’re done (they will sound hollow). If yes, transfer the lot to a cooling rack. You should, per most breads, wait for this to be cool before tearing into it. I wish you luck on that, since I rarely manage it.
