Moderately knowledgeable cook, novice baker: Baguettes/batards?

Cafe Society
21

Tripolar answered the thermometer question. Yes to both of your links.

I have no problem with steel bowls. I use a variety of sizes in my kitchen. Purists will say that stainless steel somehow interferes with the rising action of natural (sourdough) yeasts, but I’ve not has a problem with them.

Towels for me are standard kitchen towels. Mine are all cotton, try to use ones that aren’t “linty,” or have too much texture (dough grabs onto texture).

Sheet pan - I use some bog standard cheap ones when I’m cooking directly on the trays. I do tend to cook on my pizza stones whenever I can… or in the fancy oven linked above when I plan far enough ahead to bring it up to temperature.

In short, don’t worry about the details. Get started, and make a loaf. You’ll have some degree of success, and the rest is all trial and error and enjoying the learning process!

22

Okay, I’ve decided just to bite the bullet and try it without buying any new equipment. I’m using the no-knead bread that a four-year-old can make that was linked above.

I’ve mixed the flour, yeast, and salt. See ya in 12-20 hours!

23

I second this. Mine come out pretty good; I use baguette pans. Other tricks: Fold whipped egg whites into the dough to make the bread lighter. (Whip the whites until they hold peaks, then gently fold them into the dough before adding any salt.) Set the oven as hot as it can go and then, when the bread is in, turn it down to the baking temperature. After they are done cooking, turn off the over and leave them in with the door closed for a few minutes to harden the crust.

24

I can’t stop watching it!

25

Help! Disaster! I let it sit for 17 hours and it’s still just a bloop. No cohesive ball of dough that can be manipulated.

26

It doesn’t sound now as if anything is going to happen. I hate to say this, but I think you are going to have to start over, maybe with a different recipe.

I have two recommendations. You can try the recipe I linked to in my previous post. Or you could get a copy of James Beard’s book Beard on Bread, which is my favorite bread making book. He had a recipe for what he called French-style bread that is really good, and of course adapted to American ovens.

If you choose a recipe that asks for steam, get some cheap, plain unglazed tiles and place them in the bottom of the oven, throwing a little water on them when required.

But you are going to have to work on kneading the bread. With your hands. To some, this is boring. Some doughs can be sticky at first and there is a temptation to hurry the process by adding too much flour, Instead of that get a hand held metal scraper to work up the residue. Flour will gradually absorb the moisture and become less sticky, as it is worked.

When I had a class for elementary shool kids, first through third graders, on making bread, I compared the process to a person combing their long hair. It’s a mess at first, but as the strands get untangled and shaped properly they fall into line and make something great.

Without seeing your dough it’s hard to tell what happened. If it doesn’t appear to have risen the yeast may have been old, or the water too cool. But my guess, since you said it’s a no knead bread, is that the dough didn’t have the strength to rise. Gluten is developed by kneading. Recipes that promise authentic results without at least partly attempting authentic processed won’t always work.

If you ever come through Topeka let me know, I’ll give you a tutorial!

Just try again, and you can always ask us for help.

27

A few things could have happened, but I agree with Baker that you probably have to start over.

I also agree that making a bread that you have to knead a bit isn’t a bad thing. The no knead recipes are ok, but you can make bread that is every bit as good in less time and with more control over the end product if you are willing to knead. Personally, learning to knead by hand was one of my favorite parts about learning to bake bread.

There are tons of resources online that will help you learn to knead. It seems way harder than it really is.

Also, a tip that I didn’t see in the thread already. If you aren’t already, weigh all your ingredients. It helps, especially with flour:water ratios.
Some online resources that I happen to like are:

The Fresh Loaf
Sourdough Home I know you aren’t making sourdough, but it’s got lots of good general baking tips too. Also, the English Muffin Bread recipe on that site is killer (taken from Beard on Bread), and can they have both sourdough and yeast variations posted.
and for fun
Pizza Quest - which has the best pizza dough recipe I have ever made.

Peter Reinharts books are fantastic, but probably ahead of your abilities right now. Give it a month or so before you get one.

28

Actually, I am thinking about your bloop and wondering if you can’t make an attempt at saving it.

Did it rise at all? How wet is it?

It might be that you can add some flour, fold it over a few times, let it rest for an hour or two in a warm place and give baking it a shot. It sounds like it either had too much water or over proofed (or both). Might be saveable as something sorta edible. Provide some details.

