On Wed, 08 Oct 2003 18:17:58 GMT, "RLK"
wrote:

Can anyone recommend a technique for chewy french baguette.

The basic baguette recipe on the King Arthur
Flour site is a good one to start with. Above all, practice alot.

I have tried the KA recipe on their online cooking school (not the one
in their recipe section) and it is as close as I can get to achieving
what I want. The dough almost feels like putty at the end of kneading.

I use the KA bread flour which is higher in gluten than regular flour
(14%). I then add 1 TBS of wheat gluten for each 2 cups of flour which
raises the gluten to the 17% level KA used to sell as "high gluten"
flour.

I have found that the KA recipe is best made in 150% size. That way
you do not have to let the final loaves rise too much to get a decent
size loaf on your bagette pan. I am looking for a final product with
the density of a bagel, and the final rise of the KA recipe causes the
bread to be too small for my baguette pan. I am using the Chicago
Metallic 3 loaf perforated baguette pan.

For those readers not familiar with that particular recipe, it is at

http://ww2.kingarthurflour.com/cgibi...49560659978068

on their cooking school page. This recipe is different from the one
listed in their recipes, and it is presented in great detail. It
appears quite unorthodox in the way the dough is formed. First they
have you mix the dough for 30 seconds in a bread machine and then let
it sit for 20 mintues. Then it is kneaded for 7 minutes in the machine
and allowed to rise for 2 hours with a punch down after 1 hour. Then
it is formed into logs and allowed to rest for 20 minutes, then formed
into baguettes and allowed to rest for 20-30 minutes.

If I follow that recipe exactly the amount of dough is insufficient to
make the 3 baguettes they claim it will make. It will only make 2
baguettes for my baguette pan, so I have to increase the ingredients
50% to make enough for 3 baguettes. Otherwise I have to let the dough
rise for 60 minutes on the pans and that makes the final product less
dense, which I do not care for in this recipe.

If you look at Samartha's sourdough site (I don't have his URL but search
the r.f.s. archives), he's got plenty of image examples of that type of lean
bread.

Thanks for the reference, but my objective is not to make a better
sourdough (the KA recipe for poolish is quite adequate), but to make a
more elastic, higher density baguette. I figured that by asking the
sourdough experts here they might be able to help.