Artisan Bread Course Day 2

Day two was baguette day! We took the poolish from yesterday and added flour, salt, and yeast, followed by mixing, kneading and preshaping the dough. Pre-shaping is basically taking the kneaded dough and making it into a log shape or small round, as you can see at the picture to the left.

While we let the baguette dough proof (sit around and feast on sugars in the dough to produce CO2), we started our croissants by creating a dough of approximately the texture of cookie dough and pounding out our butter into a quarter-inch thick square. I think I may have gotten some of the paper wrapper from the butter in there, but I don't think it will hurt the final product. The important thing is to have a standard thickness, and a reasonably standard rectangle, which involves cutting off the edges and laying them on top to re-roll into the square. Once we finished these two pieces, they went into the fridge until tomorrow.

Back with the baguettes, we shaped the dough, completed four folds and then put them in a linen couche (cloth) for a final proof, as you can see at right. Then it was off to look at the huge oven the education center has -- steam injection, inward-swinging doors, and fed by what I can only describe as a surgical gurney.

The oven is heated to about what you would use at home -- 450-475 degrees. Then we used our lame to slash the bread. The lame is basically a straight-edge razor that is either curved or straight. I hadn't realized that you use the two types for different breads. The curved razor is for slashing baguettes and batards to produce an "ear", which is a nice lip of crust that opens up as it bakes. The straight lame is for boules (round loaves) and similar breads to create a more even opening on top of the bread.
You can see in the picture at the right a couple of examples of slashed dough before going into the oven. The slashes need to be pretty deep (perhaps 3/4 of an inch) to really open up, otherwise there's also no ear.
The results of my bread, which is in the picture below, was okay, but I need more practice. My baguette is the lighter-colored one, which probably resulted from being in part of the oven that had less steam injection.