Baking A Sweet Life

It’s day two at SFBI and things are going very well! Today we had about an hour’s worth of lecture and spent the majority day in the kitchen baking up 15 baguettes per person. That’s a lot of white flour! The point of today was to really learn about the intricacies of the three different mixing methods: Short Mix, Improved Mix, and the Intensive Mix. This is a long post with lots of pictures, so I apologize if you get tired reading this! I’ve posted this for my own reference later on, as well as to share with all of you!

With the Short Mix, you mix all the ingredients (in this case just flour, water, salt and yeast) at speed 1 for 5 minutes just to hydrate the dough. After that, you transfer the dough to a lightly greased bowl, folding it at that time, and then again every 45 minutes for 2-3 hours, until you get the windowpane that you desire. Today we ended up giving the dough a 3rd fold. Once you have the level of gluten development that you desire, you pre-shape the dough. We each did 5 pieces at 35o g each. We let the pieces of dough bench proof for about 45 minutes after being pre-shaped, and then shaped them into baguettes. They did a fermentation for about 45 minutes, and then were ready to bake at 450 F for 20 minutes.

With the Improved Mix, you mix all the ingredients (same as before) at speed 1 for 5 minutes to hydrate the dough, then speed 2 for about 3 minutes to start the gluten development. There is a decent windowpane, (which will fully develop as it ferments). After that you transfer the dough to a lightly greased bowl, folding it to create a smooth skin on top, and letting it ferment for about 1.5 hours without intermediate folds. You then divide the dough into 5 pieces again, each 350 g, and bench proof for about 20 minutes after pre-shaping. Then you shape them into baguettes, and in about an hour, they were off into the oven!

With the Intensive Mix, you again mix all of the same ingredients for 5 minutes on speed 1 to hydrate, then you bump it up to speed 2 for about 5-6 minutes to fully develop the gluten. We had a nice windowpane at the end of this time. We then moved it to a lightly greased container, and merely turned it over into a pillow shape so that it could bulk ferment for about 20 minutes, at which time we pre-shaped. It bench proofed for only 20 minutes before shaping, and then proofed for about 80 minutes before marching into the oven.

Here’s an erase board that had our day’s schedule on it, including dough temps that were measured just after the dough had come out of the mixer:

The large scale equipment that they have is so fun to use – its just super hard to get the dough out because it weighs about 60 pounds!!!!

Here’s our flour, measured out, before going into the mixer. This is 14.5 kg!!!

Here’s the dough in the mixer…

Here’s the dough after the bulk fermentation, being portioned out:

Here’s one of my classmates pre-shaping:

I’m forming the baguette after the bench proof. The technique has you fold the top of the dough over your left thumb, and smoothing it out with the palm of your right hand. This forms a seam. The next step is actually rolling it out.

Rolling out the pre-shaped dough into baguettes, then moving them to the couche for their final proof:

Into the proofing rack they go!

Here’s the edges – not quite perfect, but okay for my 2nd batch ever!

We took a break to make pizza dough that we’ll retard for two days in the fridge, and use on Thursday:

The pizza dough up close – I wasn’t sure the mixer could handle this huge batch, but it did fine!

Now back to the baguettes… Here’s a classmate moving her baguettes from the couche to the oven conveyor belt:

And now my classmate is scoring his bread:

Making sure all dough is straight on the belt:

Chef Steven showing us how to properly score:

Further instruction on scoring:

Into the oven they go!

They are now all in the oven, and the conveyor is on its way out.

Chef Steven is showing us how to make mini epis!

Finishing the epi:

My epi is the one above the bottom one:

Finally a break for lunch! Its 1:30 and we’re starved!

 

My baguettes are out of the oven!

 

My other baguettes are on the cooling rack:

And now for discussion about the different mixing styles:

Above, there are two loaves that represent each of the three mixing styles. On the far right are the two Short Mixed baguettes, in the middle are the two Improved Mixed baguettes, and on the left are the two Intensive Mixed baguettes. The characteristics for each mixing style are:

• Short Mix – More dense loaf, more flavor and more aroma. More open crumb because of being at wetter dough – 70% hydration was used for these. These don’t puff up as much as the other two types. Has a lot of moisture in the taste – leaves you feeling “refreshed”. The shelf life on this would be about 8-12 hours.
• Intensive Mix – Most fluff of all the styles. Very little flavor compared with the short mix. Very little aroma as well. The crumb is very tight – more appropriate for sandwich bread. This was a stiffer dough – we used a 65% hydration. After eating a slice of this, you actually feel thirsty. Its very dry. The shelf life on this would be about 2-3 hours.
• Improved Mix – Best of both worlds. Good fluff with great flavor and aroma than the Intensive, but not quite as much as the Short. Has a decent amount of moisture – we used a 67% hydration. Crumb was a nice combination of open and tight. Shelf life would be about 5-8 hours. Also feel refreshed after eating a slice of this.

Below is a picture showing the crumb of each of the three, again with Intensive on the left, Improved in the middle, and Short on the right. You can see that the short has the most open crumb, while the Intensive has the tightest crumb of the three. It can’t be seen in this photo, but the color of the crumb is more cream in the Short (right) mix than the Improved and the Intensive. This is because it was the least oxidized from spending the least amount of time being whipped with air in mixer.

Slice of the Improved Mixed dough after biting into it :)

We had taken a moment to discuss the difference between browning due to the Maillard reaction, which is not to be mistaken for being burned. Chef Steven brought in a truly charred baguette to show us what actual carbon looked like when a baguette had been forgotten!

Here are my three example loaves – the top one is the Intensive, middle is the Improved, and bottom is the Short. These don’t really give justice to the difference that the entire batch showed in size/spring.

Because of the high gluten development in the Intensive Mix, they are able to form better “ears” after being scored. Yum!!

Now to critique some of my loaves – this one split open at the seam. It was a combination of not sealing the seam tight enough, but mostly because the seam had ended up face-up when baking, instead of being on the bottom as it should be.

This one showed a score that wasn’t done deep enough. As you can see, it barely pierced the skin, and therefore opened up very little. The score should be about 1/4″ deep, and this one was MAYBE an 1/8″.

Here they are, all bunched together ready to be taken home! You can see the one in the very middle was slashed more on the horizon, rather than the vertical axis, and that didn’t allow it to open up as nicely as it could’ve. No real “ears” there.

Nice picture showing all of the baguettes, and two epis. I’m in love with the epi. The crust to crumb ratio is very high – perfect, IMO.

 

Today was really a great day – I feel as though I’ve walked away with so much more information than what I came in with. I’ve also realized that I’ve been primarily using the Intensive mixing method thus far, and probably overworking the gluten in my bread each time. I really loved seeing how much merely folding bread periodically can really develop gluten to a level comparable to 10 minutes of mixing. And you’re not oxidizing the dough nearly as much, and really allowing a lot of flavor and acid to build up, ultimately producing a great tasting loaf!

 

Now onto day three!