Baguettes 2

We only had one baguette left (half of one actually after breakfast) so I decided to make them again today. As usual I screwed something up, or my scale is going wacky. The poolish looked fine, and I measured the remaining ingredients carefully. But I took a look during the kneading period and noticed the dough was way, way too wet. It looked like soup.

I added a few spoonfuls of flour until it started to look like yesterday's dough. It wound up wetter than yesterday, and I thought about tossing it, but decided to just see how it would go.

After an hour I'm supposed to turn it, but it was so wet that all I could do was make a mess. After the second hour it had a little more body, but not much. I added some more flour on the board while I cut into 3 pieces it and shaped the baguettes. With a little more flour I was able to shape them, but the dough was not as pliable as yesterday and still kind of sticky.

None of the loaves rose as much as yesterday in my makeshift couche, but I baked them anyway.

I tried a different technique. Rather than use a cookie tray filled with water to add steam, I just poured water over the loaves in the french bread pan. The pan is perforated so that extra water ran off before I put it in the oven. This time I sliced the dough more parallel than yesterday.

The result was actually pretty good. The crumb, if anything was better than yesterday, although the loaves were pretty thin. The crust was about the same as yesterday, so my guess was right - the cookie sheet with water does nothing.

Overall a success. I managed to repair whatever was wrong with the dough preparation and the loaves came out just fine. I finished one, and the other two are in the freezer.

We went to dinner last night to an italian restaurant. A family place, not fancy. They serve bread on the table and my wife remarked it wasn't as good as mine! I felt a surge of pride until I tasted the bread. Wonder bread is better. The restaurant bread was stale, hard and tasteless. So much for pride. My bread is better than bread that was so bad it was basically bird food. Hurray!