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Adventures in Bread Making

March 3, 2023 /

For the past month and a half my bestie and I (she lives in France) have been baking bread. She has been experimenting with different recipes and shared them with me and I have learned several lessons about good bread: it takes time! All of the quick recipes are disappointing.

The first lesson I learned was that either my bread machine does not stay warm enough or it doesn’t work well so I finally donated it after my last quick 3 hour bread in it. I was also using old yeast which probably didn’t help but the bread was very dense and had no air bubbles.

I then tried a quick baguette recipe and while the bread looked okay on the exterior, it was still dense and did not cook all the way through.

I also needed to improve my “grignage”, the slices you make in the bread to release air. So armed with Veronique’s best recipe, I tried again. I used my KitchenAid to do the hard work after rewriting the recipe with her annotations.

I watched a couple videos to remember who to fashion the baguettes, it requires pressing and folding.

Here are my baguettes before they rest some more and go into a very hot oven. I hadn’t made my slices in them yet and those slices as you will see in the final product still need some improvement.

I also need to cook them longer but the bread was much lighter than my first try! This recipe calls for the dough to be in the fridge 12 to 18 hours for the yeast to do its work.

I hope that each time I make these baguettes, they will improve in taste, texture and appearance!

A bientôt!

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