Baguette Formula

"A beautiful baguette is truly a baker's masterpiece and represents the art in artisan baking.  The deep, golden crust creates a miniature mountain landscape, complete with peaks and ravines.  Inside, the creamy, open crumb reveals little cups just the right size for holding butter or jam.  It is, quite simply, the perfect loaf of bread.” - Ciril Hitz, Baking Artisan Bread

Traditional Baguette
Team USA 2008 Formulas – contributed by Solveig Tofte

This is a fairly classic American baguette – 40% of the flour goes into a poolish and just 3% of the flour is used in a liquid levain. The majority of the flavor comes from the poolish, and the small percentage of levain brings a slightly more complex flavor from the wheat. The levain also adds some strength and improves definition on the scores.

The formula uses diastatic malted barley flour to balance the high level of fermentation in the formula. When prefermenting this much flour, the yeast has digested most of the sugars before the final mix. The enzyme activity provided by the malt will help extract additional sugars from the starch in the flour, aiding in fermentation activity and coloration of the baguette in the oven.

There is no rule on the number of scores for the baguette. In general an odd number of scores is more appealing than an even number of scores. For the length of the baguette required by the Coupe, 55-60 cm, seven cuts is a number that looks good and shows the skill of the baker.

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