I followed Eric’s recipe from the site, the results were okay but not great. The crumb was too dense without much openness and the crust was light beige instead of the more mahogany color I’d expected. I used organic, unbleached all purpose flour. I did use a cast iron pan for steam and baked the loaves for 22 minutes. Does anyone have suggestions as to how I can get a more open crumb and crunchier, darker crust? Thanks!
For the crumb, there is more than one cause for a dense crumb. Any chance you could post a picture? The two most common issues are proofing too long and proofing not long enough.
For the crust, I have always done baguettes on a pizza stone using a small foil drip tray with a tiny hole poked in it, filled with water on the lowest rack of the oven (dripping like a drop per second onto the oven floor) for steam. That has seemed to give me nice color and the kind of thin, crispy crust you want in a baguette.
Excellent. Hey that’s not bad at all for a first time. How did it taste?
I would say that dough is under-proofed (proofed not long enough).
Thanks for looking. It tasted pretty good I’d say. I’m going to try another batch this weekend and let it proof longer. I’ll post results.