Mastering Baguette
Food provokes lively, warm, jovial feelings for me; this is especially true during the holidays. Baked goods still sparks my olfactory sense and makes me reminisce of Christmas. When I recall these memories I am at my grandmother’s house as a young child. It starts when the oven door opens, vapors of brown sugar waft through the kitchen and the caramelized, buttery aroma with lingering scents of cinnamon. For me, these memories fill me with joy and always evoke a grin. This feeling are even stronger when I recall, in particular, baguettes. My interest in bread became irrepressible at the beginning of my cooking career, and developed into a obsessive urge to create perfection the more I focused on it.
I started, as many…
The recipe consisted of few ingredients and it was simple to develop their flavor profile, but to create a flawless finished product was challenging. The kitchen added difficultly because was not set up for a baker, this was undeniably a savory chef’s kitchen. Unfortunately, they didn’t have the all the equipment necessary for baking on such a large scale, so I had to improvise several techniques.
My baguette dough was consistently producing a great flavor profile and gluten development, but there were three things I needed to perfect, and first was my shaping. My shaping wasn’t terrible, but it still needed some improving. So, I did some homework and watched videos of the masters at King Arthur Flour and read through Tartine several times to learn their baguette shaping techniques. The more I practiced the better I got.
Scoring was another problem, the baguettes kept bursting at the seams because we were using a knife to make cuts in the loaves. Sadly, this resulted in torn or unopened cuts that were not angled properly and looked sloppy. I knew the only way to fix it was to get a lame, which is a small blade similar to a razor that is curved and situated on a handle to create the proper cut. After some time, we finally gained this essential tool and it made a drastic change in their…
