better to be lucky than good

I have tried for years to get a great crust on my baguettes. I've tried throwing ice on the bottom of the oven, placing a pan of water in the oven, spritzing water on the bread while it bakes all to no avail.

Today, serendipity strikes and I have the crust - crunchy, brown, flaky - PERFECT.

Here's how it happened. I use a wet dough as has been described ad nauseum on this forum in the past. I form my baguettes on a baguette pan on which I have placed a sheet of parchment paper for the second rise. Then I put them in the oven at 425 for 10 minutes (slice the top at 2.5 minutes - the dough is too wet to slice before baking) then drop the temp down to 375 for 30 minutes. Usually ends up at 205 deg F and I'm done. Good tasting baguettes but the crust is usually less than stellar.

In order to work with wet dough, you need wet hands. Mine were very wet and I noticed the parchment paper was still soaked when I put the baguettes in to bake. Did my usual and VOILA - fabulous crust!!

I'll try to soak the parchment deliberately next time to see if it is more than coincidence but I think I'm on to something.

Oh, that's a good idea, Howard, I haven't tried that before, will give it a go ! When I bake baguettes, I tend to cook them at 220deg C (450F) for the full cooking time of about 20 minutes - they get a very crispy crust. I like my bread with a hard crust - product of years of eating Italian wood-fired bread. Also, I'm only ever making sourdough, which I think makes a difference to the crust as well.

One nice variation is to cut the baggies into epi with scissors - you get really crunchy bread then, which you can break off into mini dinner rolls.. :)