Posts Tagged → french
Adam: Baguette
So first off: I was really nervous about making this bread. I freakin’ LOVE baguettes – and am entirely guilty of sitting with a small dish of butter and an entire baguette and having them both just disappear somehow. I love the crunchy crust and the soft interior – and the smell.. oh the smell. So I really wanted this to turn out right – ESPECIALLY after last weeks debacle; and for a spoiler: It turns out! Sorta.
I ran out and got some proper white bread flour (we have a lot of whole wheat stuff in the house but not much in the way of white bread flour, so .. well, corrected now!) and decided that this was going to the loaf of loaf’s! I spoke with Ashley previously and she mentioned it become quite large and to make two (which the recipe calls for ) would be fairly difficult with a standard sized baking sheet, so I split the recipe. After the sponge was done I took it out and it was the most amazing dough I’ve ever played with.
It just felt … svelt? I’m not even sure if that’s the right word for it but it was an amazing experience. Our beloved bread book, now very specifically says: ”Knead until you feel you are done”. Really? That doesn’t seem like very good instruction to me. EXCEPT THAT IT WAS. This dough was no like no other and I knew it was ready, or did I? It then said: “When you think you are done, knead for another 15-20 minutes and whap it on the table every once in a while”. Most excellent.
Once done it was set to rise, and then rise again. And oh yes, then again.. wait no, I don’t have to split the dough and let it rise again – or do I? How much does this all really matter? Wait what? My dough didn’t rise at all – ok maybe 10-15% but that was it. I couldn’t figure out why dough that was so amazing to knead wasn’t doing everything right to insure it found itself transformed into the most amazing baguette ever. Turns out when I 1/2′d the recipe I failed to 1/2 the salt. Salt eats yeast right? I think this is the problem. But I continued (I clued into this about the time I put it on the baking pan). I rolled it out after a few failed risings and twisted it just slightly while putting it on the sheet. It looked like it was going to be awesome : a few slits down the top for steam and they said if I angled my cuts it’d open flower like, sure did.
Our oldest and most trusted baking sheet is up for the task.
40 minutes later and some magic came out of the oven. I really enjoyed the way it looked. Ashley had actually gone out for the day with my wife and when she returned it had just come out of the oven. I asked if she wanted to see it of course and I felt like I was standing next to my offspring, very proud. Of course, I think that at this point I still forgot that I doubled the salt. Turns out it was sorta salty – but otherwise really nice and soft inside and a wonderful rustic crust on the outside.
I forgot to take bread interior shots. I’ll do that in the future. It was nice and airy – not too dense. It took butter like a champ. If only it didn’t have so much salt!. ARGH. I will remake this and likely update this post. I didn’t do much in the way of storage for it as we didn’t each much of it being salty and all – but I think bread box + brown paper bag is the way to go. And of course, you must consume most of it as quickly as possible!
Also, one of the dog – because I took the bread outside on this cutting board to take some better lit pictures and she patiently waited for me to finish up. She likes short walks, cheese and belly rubs.