29

The no-knead bread doesn’t really end up with a cohesive dough ball- it’s still kind of a sticky mess, but it looks fizzy because of the yeast activity.

What you do at that point is flour your work surface enough so that the dough doesn’t stick, put the “bloop” on it, and then sort of gather it up into a ball, without actually kneading it much.

Then you bake it in a preheated covered pot of some kind- we use a 6.5 qt cast iron dutch oven because that’s what we have, but you could use just about anything like that.

The recipe describes it better than I can, but the ultimate point is that it’ll still be kind of fluid and sticky until you bake it.

30

Okay, that’s a relief. I’ll bake it and see if it works.

The yeast was definitely working over night. It was fizzy until I dumped it out of the bowl this morning.

31

So at this point I’m not worried about the kneading, because I haven’t gotten that far.

Basically what I’ve got now is like a bowl of plaster. It doesn’t hold together at all. Not only can it not be kneaded, it can’t really be gathered into a ball either. I’ve poured it onto a floured towel, like instructed, but I don’t know whether it’s going to do anything.

32

The worst case is that it over proofed and that isn’t too bad. Flour the work surface and the top of the dough a bit and fold it over on itself into a square if you can’t make a ball. It will still taste good.

33

It sounds like not enough flour.

What I do is gradually add flour and stir until it a really wet clump, then dump it onto a thick pile of flour on the counter and knead.

Of course, my “no-knead” recipe is really a “knead-lite,” not a “put it into the over still really wet” as bump is describing.

34

Well, I have a result. It definitely is bread. I added some more flour until it held together a bit, although it still wasn’t a kneadable dough. And then I baked it.

It’s got a thin crust and it’s spongy on the inside. The outside is probably a bit overcooked. The whole thing is slightly denser than I would have expected. But the inside is spongy and has holes, so the yeast seems to have done something, even though the raw substance had not seemed to have risen.

I’ll have to say, though, that the whole thing is kind of bland tasting. I wonder if I should have used more salt.

35

A little more salt almost never hurts. Out of curiosity how much more flour did you end up adding? My guess is still that the initial batch rose for too long (and probably didn’t have quite enough flour) and that it needed to be allowed to rise more a second time after you added flour which caused the overly dense loaf. The blandness was probably increased by the addition of the extra flour after the rise. This is just my guess, I am in no way an expert, just a guy who has baked a lot of rustic bread at home.

Also, how hot was your oven and how high up was the loaf? A really hot oven will help get that initial oven spring, as will cooking it closer to the oven floor, and oven spring will help with that last bit of rise and will give you a lighter crumb.

Oh, another flavor tip. The next time you make a loaf cut off an inch or two of dough and don’t bake it. Save it (up to three days in the fridge or three months in the freezer) wrapped tightly in plastic wrap. Cut it up and mix it into your next loaf. TONS of extra flavor. Rinse and repeat every time you make one of these french style loaves.

36

So, next time, I’ll try a little more salt and flour, and keep its initial rise a bit shorter. How does that sound?

Unfortunately for now, I don’t have much accuracy in my oven. I preheated it on max and then turned it down to 450 for the bake, and then turned it up again for the last 10 minutes.

Thanks everyone fror all the advice!

37

I’d also try proofing some of your yeast. Put a little flour (a Tablespoon or two) into a cup of water, along with a teaspoon of yeast. If it foams up, your yeast is still good. If not, off to the store for more yeast.

By weight, and depending on the recipe, the water should be 60-80% of the weight of the flour. Anything towards the high end of that is going to be tough to handle, and appear a sticky wet mess. It takes lots of experience to handle high-hydration dough recipes like that.

I’ve never tried the no-knead recipe, but looking at it, it’s clearly a high-hydration recipe, and if you’re not scooping enough flour in, then it’s going to be a wet mess. It also uses only 1/4tsp of yeast, so if your yeast isn’t fresh and active, it’s going to take a LONG time to get going. (Hence the 18 hr rise).

I’d try it again with a bit more flour (after you’ve proofed some of your yeast)… or try a simple kneaded recipe.

Good luck!

38

I’m pretty sure the yeast was working. The stuff bubbled quite nicely.

39

Cooks Illustrated has a terrific “low knead” recipe that improves the texture a bit and amps up the flavor with the addition of more salt and some beer to the dough.

40

Nice. Any links?