My grandfather was a diversified farmer with a thousand acres of wheat. All summer long, he had a large farm crew, and he made sure they were well fed. Every meal had "bread" in some form on the table. My mother grew up baking yeast bread 2 or 3 times a week. She made very good bread, biscuits, and soda bread. And, she could bake in a wood fired oven, an oil fired oven, a gas oven or an electric oven. She never made a baguette in her life.
I was learning to bake baguettes about the time Julia Child was writing her book on French cooking with its recipe for baguettes. In those days, my parents had a huge gas oven, and Julia's recipe worked just fine. Since then, everybody has copied it, without really thinking about it. As a reminder, Julia's baguette recipe involved high oven heat (450F or 475F) and pouring boiling water (or putting ice) into a hot skillet to generate steam at the start of the bake. This approach still echos through most of the baguette recipes that I see written by, or for "foodies".
However, these days, many pretentious foodies have moved to electric ovens. We have. Along the way we even tried one of those pretentious steam injection ovens. (It failed within weeks.) Now, we have a good, but simple electric oven. It works very well. It bakes baguettes, "SF Sourdough", and etc. as good as any I have had in Paris, New York, Dijon, Berkeley, or SF.
The approach is to use the fact that these ovens do not vent, and thereby trap the steam produced by the water in the bread dough. It is necessary to bake batches that are large enough to generate enough steam. For our oven that means baking between 1 and 3 pounds of dough at a time. It also means opening the oven door (or changing the oven setting) halfway through the bake.
I bake breads at between 350F and 425F depending on the desired style and the form factor of the loaf(s).
For most hearth breads, I start by weighing ~370 grams of water and 500 grams of flour. If I want a very bland, light, crisp, baguettes, I use a high-protein professional baker's flour. If I want a crustier bread I use a lower protein flour, such as all purpose.
If I want the bland, crisp baguettes that one finds at many high-end restaurants, I use a straight yeast process, using commercial yeast (10 gram for 500 grams flour). If I want more flavor, I use a pre-ferment process where I add a small amount of yeast (0.5 gm) to the water, then stir in about half of the flour, let the pre-ferment sit on the kitchen counter for between 4 and 6 hours. If I want more flavor I let the pre-ferment sit on the counter for a a couple of hours , then it sits in the refrigerator for 12 hours or so. When the pre-ferment is ready, I add the rest of the flour, stir to mix, let it sit for 20 minutes, knead, and proof, shape, final rise, and bake. The straight yeast method needs a good knead, but the longer the pre-ferment, the less kneading is necessary. Long pre-ferments need little more than a couple of punch-downs and careful loaf shaping. In any case, I mix in 10 grams of salt at the end of the kneading.
The whole process takes no more than 15 minutes (spread over between 4 hours and 16 hours.) It is hard to get to the bakery, buy bread, and get back in only 15 minutes. Most of my bread making chores happen when I am in the kitchen anyway.
The ratio of flour to water above is a high hydration dough, and for low protein flours, some additional flour may be required to shape the loaves, or to produce the finer crumb desired for sandwich breads. Nevertheless, working with baker's flour, it is possible to make up 6 nice 3" wide by 15" long baguettes, and have a few grams of flour left over. High hydration doughs give more volume of bread for the weight of flour.
And, I have moved away from pizza stones and such. Mostly, I just arrange on cookie sheets and quickly slip them into the oven.
Long pre-ferments with some whole wheat and/rye flour and slightly lower hydration ratios (more flour) produce doughs that work well for "pain de campagne". With the large loaves doing well with lower bake temperatures in the range of 350F to 375F.
The whole point is that modern high efficiency electric ovens allow producing great hearth style breads simply by taking advantage of the steam that is retained in such ovens.
I was learning to bake baguettes about the time Julia Child was writing her book on French cooking with its recipe for baguettes. In those days, my parents had a huge gas oven, and Julia's recipe worked just fine. Since then, everybody has copied it, without really thinking about it. As a reminder, Julia's baguette recipe involved high oven heat (450F or 475F) and pouring boiling water (or putting ice) into a hot skillet to generate steam at the start of the bake. This approach still echos through most of the baguette recipes that I see written by, or for "foodies".
However, these days, many pretentious foodies have moved to electric ovens. We have. Along the way we even tried one of those pretentious steam injection ovens. (It failed within weeks.) Now, we have a good, but simple electric oven. It works very well. It bakes baguettes, "SF Sourdough", and etc. as good as any I have had in Paris, New York, Dijon, Berkeley, or SF.
The approach is to use the fact that these ovens do not vent, and thereby trap the steam produced by the water in the bread dough. It is necessary to bake batches that are large enough to generate enough steam. For our oven that means baking between 1 and 3 pounds of dough at a time. It also means opening the oven door (or changing the oven setting) halfway through the bake.
I bake breads at between 350F and 425F depending on the desired style and the form factor of the loaf(s).
For most hearth breads, I start by weighing ~370 grams of water and 500 grams of flour. If I want a very bland, light, crisp, baguettes, I use a high-protein professional baker's flour. If I want a crustier bread I use a lower protein flour, such as all purpose.
If I want the bland, crisp baguettes that one finds at many high-end restaurants, I use a straight yeast process, using commercial yeast (10 gram for 500 grams flour). If I want more flavor, I use a pre-ferment process where I add a small amount of yeast (0.5 gm) to the water, then stir in about half of the flour, let the pre-ferment sit on the kitchen counter for between 4 and 6 hours. If I want more flavor I let the pre-ferment sit on the counter for a a couple of hours , then it sits in the refrigerator for 12 hours or so. When the pre-ferment is ready, I add the rest of the flour, stir to mix, let it sit for 20 minutes, knead, and proof, shape, final rise, and bake. The straight yeast method needs a good knead, but the longer the pre-ferment, the less kneading is necessary. Long pre-ferments need little more than a couple of punch-downs and careful loaf shaping. In any case, I mix in 10 grams of salt at the end of the kneading.
The whole process takes no more than 15 minutes (spread over between 4 hours and 16 hours.) It is hard to get to the bakery, buy bread, and get back in only 15 minutes. Most of my bread making chores happen when I am in the kitchen anyway.
The ratio of flour to water above is a high hydration dough, and for low protein flours, some additional flour may be required to shape the loaves, or to produce the finer crumb desired for sandwich breads. Nevertheless, working with baker's flour, it is possible to make up 6 nice 3" wide by 15" long baguettes, and have a few grams of flour left over. High hydration doughs give more volume of bread for the weight of flour.
And, I have moved away from pizza stones and such. Mostly, I just arrange on cookie sheets and quickly slip them into the oven.
Long pre-ferments with some whole wheat and/rye flour and slightly lower hydration ratios (more flour) produce doughs that work well for "pain de campagne". With the large loaves doing well with lower bake temperatures in the range of 350F to 375F.
The whole point is that modern high efficiency electric ovens allow producing great hearth style breads simply by taking advantage of the steam that is retained in such ovens.
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