Baguettes Mark II

So been fine-tuning my baguettes, and found this video (https://youtu.be/n0U8RdRdFDU) particularly helpful.  The video is really good for seeing the texture of his dough (which I haven't managed to replicate yet, but at least I know what I'm going for...)  Written recipe here, but I'm going to copy it down here so it doesn't disappear on me, and I can make notes.  I'm particularly liking how this method makes it easy to have fresh bread 3 days in a row, and nearly-fresh for a few days after.

Basically he spreads the bread-making over three days.  Which sounds ridiculous, but the first two days are like 10-minutes of work and pop it in the fridge.  So if anything it's less restrictive than my older version, where I'm supposed to do something every hour or so.

Day1:

450g strong white flour.  (~3 5/8 cups is what the internet told me.  This was _hugely_ wrong; ended up being about 575g, when I finally got a scale.  ~2 3/4 cups was closer, but obviously the scale is better.  Thought the dough seemed a bit dry...)

290ml water.

2.5g / generous pinch  / ~3/4 tsp dried yeast.

7g (~1 - 1 1/4 tsp) salt.

Playing with an autolyse step here, which he doesn't call for.  For that, reserve a small amount of the water to dissolve the yeast, combine the rest with the flour, and let sit an hour before adding the yeast to the remaining water, and then to the dough, along with the salt.  Work it for 1-2 mins just to get it mixed through, then put in a covered oiled bowl in the fridge for 24 hours.  (Without the autolyse step, its just combine it all, work 1-2 mins, rest in fridge.)

Day 2:

500g (~3-ish cups) strong white flour.

300ml water.

5g (~1 3/4 tsp) dried yeast.

10g (~1 3/4 tsp) salt.

Autolyse again if you like.  Otherwise combine with yesterdays pre-fermented dough, cut into smaller pieces to mix in better.  Knead 8-10 minutes until it passes the windowpane test.  Should be a bit wet and sticky.  Put in a covered oiled bowl in the fridge for 12-36 hours.  (You can take some of this dough and bake it now, to spread your loaves over more days...)

Day 3+:

You can keep this in the fridge for up to ~36 hours, so you can have fresh bread for a few days.  When you get to the end on that window, bake the rest and freeze a few loaves as soon as its cool enough.  When you pull the frozen loaves out, spray them with water and heat in the oven 5 mins and they're nearly as good as fresh.

Divide the dough into ~250g portions (6ish).  Shape into a ball and let rest 5 mins.  Grab two sides of the ball and shake it out until you're holding two tendrils; fold them back into the middle (see the video.)  This helps make neater ends.  You'll end up with a rough rectangle maybe 6 inches square.  Roll it up from one side, crimping 2-3 times, to make a 6-inch sausage roll.  Let it rest about 5 minutes (or however long it takes to do the others, if you're doing all 6 at once.)  Then roll them, from the middle outwards, tapering to points.  Rest them, seam-side-up, in floured cloth, pulling up a little wave of cloth between each 2 loaves (which should otherwise touch, to encourage them to rise up instead of out.)  Prove 50-60 mins, until slightly underproven.

Pre-heat oven to 240C fan-forced, and put a heavy pan on the bottom shelf.  Roll the loaves out of the cloth and arrange in pan.  Slash with a razor.  Put them in with a cup of hot water in the heavy pan, for steam.  Spray loaves and oven walls at 1 and 3 mins.  Cook for 20-25 mins total, until done.

Note: I still have trouble getting my loaf bottoms to cook well enough - probably our shit oven's fault.  So I'll roll the loaves over for the last few mins to get them brown and crispy.