Breads Sourdough porridge baguette in gas oven

[rmrf]

Hi KKF, I previously talked about making sourdough porridge baguettes. When I changed locations, I found myself faced with different (warmer) weather, flour, and, most importantly, ovens. In this post, I update my recipe with tips in baking baguettes in a gas oven. The main contribution here is the creation of a sealed baking vessel to trap steam.

In terms of recipe, not much has changed:

1) Make salted porridge; let it cool to room temperature
2) Mix porridge, flour, and some of the total water for an 8hr autolyze
3) Make levain
4) Once levain is proofed, mix levain into dough and add remaining water as bassinage.
5) Bulk ferment to 1.25x volume
6) Shape, final proof, bake.

Baker's percentages
70-80% whole grain flour (60% high gluten whole wheat + 15% whole grain rye works pretty well)
20-30% high gluten white flour (I use sir lancelot)
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15% dry oats + 30% water (1:2 oats to water is neutral hydration for porridge)
1.5% salt
5% + 62.5% + 20% => 87.5% water (extra hydration for porridge, autolyze, bassinage respectively)
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Levain: 10% whole wheat (or 5% whole wheat, 5% rye) + 10% water for levain

Porridge:
Combine the dry oats with 2 parts by mass with water + the extra 5% hydration water with the salt (this helps it cook more evenly). Cover and microwave until fully cooked. I use a pyrex container with a pyrex lid to ensure less evaporation, but plastic wrap works just as well.

Pre-ferment:
Combine the bulk water with the cooled porridge. Mix well so no lumps and add the mixed flour. You're starting an autolyze for the time it takes the levain to rise (6-8 hr for me). Make sure there's no dry bits. Cover and set aside. Make sure to use water straight from the tap. The salt and the tap water help resist spontaneous fermentation. A cool spot helps.

Levain:
Combine whole wheat flour, some active sourdough starter (I feed mine twice in 24 hours before making the levain), and water.

Dough:
Once the levain is proofed (doubled in volume), add to the levain and fold to incorporate. Cutting the levain into the dough is less ideal here because you don't want to destroy the developed gluten from the long ferment.

Develop Gluten:
I do a fold (2 sets of stretch and folds at right angles, followed by 2 coil folds at right angles) every 15 minutes. After each set of folds, I add some bassinage. I usually do 5-8 folds, or folding for 1-2 hours. The early ones benefit from 15 minute intervals but as more gluten develops you can wait 30 minutes. You can do a windowpane test if you're worried. The dough should be very extensible. If its not (and you're using a high gluten flour), add more water. The bassinage will help you incorporate more water, develop the gluten better, and stop you from adding too much water to your dough. The cost is just your time and effort. However, if you're making your own bread, your time and effort can't be worth much.

Bulk Ferment:
For me, 1.25x volume is done. Don't let it proof too long. You're going to need to handle the dough a lot to form baguettes and too proofed dough won't have the strength to give you oven spring.

Shaping:
Look up baguette shaping videos or read my last post. The rough shaping doesn't matter a lot and even the final shaping doesn't really matter. What matters is creating a tight exterior when you finish. Pushing from the bottom with the heels of your palms up the work surface, then using your pinky fingers with palm up from the top, pushing towards the bottom helps me develop this tension. However you do it, make sure the tension is developed. Add as much flour as you need during the very last shaping because at that point, you won't be working the flour into the inside of the dough.

Final Proof:
I proof my baguettes on parchment paper on a hotel pan. I make 4 usually, so I get 2 sheets of parchment paper to the length of the hotel pan, cut them in half, then fold each of the 4 pieces in half lengthwise so you have a center line. Flour the paper, put the baguettes on the paper seem side down. Cover with a cloth. Final proof usually takes 1-2 hours for me.

Bake:
Pre-heat your oven and baking vessel to 550. When the oven reaches temperature for at least 20 minutes, you're good to go. You should wait a good amount of time to get the best oven spring. Load your baguettes, pour about 1/4-1/2 cup boiling water into the baking vessel, slam the lid shut and load into the oven. 20 minutes cover on, 20 minutes cover off. You might need extra time outside the baking vessel to crisp the bottom. Wait at 0.5-1 hour before eating.

