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Poppyseed Crusted Yorkville Sourdough Baguettes
Many bakers are scared of making baguettes. Just four months ago, I didn’t think I could bake a baguette. Despite baking sourdough bread for about a year, I didn’t feel I had the skills to bake a baguette, let alone a great baguette. Well, let me tell you something: it isn’t all that crazy-hard after all. I’ve done a lot of research; I’ve read, discussed with other bakers, watched videos, and engaged in the repetition and practice of baking many baguettes. The techniques I’m sharing here are the culmination of those efforts, though I’ll always be searching for more ways to improve. The recipe here is quite possibly my favorite; thus I’ve named these baguettes after my neighborhood, Yorkville.
Gluten Development
Baguettes are fairly simple in terms of building the dough. In my experience developing gluten too much is detrimental to shaping the baguette and to the final crumb. So, in building the structure during bulk fermentation, baguettes are the least work of any sourdough bread I’ve made. There are no French folds, stand mixer, and laminations required; just a simple mix with some Rubaud kneading and then coil folds, what could be simpler than that?
Video of Rubaud Mixing/Kneading
Video of Coil Folding
Flour Type
It’s helpful to have a very extensible dough when shaping baguettes, and I’ve found that a lower protein flour is ideal for this. I loved the baguettes I ate when I was in Paris many years ago, and I’ve wanted to re-create them. To me this means I use little or no whole grain flour. So my favorite flour has become a 10% protein T55 flour from Quebec. If you’re not living in Canada, you probably can’t get this exact flour, but if you have a 10-11% protein white flour where you live, it should work very well, unbleached of course. [Ed note: Breadtopia’s All Purpose Flour should work perfectly]
Shaping
The most difficult part of making baguettes is figuring out what works best for your dough with pre-shaping, final shaping, and oven setup. I’ve made videos that show some of my techniques in these areas. You may want to watch them before you proceed with the rest of this article. There are many ways to do pre-shaping and final shaping, and I’m certainly not saying my processes are the best. As with anything in baking, there are as many methods as there are bakers. I do what I’ve found most successful for me and hopefully you’ll find the demonstrations and instructions helpful.
Video of Pre-Shaping
Video of Shaping and Applying Poppyseeds
Video of Scoring
Baking Surface
Getting your oven set up will take a bit of experimenting. I think a baking stone may be ideal for baguettes because of how much heat it retains and how long it retains that heat. I don’t own a baking stone but I have a baking steel I purchased to ensure my pie crusts always baked with a browned base. Although steel gets really hot, it also transfers that heat very quickly to the dough and can scorch the bottom crust of breads. To avoid the scorching, I came up with a barrier that works for my oven. I have a broiling rack, the kind that seems to come with all ovens in North America, and I stuff that broiling rack with crumpled aluminum foil. This shields the baking steel and has eliminated the scorching I initially had on my baguettes. It works so well that I now bake my hearth loaves in my Dutch oven on that same setup of baking steel on the stuffed broiling rack.
Under my baking steel, I put a broiling pan filled with crumpled aluminum foil. This prevents the bottoms of the baguettes from scorching.
The baking steel goes directly over the broiling pan.
Steam and Oven Setup
Another challenge in baguette making is how to steam your oven. Before baking baguettes I never had to deal with this because I baked my bâtards in my Dutch oven. It took me some time to figure out how to get adequate steam for a good oven spring and crust. My steam setup has two components: one to create steam throughout the initial bake and another for a big blast of steam when the baguettes go into the oven.
To pre-steam and continue to steam throughout the initial part of the bake, I use what is known in some quarters as a Sylvia towel. This is simply an old terry cloth hand towel, rolled and placed in an old metal loaf pan. This gets filled with boiling water and placed in the oven about 30 minutes before you load the dough in the oven. The idea here is that if you pre-steam your oven, then the air won’t be super dry and will reach a good humidity level faster once you load your dough. Also, because the water in this towel-loaded loaf pan gradually boils off, you won’t run out of steam before the first part of the bake is over.
A cast iron skillet is my other steaming tool. I put it in the oven when I turn it on for pre-heating. Once the dough is loaded, I pour a cup of boiling water into the skillet. This gives a good blast of steam to get the humidity back up after it drops when I open the door to load the dough.
I place the baking steel on broiling rack on the lowest shelf in my oven. Both the Sylvia towel in the loaf pan and the cast iron skillet are placed two racks above the steel, giving everything just enough clearance.
I use this setup because I didn’t want to buy anything special just for steaming. You may already have lava rocks or other steam setups which will also work well for baking baguettes. Your best bet is to experiment a bit with your own steam creation setup. It may take you a few bakes to get it right, but you do you and figure out what works for your oven.
Video of Loading Baguettes into the Oven
I hope you give making baguettes a try; they aren’t as difficult as they seem. With some perseverance, you’ll be making impressive baguettes and your friends will be asking for them. You can see more of my baking videos on my YouTube Channel Bread MD and follow me on Instagram @bread_md.
Poppyseed Crusted Yorkville Sourdough Baguettes
These sourdough baguettes have a tender crumb and the poppyseed crust is crisp and shatters when you bite into it. The detailed instructions and videos will guide you through the baguette making process from beginning to end: three flavorful gorgeous baguettes.
Ingredients
Levain Build
Dough for 3x300 g baguettes (approximate weight)
Instructions
Shopping List
Poppyseed Crusted Yorkville Sourdough Baguettes