The BB Loaf is what happens when home bakers’ minds meet!
Fellow home baker Jeff contacted me after trying out my 80% hydration baguette recipe. He asked if he could use this recipe to make one big loaf in a banneton. I was thinking about the very same thing myself because the baguette shape is sometimes not the most useful shape for your everyday bread. The taste of the dough in the baguette shape is amazing, so transferring that taste to a boule or batard should be interesting. The 80% dough is very sticky so my first thought was to reduce the amount of water to about 75% and use a lot of flour when using the banneton. The final proofing should be in the region of 40 to 50 minutes, instead of the 25 minutes for the baguettes.
The big question was: will the dough be strong enough to hold the shape when you release it from the banneton? There was only one way to find out and that’s to try it. After Jeff send me back a positive report and some very promising pictures of his results I had a go myself.
This is what I did:
I took 2 times the amount of my baguette recipe and I baked 4 loaves (if you want to make 1 loaf you logically take half the amount given in the recipe). I only used 75% hydration instead of 80%, estimating I could shape a good loaf this way. So for 4 loaves I reduced the amount of water in the final dough from 608g to 532g (for one loaf use 133g water in the final dough), so the amount of water in the poolish stays the same. I baked the loaf for 46 minutes at 235ºC / 455ºF. The result is great, the crumb is moist, lovely and sweet like the baguette, but the shape allows you to have a nice sandwich (we Dutch love our sandwiches). The oven spring was a joy to watch, the crust is much like the crust of a baguette. I also really like the color of this bread, you can see how beautiful it has caramelized. For people who, for various reasons, cannot or will not make baguettes, this bread is a great alternative.
So in honor of this successful experiment we decided that this bread is a keeper and should have a name. So next to the PR (Pain Rustique), PL (Pain au Levain), SF (San Francisco Style Sour Dough) and the MB (Mini Boules) we now have the BB (which either stands for Baguette Batard or Baguette Boule, depending on the shape you choose).
Terrance Scholtz says
June 14, 2019 at 17:46Looks awesome…..just imagining my sandwich….
Weekend Bakers says
June 17, 2019 at 21:39Which will be great!
Susan says
January 15, 2016 at 09:09Hello Ed and Marieke,
With high hydration dough, how do I stop my dough from sticking to my banneton?
I floured my banneton with rice flour to almost 1/8 of an inch thick and yet ithe dough sticks
to the banneton in places. Should I spray some oil to my bannton first and then Sprinkle baneton with flour?
Thanks,
Susan
Weekend Bakers says
January 15, 2016 at 09:16Hello Susan,
Please take a look at our short video on how to prepare a proofing basket: www.weekendbakery.com/posts…-banneton/
This preparing is important for cane bannetons for them to function well. And be a bit generous with the flour to begin with. We do not recommend oil.
Petra Robinson says
October 26, 2013 at 04:06Oh another great recipe.
We love our Sandwiches over here too * Uk *
I was going to get those Baquette proofing tray things but I do not need it now since I saw this recipe.
Petra
Weekend Bakers says
November 1, 2013 at 11:38Let us know about your baking results Petra!
Adrian says
June 19, 2012 at 00:03Baguettes are one of those things that I really have to learn how to bake because my mum loves bread and in my opinion baguette is pretty much at the top of the hierarchy. I have actually had baguettes at fairly reputable restaurants in the UK that, whilst having good flavours, they had really really tough and almost hard crusts. The good baguettes that I’ve had elsewhere had crispy crusts and were very easy to bite through unlike the one I mentioned earlier that could have broken an old lady’s teeth.
Weekend Bakers says
June 19, 2012 at 18:12Yes, baguettes is something we really took our time for to master. We fell in love with the 80% hydra version you saw in the video, but a great place to start would be here: www.weekendbakery.com/posts…te-recipe/
Yes on the crunch no on the tough! Baguettes need to be absolutely fresh, they go stale very quickly.
Hope you’ll be as successful with this project as you were with the croissants!
TONYK says
March 26, 2012 at 06:37THE BB RECIPE LOOKS SO GOOD BUT IT REQUIRES GOING BACK AND FORTH BETWEEN THE TWO RECIPES AND COULD YOU POSSIBLY DEVELOP A RECIPE SOLELY FOR THE BB BREAD — IT WOULD MAKE THE TASK OF COOKING THIS BREAD SO MUCH EASIER — THANKS FOR YOUR CONSIDERATION — I LOOK FORWARD TO MAKING THIS BREAD —
TONYK
Weekend Bakers says
March 26, 2012 at 13:08Hello Tony,
Thanks for your request and for liking the BB! I will see if I can fit it in somewhere this week. Please bear with…
Marieke
Weekend Bakers says
April 12, 2012 at 13:01You can now find the recipe on our website:
www.weekendbakery.com/posts…he-recipe/
Happy BB Baking,
Marieke
Claartje says
March 6, 2012 at 12:30YES! My first go at baking the BB last weekend and all went very well up until the point of shaping … That was a bit of a hassle. I ended up with two ciabatta look a likes, with a decent oven spring though. The crumb is beautifully open, but firm and the taste is fantastic! I’m definitely going to try again, but first I’ll have another go at the “fluitjes”. Getting there!! Really enjoying your website!
