//Exceptionnally this recipe is in English because if you start doing it you are going to have to share it with all your friends :).
(based on the recipe in French here: http://www.tillthecat.com/2013/05/recette-de-baguette-de-pain-maison/).
Active preparation time: 10 minutes Passive preparation time: 2-3 hours Cooking time: 30-45 minutes (depending on oven)
For 4 baguettes:
- 500g of all purpose flour (we took the unbleached king arthur)
- 11g of salt
- 8g of fast rise yeast (the one we found in kroeger here works the best so far)
- 400g of lukewarm water
Extensions:
- 15g of brown sesame
- dilute the yeast in some of the water (I usually start with 100g of water). It is important that the yeast is well dissolved.
- add the rest of the water
- mix together the flour and salt in a salad bowl, add the watery yeast mix (if you want to put sesame, now is the time)
- with a wooden spoon, mix. It does not have to be fast or during a long time. Just mix it like a cake dough.
- cover with a wet cloth and let it rest for at least 2 hours (not in the fridge).
[pause]
- get it out of the dish, cut in four so that it gives the form of a baguette
- let it rest while the oven is preheating (we found that 460F was nice without convection, ours here has convection, 450 seems enough)
- during preheating (and cooking), put a pan in the oven with water in it so that the interior of the oven has high humidity
- put some flour on top of each baguettes (it will give a sexy "old-fashioned look")
- before putting in the oven, do some cuts on top of the baguettes with scissors
- cook for 30 minutes (with convection, generally we let it 40/45 minutes without convection), until the baguettes have a nice golden touch.
Bread freezes well. You can freeze any left-over, then put it in a toaster then eat it at breakfeast with salted butter!