French bread wrap up

Since the first ciabatta came out pretty good my motivation for that experiment has dissipated a bit, haha. I may continue, or pick a different style. It was good, and the boys liked it, but it doesn't make for good grilled cheese. Also technique seems far less important than recipe.

At any rate, I decided to do baguette again but this time to use the technique of pain d'epi to make a holiday wreath - make the loaf into a ring and then take the scissors to it and make a nice looking loaf that way. We'll see how it turns out.

Also wanted to take the opportunity to wrap up everything I learned about baguette making. Here are the key points.

• Recipe - http://www.kingarthurflour.com/recipes/classic-baguettes-and-stuffed-baguettes-recipe
• I used 260g of water in Oct/Nov. More water did not make for bigger holes in the crumb and made it a huge pain to knead.
• I prefer pointed ends in the baguette loaf.
• Use a razor blade to make deep long slashes.
• For Pain d'Epi cut deep into the loaf with scissors.
• Preheat the oven with a small metal pan in there. Throw ice cubes in that after putting the bread in and just before closing the oven door.
• Before placing the loaves in the oven, spray them with the sprayer from the sink so they're good and soaked.

Picture of the pain d'epi loaf coming shortly...

Here it is, going to call it pain de Noël since it's supposed to resemble a Christmas wreath.

And prior to cooking...

Finally, perfection

Well, ok, perfection might be a bit strong of a word. But it turned out very nicely. I doubled up the dough in one of the loaves to make a bit bigger loaf - worked well. Once again sprayed the loaves with water from the sink, then threw a handful of ice cubes in the bottom of the oven. Twenty minutes was perfect, crust looks glorious.

Tonight's Loaves

Ok, so the much more hydrated dough had both positives and negatives.

For starters, the positives. The skin of the loaf was definitely more blistered, which is nice. I strongly suspect the crumb will be much hole-ier. And I pulled them out after only 15 minutes at 450°, ten minutes shorter than the recipe recommends! Yet a thermometer inserted reported an interior temp exceeding 200°. The crust is a gorgeous color.

Negatives. As mentioned the dough was MUCH harder to work with. The slashes were much more difficult as the wet dough stuck to the razor blade, which led to an inferior beads-on-a-wire shape to the loaf.

In addition to the other changes I mentioned, I drenched the bread with the sprayer from the sink before putting it in the oven, definitely covered it well with water.

I think the lesson here is to go with somewhat less hydration so the dough is more easily workable and the slashes take better. Perhaps next run I will try with something roughly halfway between previous runs and this current one.

Possible thoughts for the future - a longer pan for the oven would be nice, these went right to the edge. A large steam tray might be nice for proofing so I don't waste so much plastic wrap.