Vive le baton!

Why not try to create a French baguette? Well, I did partly succeed in doing what I set out to do....

Half of my result shown above, about a foot long. I used part of my sourdough starter (see 'A well-bred loaf' from a few days ago), instead of the 'poolish' suggested in the recipe that I used - French bread and baguettes.

Whilst the recipe seems to be comprehensive, I did find it a little confusing, particularly as to how many times I had to knead the dough. In the end it got three kneads, prior to being put into the hot oven.

Perhaps my dough was a little damper than it should have been, but the two loaves I made were too close together and ended up like siamese twins, with the area of contact being a little moister than it ought to have been - but the other loaf (the one you can't see) was very palatable, despite that. I regret not having some means of making the bottoms of the loaves more rounded - I gather you can buy a specific bread tin for this - but nevertheless very enjoyable!

It will help the next time I do this if I change the loaves around on the baking sheet, as well as turning the sheet around; I feel this would give a more even bake.Yum!

For more recipes of different sorts, keep your browser on this space or take a look at Healthy Eating Recipes.

A well-bred loaf

Having done a little bread baking in the recent past, I thought it was time to take on my first sourdough. This is what happened. (Nothing to do with vegetables, either!)
I picked up the recipe for this from Sourdough bread: How To Begin.

Rather than me go through the whole thing here, best read what he's written first.

I begun my starter last Sunday afternoon (when I had nothing to do, evidently), but I did cheat a little and add a very small amount of dried yeast to the mix - about half a gram.

It didn't take long to start bubbling away in the old (but meticulously clean) pickle jar I had selected as my starter home. As it was doing so well, it wasn't fed as per instructions, as I expected to use it fairly early on.

Decided on Tuesday night that I'd like to bake Wednesday morning, so I started the 'sponge' at about 8 pm. By bedtime, it was going almost like the Old Faithful geyser. Quite fortuitously, I had to get up in the middle of the night, and was able to observe that it was still going well at 3 am.

When I looked at it at 7 am, however, in anticipation of starting the real work, it was as flat as pancake batter - no bubbles, nothing. It smelt as I thought it ought to, though, very yeasty and sour.

Undeterred, the next step was to make the actual dough, but I cheated once again and added 3 gms of dried yeast to the mix before adding the additional flour. Once I'd made the dough, it did rise well, and rose well on the second proofing, too.

After about 30 minutes at gas mark 4, I had a nice-looking loaf, which smelt yeasty-sour. After it had cooled off, it was lunchtime, and this bread was used for the ham sarnies. Great! Nice and chewy, but not too much, and a smashing taste.

The rest of the loaf (I only made a small 1lb. one) went with the soup being made (not by me) for our evening repast. Well, almost all - there was a little left over for a cheese sarnie at suppertime - I can tell you that sourdough and strong cheddar go very well together.

Try it - the major cost is probably the gas for the oven. Going to try a wholemeal or granary one next - or maybe plain old baguettes.....l