So then, would my baguettes ever stand up to a grueling inspection of the kind Professor Kaplan would dish out? Certainly not. They aren’t French baguettes. They’re Kentucky baguettes. They were baked in a brick oven, but that’s a far cry from a steam-injected deck oven, the device that is primarily responsible for creating the […]
READ ONAs I mentioned earlier, a great baguette, at least for the home baker, is a journey and not a destination. Still, I’ll have my journey slathered with plenty of raspberry jam, thank you very much. Am I still finding my way toward my perfect baguette? Most certainly, but the following method yields a baguette that […]
READ ONYes, I know what I’ve been saying about baguettes, that they’re the ultimate “fast” bread, that bakeries whip them out in as little as four hours. The thing is, that’s only true if you’ve got your preferments on-hand and ready to go (like full-time bakeries do). Home bakers need to mix up their preferments a […]
READ ONAll those Americans who are dismayed at French disdain for American food will be gratified to learn that the fiercest critic of the modern French baguette is, in fact, an American — a Brooklynite, currently a European history professor at Cornell, a fellow by the name of Stephen Kaplan. Kaplan is on record as having […]
READ ONThat’s the obvious question, isn’t it? And indeed one that several of you have asked. Most breads, after all, call for only one kind of sponge or starter. So what gives adding two of them? The answer is that different types of microbes do better in different environments. Some prefer it very wet (poolish) some […]
READ ONWell, it’s not really a bait and switch, but truth be told, I don’t use old dough and poolish preferments in my baguettes. I use old dough and sourdough starter. However I wanted to put up old dough and poolish instructions because I didn’t want to punish any aspiring baguette makers by forcing them to […]
READ ONA very good question was “tweeted” in to me late last week by, well…I don’t know his (or her) name. But it was a darned good question. It went like this: You are deep into the historical aspect of baking. In the time before artificial refrigeration, how were preferments managed? I knew I’d like this […]
READ ONThis makes enough for my baguette recipe, but of course it can be increased if need be for some other application. The amount of yeast employed in a poolish is tiny relative to the flour and water. So tiny, in fact, that for a poolish sponge this small, we’ll need to dissolve some instant yeast […]
READ ON…on what you can do with all those Girl Scout Cookies you bought.
READ ONPâte fermenté isn’t the be-all and end-all of sponges, you know. The poolish occupies its own special place in the preferment firmament, right next to the Italian biga (but we’ll talk more about that some other time). You’ll recall in my opening remarks about baguettes that, in addition to various technologies like the deck oven, […]
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