Weekend Bakers says
March 6, 2012 at 16:56Hi Claartje,
Thanks so much for liking it! We just can’t get enough of stories about how our recipes work for other people too :))
Happy ‘fluitjes’ baking,
Marieke
Gregoire Michaud says
January 3, 2011 at 15:22That’s a beautiful looking loaf! It’s very nice to read your rational behind the recipe… Nice job 🙂
Flo Makanai says
January 3, 2011 at 15:02Beautiful bread! Would love to bite into a large chunk of it!
Edwin says
October 16, 2010 at 20:06Glad you liked it too,
Go for the 75%!
Ed
codruta popa says
October 15, 2010 at 12:03if i only read this article 10 minutes ago! it had the same question on my mind: can i make a loaf using 80% dough? i decided to add more flour to the dough, so now i have a 72% dough, waiting on my table. this article cleared my doubts, maybe next time i will dare to try a 75%. many thanks, codruta
Mike says
March 6, 2012 at 19:24I attempted making this today, and i followed your recommendation, but i came to closed end when i made calculations on how you got the 133 gr. of water for each loaf.
To me 75% water out of 380 gr. of flour is 285 gr. of water/142 gr for each loaf.
I don’t know if it is my laziness in math, or is it something wrong in your calculations.
Could you please clarify this to me.
Thanks guys,
Mike 😀
Weekend Bakers says
March 6, 2012 at 20:00Hello Mike,
In our calculation we only reduced the water in the final dough to get to 75% instead of reducing the water equally in the ‘poolish’ and the final dough, like you did, giving you the amount of 142 g. But the end result for both is the same so no problem for your dough. I did this because I wanted to keep my ‘poolish’ wetter, in other words, closer to the hydration of an actual poolish. To end the confusion ad make things more clear, we will add a water/flour table to this posting.
Thanks and hope the BB loaf will turn out great,
Ed
Mike says
March 6, 2012 at 20:28Thanks for your expeditious response Ed.
I will surely make this recipe now. I’m keeping my fingers crossed.
Wish me luck
🙂
Mike says
March 7, 2012 at 22:11Well here’s the results for trying this recipe.
Shape: well cannot be defined as a perfect oblong batard, but it was fine. However, i think that this is forgivable due to handling such high hydration dough for the first time.
Color: Beautiful golden chestnut brown.
Smell: Unbelievably sweet and appetizing.
Taste: The least i can say, WOW, so very much delicious.
Crust: Thin yet very crunchy, very much like Baguette.
Crumb: Now this is the part i felt proud of. Crumb is sooo sweet, light, fluffy, chewy, with really big opening exactly like in your pictures.
I really loved this bread. I just prepared the poolish for tomorrows baking.
I recommend this to all.
A tasting tip:
I made myself a slice of this wonderful, flavorful and delicious bread. I put sliced of Mozarella Cheese on it, topped it with Sun-dried Tomato preserved in olive oil, and sprinkled some dry wild thyme on it…Soooo delicious, but hey it’s addictive 😀
Thanks Marieke & Ed for this wonderful bread. You earned it’s creation.
Thanks again, i will let you know of tomorrow’s Baguette Boule Baking.
Cheers,
Mike
Mike says
March 7, 2012 at 22:13Guys,
Can i include some Whole Wheat Flour in the dough mixture? And if yes how much do you recommend? And would that affect the texture of the bread?
Thanks,
Mike
Weekend Bakers says
March 7, 2012 at 23:25Hi Mike,
Great, love your description of the result!
About the BB loaf: The whole purpose of the bread is to be like the baguette, sweet, thin crust, lovely crumb et cetera. Adding whole wheat will certainly change this, if you want to try it anyway we would suggest not going any higher than 10 to 15 %. We also suggest trying the pain rustique and the whole wheat levain recipes if you want to go further along the route of healthy, whole grain and sourdough.
Have a great evening and keep up the good baking work,
Ed ad Marieke
Mike says
March 8, 2012 at 23:38Hi guys,
Well i made this bread again today. It was wonderful and very tasteful.
But the thing that puzzled me is: when i took the loaf out of the oven the crust was very crunch. As the loaf cooled, the crust became soft and chewy, i.e: it lost the crunchiness.
I wonder if this is due to using too much steam in the oven or is it something else i did?
Do you have any explanation guy?
However, it was sooo delicious and tasteful. The opening in the crumb is unbelievably large.
Thanks,
Mike 😀
Weekend Bakers says
March 9, 2012 at 08:58Hi Mike,
The most common reason this happens is that your bread has not baked for long enough. This means too much water is still in the bread, this moisture travels from the core of the bread to the crust, making it softer.
So we would suggest you bake your bread just a little bit longer to reduce the amount of moisture further.
And it is really important to cool the loaf on a rack so moisture can escape easily.
Glad you like the BB loaf 🙂
Marieke
Mike says
March 9, 2012 at 18:11Thanks Marieke,
But i honestly baked it for good 43 minutes. Should i go for over 45 minutes? I guess i will try this.
And yes i’m in love with this recipe now, so is my family. And of course that’s thanks to you and your great creativeness guy.
Cheers 😀
Weekend Bakers says
March 10, 2012 at 19:12Yes, you can play with that a bit. And also, when the added steam has done its job, after the oven spring moment, it should be released from the oven (usually after about 10 minutes) and the bread must be able to get rid of the moisture.
Good luck with it,
Marieke