The last couple of months we have been doing a lot more cooking experiments here in the house. Usually they are in a stew situation becaus you totally freewheel with the experiments and give everything you own twist.
Baking however is not really my skill. The amounts of the ingredients are fixed and crucial to the process and I am not the best in working that.
One thing that was on the top of my list of slowcooking stuff to make is bread. As a Dutchy, we eat bread nearly every day and I have no idea how it was made and I don't like that. I did a little bit of diving into recipes and the one thing why it always seem challenging to make is because it is time sensitive.
No wonder that bakeries always work on weird times. The dough has to be made in the evening and has to rise until the early mornings. Then the bread had to be baked and has to cool off before it i ready to sell at your breakfast time. That means a hassle.
I was looking around for bread recipes that seem doable for me as a bread first-timer and found this Dutch recipe by Rugterbakt on how to make baguettes.
The reason for me to choose this one: The dough has a resting time of a couple of hours plus 10-20 hours. That tells me the dough isn't so time sensitive as other recipes and that suits me a lot more. It gives me a little bit of own influence on the own timeline and that is how I like it.
Making the dough
The amount of ingredients in baguette is really super easy and doesn't really differ from normal bread, except for the amount of yeast, which seems less to me.
- 500 grams of wheat flour
- 320 ml of water
- 10 grams of salt
- 1 gram of dry yeast
The recipe says to start with mixing the flour and the water and let it sit for half an hour. That sounds to me that it is waiting to get entirely on roomtemperature. Then you mix in de salt and only when that all is mixed in then you mix in the yeast. I learned in my search for bread recipes that salt kills the working of the yeast, so it is important not to put them in at the same time.
I started my dough in the evening, with the idea to eat it the day after. I mixed it all by hand in about 10 minutes and it was not difficult at all. When everything is together, that is when the waiting game starts. The recipe says after it rises that you need to 'fold' the dough when it has become more fluffy.
And that is where reality kicks in: It hasn't gotten any more fluffy at all. So I did a bit of folding and stretching the dough, and I decided to hope for the best and just leave it outside the fridge and check again in the morning
Luckily in the morning there was proces and the dough looked like this. More big and more fluffy.
Making the baguettes
Dividing the dough the next morning into two pieces was already a bit challenging since you don't want to kill all of the fluffyness while cutting (of pulling) the dough.
Once it has a bit of the right shape you leave it again for 15-30 minutes.
After leaving it again it was actually easier to stretch it in the length direction so you get more of the shape of a baguette. Important is here to fold out all of the air because this is about your finalisation of the baguette dough.
I cutted some lines in there which look good for the end process and it is was time to hit the oven.
After a nice 15 minutes on 230-250 degrees Celsius in the oven you bread is ready! Let it rest for about 15 minutes to set shape and you are good to go!
I was super happy with the result of this baguette. I ended up saving the half of the dough for the day after even and that was also just fine. So the total mixtures will give you 2 long baguettes.
Now Frenchies, don't kill me on that this is not the original recipe. I am fine with that. This was my first bread experiment and I am actually happy with doing this for the first time. Dense but fluffy, and tastewise it was literally as I had expected.
On to the next bread as this sure will not be my last. Needing more time-friendly bread recipes!