Due to a supermarket delivery item swap we ended up with some yeast for hand baking, as opposed to our usual bread machine bake. So I found a simple recipe online to make baguettes by hand and we had boiled egg, onion and mayonnaise sandwiches for tea, which turned out to be easy to do and very tasty.
I recommend trying it out. The bread was easy to make and we’ll definitely be baking it again. It isn’t hard to do, but you need to be patient, allow the yeast to work, which does take time.
So here’s the recipe and some pictures.
French Baguettes
Ingredients
7 g Easy bake yeast sachet
270 g Warm water (lukewarm 35-40°C)
1 tsp Granulated sugar
450 g Strong white bread flour
2 tsp Salt
Method
Step 1: Started at 5 am.
In a large bowl mix the yeast with the water and sugar.
Sift the flour and salt together in a separate bowl, add half to the yeast mixture, stir and cover.
Leave until the dough has doubled in size. (I left it for 4 hours at 22-23°C by which time it was well risen three quarters filling the bowl)
Yeast beginning to work
Step 2:
Add the remaining flour and mix to a light dough.
Knead for 10 minutes by hand or for 5 minutes if using a food mixer fitted with a dough hook.
Step 3:
Divide the dough into 3 pieces and shape each into an oblong.
Fold the 2 ends into the middle and seal, repeat this process 3 or 4 more times for each piece.
Step 4:
Roll each piece of dough into a 33-34 cm (13-14”) long loaf.
Ready for oven
Step 5: (Reached this stage after a further hour. Happy with the progress.)
Place onto a greased baking tray and leave until doubled in size, then slash the tops.
Meanwhile preheat the oven to 200°C (fan 180°C, gas mark 7).
Rolls baked and out of oven, piece taken for testing purposes
Step 6: (After a further two hours, 12.00 am, I reached this point. Ready to bake.)
Bake for 20 minutes carefully spraying the inside of the oven and the dough with water during the first 5 minutes of baking.
Buttered and filled with chopped boiled egg, onion and mayonnaise
Try it, I promise it is far easier than you would think.
Thanks to Hilary for the photos.
I got up at 5 am and worked through it again, added the timings for anyone interested. It is a slow lazy loaf. Finished at about 12.30am. Seven and a half hours all together. Mostly spent drinking coffee and browsing the net on my laptop. The yeast did all the work.
This is the result of today’s bake. The oven and dough were sprayed with a film of water just before baking, which encouraged the crust formation and appearance. Giving the yeast a bit more time, as well, has produced a definite improvement.
Later on, we’ll be having some of this, buttered, with a bowl of home-made tomato soup. (See below for recipe.)
Keep on keepin’ on
