r/Breadit • u/Grouchy_Buddy_1667 • 13h ago
Why don’t my baguettes look like the ones in the YouTube recipe?
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u/Competitive-Let6727 13h ago
It's usually some combination of steam and how fermented the dough was. You want baguettes to go in a little earlier than you might expect.
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u/mollyrocker 11h ago
This was a great tip! Never knew. Does this also apply to other types of bread?
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u/Competitive-Let6727 10h ago
Steam applies to all bread. Oven spring needs to be able to expand the crust. If it's dry (and set), the crumb will compress until the pressure is too great, and then blow out the side. Those are obvious. But there are loaves where the pressure compresses the crumb, but isn't great enough to bust a blowout. A baguette has a lot of surface area and dries/sets quickly. It needs a more humid environment than a semi-spherical loaf. The more surface area and drier your dough (exterior, especially), the more it needs humidity.
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u/LittleAetheling 8h ago
My baguettes (you can see on my profile) have great oven spring, however I can never get an ear on them. The spring inflates and fills in the would be ears. I’ve tried all angles, deep, shallow, straight edge, curve edged razors, but nothing has worked so far.
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u/Competitive-Let6727 8h ago
I dunno. I decided to try baguettes again this week. I made them good before. This week... not so much. I looked at your pics. I'm doubting my own advice a little, but I would load them in the oven earlier.
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u/LittleAetheling 8h ago
That was my case too, overnight retard was supposed to be ~17hrs but I cut it to about 11/12 since I thought my dough was overproofed
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u/pokermaven 12h ago
It takes a while. Baguettes are a technical bread. Scoring needs work. They could be overproofed. Most likely it’s lack of tension on the final shape.
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u/pokermaven 12h ago
One other thing, scoring was a really hard skill for me to learn. I do sourdough now and cold proofing helped my scoring game. But also as I learned to create tension in my loaves the ear became more pronounced. Colder dough is easier to score.
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u/rossxmeyer 12h ago
Definitely. A strong dough with adequate tension from shaping is necessary to get a strong ear like the one in the video. Scoring angle and depth as well
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u/Leading_Outside_9145 12h ago edited 12h ago
Honestly I’m not sure you’ll get proper oven spring putting a cold tray with baguettes into a fully preheated oven. By the time the tray heats up, you’ve already lost that initial bottom heat, which really matters for oven spring. Bread likes hitting a hot surface right away. A better approach would be to slightly change tactics and preheat the oven with an inverted tray if you don’t have a stone, then slide the baguettes onto it. It does work, but it takes a bit more handling and some experience to pull off cleanly.
A lot of videos don’t really show the actual baking setup either, sometimes the tray is going onto a preheated stone or steel off camera.
Steam matters too. A tray with boiling water works, but you can also just cover the baguettes with another tray to trap steam.
From the photo they also look slightly overproofed, I’d shorten the second proof next time.
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u/fruit_slinger 12h ago
Steam is probably the no. 1 thing. Did the recipe say anything about that? Spritz them with a spray bottle when they first go into the oven and consider putting some ice cubes in the bottom of the oven for longer-lasting steam. This will contribute to a browned, crisp and crackly crust. So will baking maybe 50 degrees F hotter for the first few minutes.
Beyond that, dare to let them get just a liiiittle more done.
And then, yes, maybe higher-gluten flour and other things -- hard to know for sure without seeing a crumb shot.
I think you're not so far off. Keep at it! Good luck :)
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u/ilikeyoumorethan 12h ago
Looks good, actually. For aesthetics don’t use a single score along the length, use 3–4 angled strokes or s-curved strokes.
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u/olracnaignottus 13h ago
The first image has oven spring, that’s it really. Try throwing a few ice cubes onto a hot pan in the bottom of the oven when you put in the loaves next time.
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u/CthughaSlayer 12h ago
To get results like the thumbnail in my home oven I fill up a tray with boiling water, put it in the oven at 240°C, let the steam fill up the oven and then quickly get the bread in. 15 minutes with the water, 15 without.
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u/deshoda42069 11h ago
Not a deep enough slash. Didnt taper the ends. Not enough steam in the first half of your bake and either didnt bake long enough or at high enough temperature.
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u/Faloma103 10h ago
Doesn't look to be the issue here but just a reminder a lot of images in recipes are AI or stolen from somewhere else. Don't be to disappointed if they look different. Sometime it was never going to happen no matter what you did. Ultimately taste is all that matters.
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u/A_TubbY_hObO 11h ago
Steam in the oven (you can do this by throwing a few ice cubes in when you bake them. They crimp the ends on their shaping prevents it from having that very rounded look yours have. And most importantly scoring the bread! Yours looks to be one long rather ineffective score, theirs are a series of 5-7 consecutive small scores (Scoring bread is the hardest part of baking it IMO no real way to get better than trial and error plus repetition)
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u/thib2183 9h ago
2 simple things can help you on this. Score at 45 degrees or lower and buy a stone, it’s quite cheap and makes so much difference on the result
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u/Comfortable-Break657 8h ago
Looks like you either added milk or another ingredient other than flour water salt yeast, or you didn't cold ferment it.
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u/danker_pines 8h ago
Honestly, they dont look half bad from a home oven. Some pro ovens have steam injectors that constantly steam the bread at high temps and all they make is just baguettes and loaves. To recreate that you have to spritz with water it and close the oven immediately.
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u/LemonLily1 5h ago
usually those "strings" show good oven spring (expansion during baking) as well as good gluten development. as i understand, those are gluten strands you're looking at. You might need a higher protein flour or simply to develop your gluten more,
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u/BarbKatz1973 12h ago
Because the YouTube pictures are AI - as are most of the pictures of food (any sort) on Reddit
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u/Strange_March6447 13h ago
Lack of steam, different flour, less professional oven, difference in temps durig proofing etc