Its useful to make cuts with your razor blade as close to parallel to the earth as you can. This gives the best ears in my experience. Dusting them with some flour before cutting can help prevent sticking, especially on the areas where you start the cut. Refrigerating them helps even more, but I rarely have space these days for a hotel pan in the fridge.

And thats it! If you have a baking vessel. If you don't your bread will come out limp, pale, and with barely any openings.

Baking Vessel:
All of the magic is in the baking vessel.
Baguettes require an extremely humid and hot environment in the first 5 minutes. A gas oven is hot but not humid.

Things that don't work:

1. My first attempt were various forms of hotel pans with a lid. A full size, 4 inch tall hotel pan with aluminum foil does ok. However, you can't get enough steam inside from the bread alone.
2. So, the natural attempt is to mist the bread before it goes in. That doesn't work. I don't know why but I suspect the cold water prevents the dough from rising when there's no hot convection currents.
3. The next natural attempt is to add a pizza stone to the bottom of the hotel pan and add some boiling water. A real lid (not foil) helps you trap the steam. This also doesn't work. The boiling water cools the pizza stones too much for oven spring. You can try putting a large metal block (pizza steel) under the hotel pan. This also doesn't work. There's just not enough thermal mass close to the baguette.
4. If water is too much thermal load, the next natural thing is to add wet towels with the baguettes. This doesn't work. Adding towels sitting in boiling water, rung out of most of their water also doesn't work.

What does work:
Here is what works for me:

1. Full size hotel pan, 6" tall
   https://www.webstaurantstore.com/vo...-6-deep-full-size-transport-pan/92230065.html
2. Oven safe hotel pan lid
   https://www.webstaurantstore.com/vo...-full-size-cook-chill-pan-cover/92277450.htmlI highly recommend this vollrath system. The chili pan cover is less deep than other lids so it doesn't jam under intense heat and weird steam conditions.
3. Place a layer of broken pizza stones down. Try and cover the bottom as well as you can in a single layer
4. Add whole, nice thick pizza stone ontop. I use 2 9x9x1inch stones from California Pizza Stones. Industrial Square Pizza and Baking Stones
5. Place some pizza stone fragments near one corner to help direcct the water away from the baguettes.

What we've created is basically an oven-within-an-oven. You preheat this giant mass of metal and stone, put your baguettes into it, and add boiling water. There's other solutions that involve steam machines or other tricks. However, this method is basically fool proof. It just requires the strength to lift the giant contraption (its like 40 lbs?) and an oven that fits the hotel pan.

 

[rmrf]

I've now been making this style of bread for 3 years, with 2 different ovens and many different sets of flour. Here is what matters in my opinion, in order from most to least significant:

1. Baking Vessel: Without enough steam, the baguettes never form any form of ear or open up for me.
2. Hydration + Bassinage: Without enough hydration, the baguettes just don't taste right to me. Bassinage helps you fine tune the water and work more water into the dough. It also helps you really develop that gluten
3. Underproofing the bulk ferment: If you wait to 1.5-2x volume, there won't be enough strength after the aggresive shaping
4. Making a tight skin on the baguettes: All that matters when shaping seems to be if you can make a tight skin on the baguette. The pre-shaping should just be whatever you want to do to make that step easier for yourself.
5. Active starter: 2 feedings in 24 hours does it for me, just 1 sometimes work but its a risk.
6. High Gluten flour: Its very hard with only AP + normal whole wheat flour. You need enough gluten to shape, but if you don't want to use all high gluten flours, you don't need to. You can do it with a low-ish gluten whole wheat (12%) and high gluten white (15%). If you have both high gluten, you can add more rye for more complex flavor. I use Bolles, a red spring whole wheat, KA Sir Lancelot, and Serafino rye in this recipe. With a weaker flour blend, I just reduce the water.

To end, here are some safety tips:

1. Hot steam is hot. Stand back and be careful when pouring in the boiling water.
2. Hot metal is hot. Wear heat proof gloves, as long as you can find. Its very useful when pulling the box out of the oven and pulling the baguettes out of the box
3. Use something with low thermal mass and low thermal conductivity between your countertop and the hot metal box when you're loading the baguettes. You really don't want the box to buckle if it changes in temperature.
4. Don't use a lid that seals well at room temperature. It will get jammed into the hotel pan and unjamming is a pain.

 

[sumis]

brilliant stuff. thanks.

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