breadkneading
I've been making baguettes using the "stretch & fold" method instead of kneading. The resulting baguettes have great taste & texture, but the surface is covered with coarse, unsightly ropes of gluten, as below:
Is there a way to get the benefits of the stretch & fold method (texture; open crumb) without the ugly appearance?
Damn, that looks good. I've never made this particular type of bread before, but here are some things that I do know which might help:
Butter is (roughly) 10% water and 90% fat, while lard is 100% fat. So if you substitute one for the other, you should adjust the amount of water in the recipe accordingly. The flavor will be a little different, but I bet either one would work.
I would not assume AP flour. In fact, I'd assume high-gluten bread flour. The gluten is what creates those fibers. It's the fat that keeps it tender.
This looks very similar to a brioche, so you might want to look at brioche recipes to learn some of the principles. One thing that most of them will tell you is to to knead the dough to develop the gluten fibers, and then add the butter. This I think is the key. I know that fat can keep gluten molecules from sticking together into strands, so if you add the fat later, you should wind up with strands of gluten surrounded by fat.
Assuming that this is what you want:
This kind of crust is made with steam injection. Normal household baking methods will give you a thick crust, which is usually also hard. Wetting and covering it right out of the oven will give you a chewy crust. If you bake the bread in a fitting pan and tweak the recipe, you can get thin, almost non-existant crust, but also soft, like sandwich bread.
For what you see in the picture, you need standard French bread dough (60% hydration, AP flour) and a blast of steam in the oven at the beginning of baking. Sadly, homemade steam methods which rely on evaporation won't work, because there is a limit to the amount of water which will evaporate even of high temperatures, and you need to get more steam inside than that. So, you'll either need a pro oven or a steam modding (which only works on an oven with vents, unless you are prepared to drill a hole into the oven cavity).
For extra tweaking the crust, you can use a glaze. We had a question explaining the different glazes and their results.
Best Answer
Regardless of the kneading method you use your loaves need to have a taut skin on top after shaping or they will look ragged. Another consequence of a ragged top is that it doesn't trap the expanding gasses as well and might not rise as high.
Boules are easier as you can pull all the dough to the underside in a circle to stretch the top. Baguettes are trickier.
One method is to push a finger into the underside of the baguette while stretching the top surface around it and then working down the length of the loaf.
This is a good description of this method:
https://www.theperfectloaf.com/guides/shaping-baguettes/
Another method is to pull the loaf along the table with the tips of the fingers on the edge of the loaf to let the friction with the table stretch the top of the loaf.
Don't forget to score the proofed loaves of that nice top will tear in the oven.