7.03.2004

Sourdough Baguettes

Been using Silverton's starter lately for breads. A good friend developed it and gave me some. Tonight, in preparation for tomorrow's 4th of July picnic I took it out and started my feeding/prep (this is a combination of methods using a large fraction of starter and finally using a bit of yeast (1/8 t) for the final dough):

Sourdough Baguette (attempt) using Silverton's Starter
1. Removed the starter from the fridge and discarded all but ca. 150 grams of it.
2. Charged unbleached white flour (130 g) and water (130 g) and stirred it about 50 times or so with a spatula. The resulting blob was a thick batter. Within a couple hours the volume had increased to nearly double. I let it sit about 6 hours total (went and saw a movie).
3. Charged to the inflated mass water (140 g) followed by unbleached white flour (140 g); mixed as in step 2 and let ferment 10 hours. Ca. 2-3 fold volume increase and held.
4. Mixed starter (250 g), water (rt, 250 g), active dry yeast (1/8 t), unbleached white flour (400 g) in Kitchenaid and let mix for about 3 minutes and let sit (autolyse) for 20 minutes covered with towel.
5. Charged salt (9 grams) and continued mixing in KitchenAid for about 5 minutes and a few minutes hand kneading. Our KitchenAid sucks for kneading, wrapped around the hook. Should've used bread machine for kneading.
6. 1st rise at rt for 2 hours (1.5 - 2x volume increase).
7. Deflated and let rest ca. 30 minutes.
8. Preheated oven to 450F with clay tiles, shaped two loaves and covered with muslin towel.
9. Final proof, 45 minutes (pic on the left after proofing). They proofed sitting on parchment, placed in a baguette pan (to support the sides) and then placed on a peel prior to launching them into the oven.
10. Docked and onto the tiles with a steam shot and baked till amber (about 35-40 minutes).

Results
-They look terrible. Only a couple of the places where I docked them, did they give a nice open vent; the rest of the slashes look "unopened". They look as if they overproofed but I'm not sure. How could they be, I only used an 1/8 t yeast to assist the starter. My other suspicion is under kneading (as noted above). I'll break into them this afternoon. I'm a notorious underproofer but I'm not sure that was it. I'm still not sure what exactly it is I don't like about them. I guess I'll know after a sample.

-Results at the picnic today were quite favorable. They tasted much better than they looked. A pretty good crust,a bit chewey, nice interior, tender but not super airy. I was thrilled with the compliments but still think more kneading would've helped the texture.

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