Baguette

I wrote so much about how great the baguette recipe is that I decided to make it. Two are out of the oven, and one is still in.

They look pretty good. I use a bread pan, that only has room for two - the three loaf pan doesn't fit in my tiny oven.

Can't wait to taste them.

I tried to get some additional steam in the oven by putting a cookie sheet on the lower rack and pouring 2/3 of a cup of water into it after I put the loaves in. I think this adds to the baking time. The loaves came out lighter than I remember and I had to leave them in another 5 minutes or so to brown the crust.

Update:

Well done, once again. Tastes great. Because the crust to crumb ratio of a baguette is higher than a boule you get some crust in every bite, which adds to the flavor. Saltier and sour-er than the nk bread.

Appearance-wise, probably should have cut the loaves lengthwise more than I did.

Crumb was light and fluffy, with small holes. Not like Amy's version, which had big holes and a creamy crumb that was more like the crumb in the nk bread. My baguette crumb was kind of white-bready. But still good - soft, and tear-y.

The experience of making baguettes is totally different from the nk bread. The nk is a marvel of minimalism. The baguette takes more effort and equipment. You have to fold the dough during its rise, cut it, shape it, prepare a couche (I did one out of parchment paper that worked great), pour water into the oven. And yet, the bread is done a lot quicker than with the nk. I let the poolish proof for 12 hours overnight, then added the rest of the flour and started the process in the morning. The poolish was done at 6:30am and the bread was out of the oven by 10:45am. It was edible by 11:15am.

If I had made a nk bread and put it up at 6:30pm on day 1, it would have been out of the oven at 5:30pm the next day, and not edible until 8pm at the earliest.

That's quite a difference - more effort, but the bread is done nearly 9 hours sooner. And frankly, it tastes better.