Baguettes

For Christmas I received a Sunbeam bread machine and have fallen in love. <3
Today is my third attempt at a bread that needs to be shaped and baked outside the machine.  Historically these attempts have run into problems because the winter air is SO DRY that a skin forms on the rising bread, but this time. . . this time things will be different because I have a mister!



Ok, so I am using this recipe from King Arthur flour, and my goal with these posts is to document the changes I make and how they work:

1. I measured all of the ingredients by weight.  I am a scientist by profession and really like to be exact in baking.  Also, I discovered that my liquid measures can't agree on what 2/3 a cup of water looks like.
2. The "poolish" was made in a bowl and stirred with a fork.   It looked much doughier than the one pictured when I set it out, and I was worried about the overnight humidity loss, so I misted it down and covered the bowl with a damp towel.  In the morning it looked just like the photo. (yay)
3. I then skipped all the precise directions for mixing and kneading times, and just through everything in my bread machine in its 90min dough setting
1. Note for hypothetical-future-super-rich-self:  Buy a  bread machine with manual control over kneading and rising 
4. I lack all the fancy equipment mentioned, and don't even have plastic wrap, so I put my shaped baguettes onto oiled parchment paper (bunched to make dividers as in photo) sprayed them with water and put another oiled sheet of parchment above them before placing the bread in the over for the final 40min rise.
5. Halfway through, I misted again because I detected some drying.
6. My first real stumbling block:  My knife wasn't sharp enough to cut the dough, and instead of the classic baguette cuts that break to let the dough expand, I just got lame dimples.  This may also be because my baguettes were already quite wide.

As you can see below these came out less like a round baguette and more like some type of weird flat loaf.  Clearly I need to try again, maybe with less misting, so the dough holds shape better in the second rise.  Also, next time I think I will try 1/3 whole wheat flour.  On the plus side I think they will make for great sandwich buns, and the "poolish" gives them a delicious and distinct flavor compared to white bread.