With a Sponge and a Crusty Baguette

I made baguettes.  Sort of.  My oven is too small to make a loaf of bread that could rightfully be called a baguette, so I guess these technically fall under the definition of a batarde.  Aside from being the French for bastard, a batarde is also a stubbier version of a baguette.

Here's the deal, bread like this is incredibly simple.  Four ingredients: flour, water, yeast, salt.  I used 20% whole wheat flour for some extra flavor, although that did sacrifice the nice big crumb texture that baguette should have.  Also, the water was 67% of the total weight of the flour.  (This means my dough was at 67% hydration, which is a bready term that you don't really need to care about.  Hydration levels just help to illustrate how different breads happen is all.)

So the bit about the sponge.  Well, a sponge is a term people use to describe a preferment.  This means a portion of the dough that is fermented before the rest of the dough (fermentation is the yeasty bit.  Some people say the bread is rising; other, more accurate, people say that it is undergoing fermentation).  The spongey bit shown here is known as a poolish, so called because it's supposed to be a method from Poland.  It involves taking a portion of your flour, around 30% or so, mixing it with an equal portion of water and a bit of yeast, and letting it sit till it gets light and bubbly.  This first pic is right after mixing the sponge.

Preferments are good because they help to develop extra flavor.  When water and flour are combined, the water activates an amylase enzyme in the flour that breaks the starches down into simple sugars.  This is called autolysis, or self-digestion.  The longer you let this happen, the more complex your flavor will be. Mix it up and ignore it for a while.  Go for a walk where it's quiet and dry; talk about precious things.


Preferments also develop some extra yeasty goodness that wouldn't happen in a quicker method.  Once the yeast is in there, you can't really let the thing sit around forever, so you do have to keep an eye on the optimal timing of the thing, which is based on how much yeast you put in to begin with.  I used enough yeast to have my poolish ready in two hours.  (For the sake of comparison, the pizza dough recipe of which I am rather fond uses a sixteen hour poolish.  Sixteen!)  But here's how it looks after two hours.

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Then you just mix the poolish in with the rest of the flour and water, plus a bit of salt for flavor and yesty crowd control.  Mix, knead, ferment, punch, scale, round, bench, (you don't need to know about all these words, I'm just making them up), shape, proof, and here we are:

Whoops, forgot to cut the slashes in it to make it look official:

That's better.

Bake them in a freakin' hot oven (seriously, 450f or more.  But my lame oven only got to about 375f after 30 minutes of preheating!  And it was set at 500f!  Curious to know if your oven is lying?  Buy an oven thermometer.)  Also, you need to get steam in your oven.  Just put a pan underneath your preheated baking stone (you already have one, correct?).  Pour some hot water in the pan just after you toss the bread onto the stone.

The steam delays the formation of the exterior crust, which gives extra volume to the loaves.  Essentially, the heat makes them blow up as much as possible before the crust hardens and prevents further expansion.  Also, steam causes partial starch gelatinization on the surface of the bread, which gives the crispy baguette crust we all know and love (though it kills my jaw.  Any other TMJ friends out there?)

Here is the bread.  If my oven had been hot enough, those slashes would have blown open into ear-like flaps called grigne.  Ah well.

Smallish holes, due to the extra weight and water absorption of the whole wheat flour.  Still awesome with oil and vinegar, roasted garlic, etc etc.

And the best thing about baguettes?  They have this crackly sound right when you take them out of the oven.  Some people say the baguette is singing, but that's nothing; you should hear them play piano.