As of late, I have taken to making bread every week for the family. I have been making an oatmeal bread recipe, which is supposed to be a knock off Brownberry's bread. I enjoy the loaf a great deal, but I seem to have a case culinary attention deficit, so I wanted to try something new. I have heard that the French Baguette is extremely simple in terms of ingredients, however it is anything but in terms of taste and texture, so there begins my adventure. One of my favorite chefs is Jacques Pepin, so I decided to turn to him after first consulting Julia Child's quintessential book and finding no information. Below is a link to the recipe I found:
For my first attempt, I decided to make baguettes and I tried to follow the recipe exactly as I could. I was pleased to see he called for the use of a food processor as I received a Kitchen Aid 12 cup for my birthday last month. Sadly, I found it's use much more of a hassle than it was worth. I have become fairly proficient at making bread in a large bowl with a wooden spoon and find it much easier in terms of getting out the tools much less cleaning up afterwards.
As far as the amount of flour goes, I found the 4.5 cups to be not quite enough -- the dough was far too sticky to attempt any hand kneading. It probably took about 5.5 cups total. The other issue I had was that I only have a round pizza stone, which doesn't exactly hold a lot of baguettes and I don't plan on spending 2+ hours baking each loaf individually. I was able to fit 3 10" baguettes on the stone and one in a regular bread pan. They weren't the most elegant looking loaves... I also forgot to read about the baking section where you put water in the oven to create steam to help develop the crust. When all was said and done, the bread tasted great -- the crust had a solid bite to it and the inside was chewy like a baguette should be.
Needless to say, the bread didn't last long between egg sandwiches, roast beef sandwiches and general snitching. So I tasked my wife with making some more bread, except this time we made a couple changes.
Here is our version to make a 10" diameter and 4" tall country loaf of french bread.
Combine the following in a large bowl (we use a pyrex bowl with a plastic cover):
1/2 cup 110° water
1.5 tsp yeast
.5 tsp sugar
Let rest until yeast begins to bubble (about 10 min)
Add the following ingredients and stir until dissolved:
1.5 cups water
1.5 tsp salt
You will add in total about 5.5 cups of flour, but use the following method:
Add flour 1 cup at a time and stir with the wooden spoon -- the first 2 cups should make a fairly smooth batter and then it will begin to clump. At that point start using the spoon like you would knead with your hand, pull from the bottom and push on top. After that, you should be able to start kneading by hand, but as soon as the dough sticks to your hands, add some more flour. The goal is to not have to scrape half the dough off your hands when you're done kneading. Once the dough can be knead about 5 times before it sticks to your hands, it has the right amount of flour in it.
Put the lid on the bowl (or plastic wrap) and place it in the oven with the light on for about 3 hours to rise. I think the dough will rise to double in size within an hour or so, but I think there is a certain amount of flavor developed as it "proofs" for the full 3 hours.
After the three hours, knead the bread for 2 minutes adding flour as necessary to keep from sticking to your hands, being sure to press out the pockets of air, otherwise you'll end up with hol-ey bread.
Take a good amount of cornmeal and lightly press it into the seam side of the loaf and sprinkle some more cornmeal on a plastic cutting sheet or other flat surface. Place the loaf seam-side-down on the sheet and place it back in the oven for two hours to rise. The goal with the cornmeal is to get the loaf to slide to the stone with ease.
Remove the sheet and loaf and put the stone in the oven. Preheat the oven to 425° F and let the stone preheat for 20 minutes or so. Sprinkle the loaf with a little flour and make a couple slices across the top to make it look fancy. Transfer the dough to the stone and put in the oven. Before closing the door, spray some water on the bottom of the oven to create steam. Do this three more times at 3 min, 6 min and 9 min. From then on let bread bake for about 45 minutes to an hour depending on your oven. When you knock on the loaf and it sounds hollow, then it should be done.
Ideally you should wait an hour before cutting into the loaf... Good luck.
Enjoy.
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